Shannon Sharpe's horrendous Joe Burrow take is why no one takes sports talk shows seriously anymore
Losing makes everything look and feel worse, even when the quarterback has an objectively great game. That's what's happening with Joe Burrow following the Cincinnati Bengals' Monday night loss to the Washington Commanders. Burrow had never played so well in his career without being the winning QB at the end of the game. Everyone who watched […]
Losing makes everything look and feel worse, even when the quarterback has an objectively great game. That's what's happening with Joe Burrow following the Cincinnati Bengals' Monday night loss to the Washington Commanders.
Burrow had never played so well in his career without being the winning QB at the end of the game. Everyone who watched the game could tell that while it wasn't a perfect game from him, he wasn't the reason why Cincinnati fell short.
Everyone except Shannon Sharpe.
When asked by ESPN's Jeff Saturday if Joe Burrow played well against Washington, Sharpe paused for a few seconds before getting his point across.
"He played well, not well enough to win."
He didn't even need to include the first part of his answer. All he really wanted was to emphasize the second part of Burrow playing losing football.
If there's an example of why sports talk shows are terrible products nowadays, this one stands tall above the rest. The utter lack of nuance and reasonability reeks of incompetence and buries the logic he attempts to support, but for Sharpe's sake, we'll attempt to uncover it.
Sharpe's issue with Burrow's performance stemmed from the fact that the Commanders' offense was playing so well that any time the Bengals didn't score a touchdown, it was a failure.
"He saw his defense couldn't stop them, so now he has to find a way to get the ball to the end zone, because you're going to be down," Sharpe said. "Think about it. They were down one time, 13 [points]!"
The Bengals did in fact fail to capitalize inside the red zone twice in the first half, leaving some points on the board and giving the Commanders added cushion entering the half.
That's a worthy point of contention to bring up against Burrow, but to use that as a basis to say he didn't play well enough to win a football game and ignoring everything else that happened for all four quarters is wildly irresponsible for someone who's watched by millions of viewers.
Burrow finished the night with 324 passing yards and three touchdowns to go with a 76% completion rate. His Expected Points Added per play was the fourth-highest from Week 3. His passer rating was the fifth-highest.
ESPN's Marcus Spears said he doesn't want to live in a world where a QB can have the game Burrow did and have it be labeled as not well enough to win. Those numbers are more than enough to secure a victory 99% of the time. Sharpe's response was as disappointing as his initial comment.
"I do," Sharpe replied to Spears. "You live in a world where they make $55 million, why do they make so much if so much isn't expected of them?"
If I can interject here, maybe the quarterback for the other team has something to do with it?
While Burrow posted great numbers against Washington's defense, rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels posted even greater numbers against Cincinnati's defense. He led the NFL in EPA/play, success rate, and was second in passer rating.
But because Burrow is one of the highest-paid players at the position, he was supposed to make sure Daniels wouldn't completely dominate with him off the field. Makes sense.
Sharpe went back to harping on Burrow failing to put the ball in the end zone early in the game as the reason why he deserves his criticism.
"His team settled for two field goals!" Sharpe exclaimed. "That was the difference. He saw his defense couldn't stop Washington. You've got to match that offense, because once you fall behind, if your defense can't stop, how do you get the lead?"
Sharpe does have a point here. If the opposing team scores on all six of their possessions (sans two kneel-downs), including five touchdowns, and therefore doesn't give you any extra possessions via punts or turnovers, you will not be able to secure a lead without matching all those scores.
Translation: The only way to beat perfection is to match perfection. Sharpe expected perfection out of Burrow, and by simply being great instead, he gets the blame.
And now we've reached why the masses don't appreciate this level of analysis. It has absolutely zero nuance. Either Burrow plays great and loses, or he plays perfect and wins.
That's all the context Sharpe needs, and people see right through it.
It's entirely okay to say that Burrow and the Bengals missed on a couple chances and they lost a shootout because their defense played historically awful at home. That covers all basis and shows a knowledge of the situation as a whole.
But Sharpe wanted to make a larger point and looked foolish in the process, and sports talk shows continue to show their decline.
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