I don’t think any of us signed up to watch one of the great on-paper matchups of the season to see it finish with a flailing Jake Browning frantically trying to make up ground for the Bengals against an elite Ravens defense, but I’m in the silver lining business.
This has been a massively disappointing season on the injury front, especially when we look at the AFC. Aaron Rodgers made it a handful of plays. Deshaun Watson is now out for the season. Joe Burrow, who left Thursday’s game with a wrist injury, joined Rodgers and Watson, and will miss the rest of the season with a torn ligament, Cincinnati coach Zac Taylor announced Friday. The AFC, in particular, was supposed to feature the gold standard at the position, which caused a lot of teams—certainly the Browns highest among them—to bend moral and economic principles just to keep pace in the first place.
The positive is that, in the absence of an elite starting quarterback we find the sort of primal skills of a franchise laid bare. Namely, how good, really, is a coaching staff? How good, really, is a general manager?
