The Athletic’s Mike Sando has unveiled one of his excellent summer projects, the annual QB Tiers list, ranking the top 30 quarterbacks and placing them into various tiers. Cincinnati Bengals fans may be intrigued in this year’s edition.
Tier 1 is made up of quarterbacks that “can carry his team each week. The team wins because of him. He expertly handles pure-passing situations. He has no real holes in his game.” Only three quarterbacks landed in this tier this season: Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen…and one Joe Burrow.
In fact, only Mahomes was ranked higher on the overall list than Burrow with Allen coming in at No. 3.
A mix of head coaches, general managers and executives, 50 in total, made up the voting panel for this list. Of the 50, 43 had Burrow as a Tier 1 quarterback. The other seven placed him in Tier 2. That gave him an average tier vote of 1.1, just above Allen’s 1.2 — Allen had 39 Tier 1 votes, 10 Tier 2 and even one Tier 3. It goes without saying that Mahomes was a unanimous Tier 1 pick.
Burrow had six fewer Tier 1 votes this season compared to last season, mainly due to his wrist injury from 2023.
Here’s what The Athletic wrote about Burrow in their rankings:
The 43 Tier 1 votes for Burrow are six fewer than he received last year after his latest injury, which required surgery on his throwing wrist, amplified durability concerns.
“You love everything about him, but at some point, physically, his body is going to fail,” a defensive coach who has faced Burrow multiple times said.
Burrow’s confidence is one of his most endearing qualities.
“He is a cool, calm, collected, confident version of Kirk Cousins,” another coach said. “He might have a little better arm strength, but the skill set is very similar, except Burrow is not an overthinker. He just has this confidence that he’s right, and he throws with that purpose and that confidence, and normally, he is right.”
Injuries cost Burrow six games as a rookie (knee) and seven last season (calf).
“He is definitely a 1,” a head coach said. “He is an accurate, touch passer with anticipation, but they gotta be careful. He is getting hurt on his throwing arm. You have injuries to your legs like he’s had, that will affect your arm. I’m curious to see how the ball comes off his hand this year.”
As long as Burrow stays healthy, and so far he looks great, the Bengals are going to be right back in contention after missing the playoffs but still finishing with a winning record (9-8) last season with a limited Burrow and Jake Browning at quarterback.
