Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow may return for the team’s Thanksgiving game despite recovering from a turf toe injury.
The Bengals have a 3-8 record and less than a 1% chance of making the playoffs this season.
Several of the team’s other key players, including Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins, are also injured or unavailable.
If you’re a proud member of Generation X, then maybe you used to catch the old “G.I. Joe” cartoon series after school. If so, then naturally you remember each episode ending with some concisely packaged life lesson with the tagline, ‘Knowing is half the battle.”
Joe Burrow isn’t old enough to have gleaned such wisdom from his faux military namesake. And, unfortunately, the injured Cincinnati Bengals superstar is employed by an organization known for its disproportionate focus on said battle – quite often at the expense of managing the war at large. But any hopes that a team on a downward spiral would prioritize its quarterback’s long-term health and embrace the need for a full-scale retreat in order to consolidate for a well-planned counterattack − in 2026 − were put on hold Monday.
‘I anticipate him playing, but we’ll continue to work through the week. I’m not going to declare that definitively,’ head coach Zac Taylor said of Burrow’s outlook for the team’s Week 13 game at Baltimore on Thanksgiving night. ‘He’s done everything he could, he put himself in position to do his best to play yesterday.
‘He looks like he’s in good shape right now to be ready to go.’
But should Joe Burrow suit up for the Bengals in 2025?
A quick refresher.
Burrow, the best player the Bengals have had since Hall of Fame left tackle Anthony Munoz retired nearly a quarter-century ago, suffered a turf toe injury in Week 2 that required surgery and was expected to keep him out until at least December. However he practiced fully last Wednesday and Thursday, fueling hope he might return over the weekend. But the Bengals chose not to activate Burrow and wound up losing a valiant, 26-20 fight Sunday to the New England Patriots, owners of the NFL’s best record at 10-2.
The Bengals should take the moral victory when it presents itself – I know, there are no moral victories in the NFL – and have the moral backbone to fully shut Burrow down rather than let him back on the field at what Taylor admits is less than 100%.
Cincinnati is now a 3-8 football team. It’s two games up on the Tennessee Titans for the league’s worst record but what feels like a more distant three behind the Baltimore Ravens and Pittsburgh Steelers, co-leaders of the AFC North … and four back of the Los Angeles Chargers, Jacksonville Jaguars and Buffalo Bills, who are all 7-4 and currently occupy the AFC’s three wild-card positions.
‘Everything is still there in front of us,’ said Burrow. ‘Very rare that our division looks like this, but it does this year. And so, I think we’ll be at least in it until the end.’
(Incidentally, that’s how he felt two weeks ago, when Cincinnati was 3-6.)
By the end of Sunday’s game with New England, the Bengals were without, arguably, their four best players – but certainly their four best-paid players. Burrow, whose five-year contract pays him an average of $55 million annually was in street clothes along with pass rusher Trey Hendrickson ($29 million in 2025), who’s played 23 snaps in one appearance since Oct. 12 while he deals with a hip injury. No. 1 wideout Ja’Marr Chase, whose new extension averages $40.3 million annually, was suspended Sunday for spitting on Steelers defensive back Jalen Ramsey a week earlier. No. 2 wideout Tee Higgins ($28.8 million average annual salary) left the field on a cart after suffering a scary-looking concussion.
If playing is half the battle … well, no more than half those guys will dress Thursday against the Ravens. Taylor ruled Hendrickson and Higgins out Monday.
‘Are they gonna play Joe Burrow?’ NBC “Sunday Night Football” analyst and former Bengals wideout Cris Collinsworth wondered after Week 12’s Rams-Bucs game.
‘I mean he’s back practicing, and he kinda makes a lot of the decisions there. You know? And you know Ja’Marr Chase is not gonna be too happy after having to sit out one. I mean, if they can beat the Ravens twice, right? It’s a really interesting decision. I’ll just say that. It would be hard for me to take the franchise quarterback and risk him.
“But they might.’
The Bengals apparently will roll those dice.
Cincy is still a deeply flawed team, even when Burrow and Chase cook
Yet what are the realistic expectations of this team even when deploying Burrow and Chase, perhaps the league’s best receiver, against the surging Ravens when they won’t have Higgins available to penalize double-team brackets against Chase? Can an offense led by an 80% Burrow (maybe?) sufficiently post the requisitely ridiculous numbers Cincy would likely need to keep pace given its league-worst defense’s propensity to disintegrate … if it even shows up at all?
It was little more than a year ago, when he was close to full health, that Burrow roasted the Ravens at M&T Bank Stadium for 428 yards and four touchdowns through the air – 264 of those yards and three of the scores going to Chase. Baltimore still won 35-34.
The best-case scenario for the Bengals’ upcoming date in Charm City? Burrow is able to operate heavily from the shotgun, limiting the amount of stress he has to put on the surgically repaired toe while dropping back or pivoting on handoffs. He gets exceptional protection from an offensive line that historically never protects him exceptionally. He’s somehow able to execute a balanced attack with help from running back Chase Brown, who’s averaged nearly 85 rushing yards over the past five games, while not forced into a deep deficit by his D – a circumstance that would allow the Ravens to tee off on him while testing what’s sure to be limited mobility.
‘It’s the NFL. You can’t go out there with kid gloves on,’ said Taylor, putting much of Burrow’s preservation … on Burrow.
‘Some things are gonna happen naturally, and it’ll be in his hands to take care of it if he’s out there.’
Let’s say Burrow navigates an inherently fraught situation, and the Bengals snap their four-game skid – and that matters further improve with a loss by the Steelers to the Buffalo Bills next Sunday. What then? Cincy would still be two games behind Pittsburgh and Baltimore for the divisional lead, and that gap wouldn’t shrink after Week 14, when the Ravens host the Steelers.
Burrow would risk health for long-shot playoff odds, not much more
According to the NFL’s Next Gen Stats, the Bengals, who currently rank 12th overall in the 16-team AFC, presently have less than a 1% chance to make the playoffs – a season after what was essentially a healthier, hotter version of this outfit finished 9-8 and a game out of the postseason field. NGS hasn’t provided any odds as to whether Burrow will suffer another major injury if he returns, but we do know that he’s missed 23 of 94 potential regular-season games to this point in his six-year career – meaning, in a purely historical context, he’s available to play about 75% of the time. What’s the point of further exposing the already compromised face of the franchise on a cratering squad? Are fans really going to show up only to wince at every hit he absorbs?
We know Burrow, to his credit, has campaigned to play in what’s likely an ill-fated attempt to buck his odds and the team’s. The man who triggered LSU to the 2019 championship − those (Bayou) Bengals might have been the best college football team ever, with their Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback at the helm − and then led the Ohio River Bengals to Super Bowl 56 two years later has never lacked accountability or been short on confidence.
Or hubris.
Asked about Cincinnati’s championship window after the Bengals lost the 2022 AFC championship game, Burrow said, “The window is my whole career.’
That’s precisely the type of guy you protect from himself, especially since the Stripes haven’t neared that window since that statement was made − even as the team has heavily invested its resources in Burrow, Chase and Higgins − largely at the QB’s direction.
‘It’s exciting to have him back,’ Taylor said of Burrow while stating the team has maintained a good energy during his absence. ‘But obviously when you have one of the greatest players in the world coming back, that’s another boost on top of that.
‘It’ll be exciting to watch him go out there and play, and I’m sure it’s energy for everybody involved.’
Let’s just hope it doesn’t instantly devolve into negative energy that will need to be bled off when the correct tack is almost certainly shielding Burrow from full-speed game action until next summer.
In this case, “G.I. Joe” should stand for “Guaranteed IR, Joe” – knowing half the battle is putting you in the best spot − the shelf − to ultimately capitalize on that championship window.
Hopefully your employers reach that inevitable conclusion sooner than later … even if it takes until Black Friday.