When Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow suffered a season-ending wrist injury in his team’s 34-20 Week 11 loss to the Baltimore Ravens, it certainly looked as if the 5-5 Bengals’ season was over in a competitive sense. Replacing Burrow would be Jake Browning, a 2019 undrafted free agent out of Washington who had never thrown a regular-season pass before the 2023 season.
Clearly, the onus was on head coach Zac Taylor and his staff to make things as easy as possible for Browning by tailoring things to his preferences, and that’s what they did. The changes for their new quarterback weren’t extreme, but they were meaningful.
In Weeks 1-10, per Sports Info Solutions, the Bengals ranked 23rd in dropbacks with pre-snap motion. Since then, they rank 10th. They ranked 22nd in dropbacks with play-action. Since then, they rank 16th. They ranked 30th in passing snaps under center through Week 10. Since then, they rank 16th.
One play that combined motion, play-action, and under center was Browning’s 54-yard pass to running back Chase Brown against the Indianapolis Colts last Sunday. This pass was thrown four yards behind the line of scrimmage, so this was a lot about Brown, but the design made things difficult for the Colts. The Colts were in Cover-3, and safety Julian Blackmon ran with Jamarr Chase’s jet motion across. The under-center play-action froze linebackers Ronnie Harrison and Zaire Franklin, and cornerback Darrell Baker fell down when he tried to follow Brown’s delayed flare route. Not an explosive play from Browning’s arm per se, but you can tell that the Bengals’ coaching staff have gone out of their way to make Browning comfortable.
“I don’t know if it’s really been that different,” Taylor said of the new stuff. “They’re all things we’ve done over the course of the season. Each defense we play is a big driving force for how the game is played. We haven’t called a single play that we didn’t rep all training camp and fall. These guys believe in what we’re doing and have done a great job. We’ve really called upon every resource we have on offense, and everyone has stepped up. So many guys made catches and big plays today. We’re not afraid to use everybody on the roster that’s active. We have faith that everyone can step up and do their job.”
Browning has done just that, Browning is the second player since 1950 with a completion percentage of 70% or higher and a passer rating of 95.0 or higher in each of his first three career starts, joining Chad Pennington (first four starts, Weeks 5 and 7-9 in 2002 with the Jets). Browning has completed 79.3 percent of his attempts (69 of 87), the highest completion percentage by a quarterback in his first three career starts since 1950, surpassing Pennington (77.4 percent).
“I don’t look at him as a young guy,” Taylor said of Browning. “He’s been here now for three years — that’s old in this league. He knows what makes a really good backup quarterback. It’s being able to take the reps you’re not getting mentally, and manufacturing them in practice. Dan Pitcher does a great job with that. You’d handle him differently if he was a rookie or second year guy. I feel like we have a veteran quarterback out there, just getting his first action in front of a whole stadium. This is why we’ve given him the opportunity to compete for the job, this is why he won the job and this is why he stuck around for three years.
“A lot of times the guys on the practice squad, you just switch them out after two years. But Jake had all the intangible stuff, the skills we saw that made us think he can be an effective player for us. All he’s done is continue to prove that right. He knows the season doesn’t end today. He has to continue to stack and prepare. I’m sure we have another tough defense coming in next week with Minnesota. He has controlled what he can control at this point.”
Not that Browning is capable of just checkdown stuff. He hit receiver Tee Higgins with this 26-pass against the Colts in which Browning threw with good anticipation to hit Higgins in Indianapolis’ Cover-6 gaps. Browning was in the shotgun here, but his flash fake helped open things up downfield.
And this 76-yard touchdown pass to Ja’Marr Chase against the Jaguars in Week 13 shows that Browning can roll deep when Chase is the backside iso receiver.
The Bengals have a very tough matchup this Saturday against a Minnesota Vikings defense led by Brian Flores, and that defense will throw the entire playbook right at your head. But so far, Browning has proven able and capable in a system tailored to his skill set.
In this week’s “Xs and Os with Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar,” the guys get further into how Browning has kept the how 7-6 Bengals in the playoff race.
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You can watch this week’s “Xs and Os,” featuring all of Week 15’s biggest NFL matchups (including Bengals-Vikings) right here:
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