Zac Taylor explains why a bruised Joe Burrow ended up taking so many hits during loss to Ravens
It's been nearly one year since Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow returned from a Thursday night game against the Baltimore Ravens with a season-ending wrist injury. Burrow and the Bengals are back in town from this year's TNF installment a lot healthier, but still banged up. Head coach Zac Taylor told reporters Friday afternoon that Burrow's […]
It's been nearly one year since Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow returned from a Thursday night game against the Baltimore Ravens with a season-ending wrist injury. Burrow and the Bengals are back in town from this year's TNF installment a lot healthier, but still banged up.
Head coach Zac Taylor told reporters Friday afternoon that Burrow's left arm is sore from being hit, but should be okay going forward.
"Bruised, yeah I mean he took some good hits," Taylor said about Burrow's health. "But I think, just talking to him, the left arm was more just a hit, bruise, soreness."
Not only did Burrow and the Bengals play on a short week, he was hit a total of 13 times throughout the night. The last time he was hit that much in a single game was during his rookie season, according to Cincinnati Bengals on SI's Jay Morrison.
It's been a minute since Burrow was in the position he was in last night. Coupled with an ineffective run game and an aggressive game script, the ball left his hands a whopping 56 times on 60 drop backs. Burrow has only dropped back more in two other games in his career. His average time to throw was 2.96 seconds, which also ranks third on his personal leaderboard.
Dropping back that many times while holding the ball for that long each time is a recipe to be battered. According to Taylor, it's a result of what the game had to look like.
"Joe knew what the plan was, and he was fully on board with that," Taylor said. "And we get to point second half, where we're gonna put them on his hands. And part of the issue with that is you're gonna drop back a lot, and we were trying to change the protections, play action protections, you know, to change up the looks of the line. But, after a while, they know the drill, and they're in pass rush mode.
"But the thing with Joe as well, is he's going to wait to the last second to make sure guys can uncover," Taylor continued. "And so part of that is he knows he's going to end up taking some hits, because he'd wait till the last second to get the ball off, to give Ja'Marr [Chase] one more half-second, because they were pretty tight in coverage, it wasn't like guys were running wide open, and so sometimes he needs to extend the play, and it is going to lead to a hit."
When Burrow is locked in, he's hanging tough in the pocket or doing whatever he can to buy time and extend plays. That puts his body at risk for the betterment of the play, but it rarely leads to this many collisions. Thursday ended up being a perfect storm for the Ravens in that regard.
"I think when you throw it the high 50s [pass attempts] against a good team that's got good playmakers, there's going to be some of that," Taylor said. "We want to minimize as best we can. That's not the type of game we're always trying to play, but that was certainly the type of game we knew we signed up for last night."
Considering how last year's game turned out, Burrow and the Bengals will take a bruise or two if this kind of game doesn't need to be repeated again.
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