From the podium after the Bengals‘ 20-6 win over the Texans, Joe Burrow assessed his performance.
“I was incredibly average today,” Burrow said Sunday. “We’re going to keep getting better. It was a great win. We did some good things, but a lot to learn from.”
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Burrow’s pair of deep-ball touchdowns to Ja’Marr Chase in Houston were hardly average. And yet, the three-time Pro Bowl quarterback’s evaluation of his day at large reflected more than just a quarterback being hard on himself.
The Bengals don’t aspire for their quarterback to be “average,” per se. And there are pieces around him that need to step up, such as the offensive line allowing Burrow to face blitzes on 37% of dropbacks through two weeks, the highest rate of his career, per Next Gen Stats.
But also: the Bengals don’t want Burrow to look like Superman every week, as he has in some years past.
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More precise: They don’t want him to need to.
“You talk about when are the appropriate times to have that dial turned toward ‘I have to be a playmaker’ versus one of the times to have that dial turned forward, ‘I have to mange this football game and keep myself upright,'” Bengals offensive coordinator Dan Pitcher told Yahoo Sports during training camp. “That’s a discussion I think you always have to have. And for great, talented players, they have to think about that a lot.”
Pitcher said that Burrow, whose offense has outperformed its defensive counterpart throughout his Bengals career, thinks about that often.
“The goal would be that we create a team, all three phases, that allows us to be in fewer situations where [Burrow] feels like, ‘I have to go make this play come hell or high water.'”
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Two games is hardly a representative sample size. But through two games, the Bengals defense has provided Burrow with more reason to believe than they have in at least four campaigns.
After ranking 31st of 32 in yardage allowed last season and 30th in points allowed, Cincinnati ranks 16th in yards allowed and eighth in scoring defense through two weeks.
The Bengals traded the 10th overall pick of the 2026 NFL Draft for defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence in April. They also collected key offseason acquisitions, including safety Bryan Cook, outside linebacker Boye Mafe and defensive tackle Jonathan Allen.
The group is changing the Bengals’ defensive reputation week by week — and changing how Burrow considers in-game scenarios.
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“You just play a little more conservative,” Burrow said after the Texans game. “Those guys have been great. When you have that rush and that coverage, you try not to mess it up.”
Burrow fantasy owners may regret that the quarterback who led the NFL two years ago (his last fully healthy season) by passing for 4,918 yards and 43 touchdowns may not actually be chasing similar numbers.
But the Bengals believe this formula gives them a better chance at contending for the Super Bowl as it returns to Los Angeles‘ SoFi Stadium, home of the Bengals’ last big-stage appearance. They believe alleviating Burrow’s burden increases the chances he finishes the season healthy, as he enters this year having missed at least six games in three of his six prior seasons.
“Throwing for all these yards and scoring all these points, sure, that’s good,” Pitcher said. “But unless we’re playing for division championships and playoff seeds, and playing in January and February, that’s the only thing that really matters now.
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“I really feel that from Joe and some of the other guys as well.”
To improve from a bottom-three defense, the bar is low.
To maintain it for two weeks could prove to be a mirage at season’s end.
But the Bengals don’t expect their new-look defense to falter.
Perhaps the Texans won’t rebound to a strong offensive year. But the Bengals held Houston to 6 points one week after the Buffalo Bills allowed Houston 31. The Bengals limited the Texans to a 29.41% third-down success rate and reduced QB C.J. Stroud‘s completion percentage 14 points from a week prior.
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A week after the Bills allowed the Texans to score touchdowns on four of five trips to the red zone, the Bengals denied all four visits. The Texans did not reach the end zone at all, breaking the Bengals’ 65-game streak allowing touchdowns. (The Bills now hold that record at 47 games, per Next Gen Stats, after the Bengals kept an opponent from scoring a touchdown for the first time since Week 3 of the 2022 NFL season).
The Bengals seemed at risk of allowing another score halfway through the second quarter on Sunday, when Stroud hit running back David Montgomery for 8 yards on third-and-9. All Houston needed was inches to convert the first down from the Bengals’ 17-yard line, a chance to score in a game yet scoreless.
Lawrence had other plans. He slipped through his block quickly, finding Montgomery in the backfield for the loss of a yard. Turnover on downs. Bengals ball.
