BY ADAM GREENE<\/p>\n\n\n\n
JOE<\/strong> BURROW MIGHT BE OUT A YEAR<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n When Cincinnati Bengals rookie quarterback went down with a knee injury Sunday in a 20-9 loss to the Washington Football Team, everyone knew his season was over. Even Burrow didn\u2019t waste any time being coy, Tweeting out \u201cSee ya next year\u201d barely an hour later. He was cheery, about to work on his comeback and if you were a Bengals fan, the sky didn\u2019t have to be falling. Cincy had shown some real growth as a team, especially as an offense and Burrow looked very much like a slam dunk pick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then Monday came. And the sky totally fell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After a thorough evaluation it turns out Burrow tore nearly everything he could have in his knee; his ACL, MCL and other \u201cstructures\u201d that booted his recovery time from a few months to maybe even a calendar year<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Bengals were not going to win this season. They weren\u2019t going to finish any better than 4-12 or 5-11 so a Burrow injury, if it had been \u201cnormal,\u201d would have actually worked out pretty well. They\u2019d get a guaranteed a Top Five pick in April 2021\u2019s NFL Draft (they would currently pick third) and likely nab whatever offensive lineman they saw fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There was a chance, if the QBs outside of Clemson\u2019s Trevor Lawrence got hot, that the high draft pick could have been turned into multiple first round picks as quarterback-hungry teams offered megadeal trades to set Burrow and the team up for years to come. But now, all you have is uncertainty, not just for Burrow\u2019s return, but for head coach Zac Taylor\u2019s future with the team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Burrow injury news came with the caveat that \u201cevery player heals at his own pace,\u201d but the average recovery time for this type of injury is 9-12 months. If everything goes perfect, maybe Burrow is ready for the beginning of next season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And here\u2019s the thing; the Bengals can\u2019t rush him back. You don\u2019t want to go through what the old St. Louis Rams did with Sam Bradford and lose him for consecutive seasons and basically ruin his career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So what does Cincinnati do, considering there\u2019s a real chance Burrow won\u2019t see the field again until Thanksgiving 2021?<\/p>\n\n\n\n If I\u2019m running the team, I draft a quarterback. And I\u2019m not talking at No. 3. You want to turn that pick into multiple picks with a trade or grab the best OL available. The fact that the Bengals offensive line is so bad was a big reason this happened in the first place. Cincinnati needs to open up the coffers and rob the free agent market too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But in the second or third round you want some insurance, making the same call that the Philadelphia Eagles did back in April when they selected Jalen Hurts out of Oklahoma in the second round. That means \u201creaching\u201d for a guy like Iowa State\u2019s Brock Purdy or Florida\u2019s Kyle Trask. And you\u2019re dream scenario when you do that is you\u2019re wasting a pick. That Burrow will be fine and turn into a franchise QB and you can ship Purdy or Trask out of town in a year or two and recoup your second rounder like the New England Patriots did with Jimmy Garoppolo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But you need the insurance. And you don\u2019t want to drag in some free agent like Joe Flacco or Cam Newton. You want a guy, like Trask of Purdy, that you can create value with. That you can use in a trade. Or that turns out to be the franchise guy you thought Burrow was going to be. But you keep forging your team like you have a QB (because you do) and the worst case scenario becomes that you have two. And, that\u2019s good because, as Don \u201cMagic\u201d Juan used to say, one is so close to none.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Zac Taylor, in year three, will be out of excuses. Even without Burrow, his neck is on the chopping block if they can\u2019t put it together and compete next season. You can\u2019t put a band aid on this. You have to keep building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n PLAYOFF UPDATE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s no reason to go deep here, but it\u2019s worth it to see, as we head into Week 12, where every team is currently seeded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the AFC, the Pittsburgh Steelers (10-0) remain the one-seed, with the Kansas City Chiefs (9-1) at No. 2, the Buffalo Bills (7-3) at No. 3 and the Indianapolis Colts (7-3) at four. Five is the Tennessee Titans (7-3), six is the Cleveland Browns (7-3) and seven is the Las Vegas Raiders (6-4).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Baltimore Ravens (6-4) and Miami Dolphins (6-4) are currently right outside the bracket. Officially, only the New York Jets have been mathematically eliminated from the playoffs. But those dominos are going to start to fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The NFC is a lot more cut and dry, with the New Orleans Saints (8-2) sitting at No. 1, the Los Angeles Rams (7-3) at two, the Green Bay Packers (7-3) at three and the Philadelphia Eagles (3-6-1), in defiance of all reason, still at four. At No. 5 is the Seattle Seahawks (7-3), with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (6-4) at six and the Arizona Cardinals (6-4) at seven.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Chicago Bears (5-5) are really the only team close to sneaking in at this point, but no NFC team is mathematically out of it as of today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n NFC IS WIDE OPEN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Being realistic, there\u2019s only three teams that could come out of the AFC at this point and even that might be a stretch. The Kansas City Chiefs and Pittsburgh Steelers are far above their competition and will never play in the regular season. So unless the Buffalo Bills somehow spoil it (and they could), one of those franchises will hoist the Lamar Hunt Trophy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The NFC, on the other hand, is a scrum. And while you could all but guarantee the current seeding will hold up (with the exception of the Bears sneaking in if the Cards stumble), it\u2019s pretty much anyone\u2019s game. Seeds 1-3 and 5-6 could easily make their way through and claim the George Halas Trophy, especially considering that home field advantage will be negligible. There\u2019s a not a team there (Saints, Rams, Packers, Seahawks, Bucs) you couldn\u2019t see beating the other in the playoffs. It\u2019s going to be a gauntlet and the team that gets through it could be tested and ready to upset the Chiefs or Steelers, as they will most certainly be the underdogs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Follow our BetOnline Twitter accoun<\/a>t for the latest sports news and betting odds, and stay tuned on the Instagram feed<\/a> for more good information too.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BY ADAM GREENE JOE BURROW MIGHT BE OUT A YEAR When Cincinnati Bengals rookie quarterback went down with a knee…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":14527,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[129],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nfl"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14525"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14528,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14525\/revisions\/14528"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}