[jwplayer aBSfyrKD-ThvAeFxT]
Most Cincinnati Bengals fans have been fortunate enough to live in a time that saw the Bengals helmed by a legitimate franchise quarterback. In fact, depending on your age, you may have witnessed two or three of them. Those times also likely constitute the halcyon days of your Bengals fandom and that is obviously not coincidental. Quarterbacks with the physical ability of Carson Palmer, the moxie and toughness of Boomer Esiason and the accuracy and intelligence of Ken Anderson create an alternate universe of possibilities for the teams that employ them.
We’ve existed in an odd place for quite a while now as Bengals fans. I’m reticent to use the term purgatory because that word is steeped in negative connotation, but it’s undoubtedly true that the Bengals have lagged behind an appreciable amount of their direct competitors at the game’s most important position. In the AFC North for example, the Bengals have consistently looked up at a Pittsburgh Steelers team that featured a HOF bound quarterback, a reality that exacerbated the disparity between the quality of their respective organizations more broadly during that time. Also in their Conference for much of the past decade, in order to achieve the desired outcome — winning the Lombardi trophy — they’ve stared down the possibility of facing Peyton Manning, Andrew Luck and Philip Rivers for essentially the entirety of Dalton’s tenure, and more recently they’ve faced the prospect of encountering Deshaun Watson and Patrick Mahomes, and that says nothing about what they’d encounter in a league championship game. To many supporters of this organization, that lift was inconceivable given the limitations at coach and quarterback.
None of this is meant to diminish the contributions of Andy Dalton to this franchise. Dalton was drafted at a time of great tumult and along with his draftmate A.J. Green, helped steady a ship that appeared to be careening toward an iceberg, but even at the time of his selection his shortcomings were apparent, and putting it plainly, none of us would’ve been confident in head-to-head-playoff matchups with any of the aforementioned QBs irrespective of roster quality (indeed we watched Dalton in a home playoff game succumb to a Rivers-led team in a shockingly dreadful performance and watched as Andrew Luck subsumed the light from Dalton’s star in another). The chasm between Dalton and the others with regard to accuracy, flair for the moment and production out of structure was simply too large to overcome. That reality changes for this organization on April 23rd.
Joe Burrow is a franchise quarterback prospect. As I enumerated in my seven-round mock draft, while Burrow does not have truly dynamic arm talent, he is top of the scale good in the areas that truly matter at the position. During his final season at LSU, he showed himself to be an incredible leader that players rallied around in times of adversity. He demonstrated elite accuracy, the ability to create in a muddled pocket, the courage to step into contact when necessary and the type of temperament and the level of confidence that allowed him to play his best football in LSU’s most important games. As importantly, those qualities snugly fit both the modern game and Zac Taylor’s offense, and it’s not difficult to envision a Joe Burrow led team competing for division supremacy perennially and potentially developing into a legitimate threat for the conference.
That would obviously require a level of support from the organization that has been the exception rather than the rule over the past few decades, but even there, the early signs are promising. Perhaps buoyed by the prospect of a franchise quarterback that also has the added twin benefits of a national profile AND local ties or perhaps motivated by missing the playoffs for multiple years after a spate of success that saw them make the playoffs for five consecutive seasons, whatever the reason, the Bengals have splurged on frontline free-agent talent like never before in their history. They have attacked need areas in March, thereby opening up their available options in April. In short, they are beginning to behave like an organization that might be primed to take advantage of the window that the number one pick in this draft affords them.
It should be noted that residing in Franchise Quartlandia is not a ticket to a turbulence-free existence. There will be developmental struggles with a young quarterback no matter the talent level, there will be fits and starts with an unproven coach and with a rapidly-shifting roster, but as importantly, there is the amorphous, elusive thing we call hope sojourning to Cincinnati, the thing that fanbases cling to in times of despair and the thing that sustains them in intermittent down periods. That thing is ticketed for Cincinnati on April 23rd, and I for one look forward to its extended stay in the Queen City.
[vertical-gallery id=29915]