Joe Flacco started this season looking rough with the Cleveland Browns. In four games, he threw just two touchdowns and six interceptions before being traded within the division to the Cincinnati Bengals. Since then, he’s looked like a completely different player.
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With the Bengals, Flacco has thrown 11 touchdowns and just two interceptions, even adding a rushing score on a quarterback sneak. On Sunday, he set an NFL record by throwing for 470 yards against the Chicago Bears, the most passing yards in a single game by a quarterback aged 40 or older.
The record-breaking performance has some people wondering just how good Joe Burrow really is. After all, he has always had the top wideouts to throw to throughout college and the pros. One of these questioning voices is former player LeSean McCoy, who admits he loves Burrow but pointed out that Flacco’s performance has somewhat changed his perspective.
“I love me some Joe Burrow, but Joey, I ain’t never seen Joe Burrow without superstar wide receivers,” McCoy began on Speakeasy.
“And knowing what I know about Joey, he always balls. But okay, you take him out of the picture, you put an old 40-year-old quarterback that’s been regular for a long time- he looks phenomenal! I don’t even recognize Joe Flacco right now,” added the pundit.
Not many of us can recognize the veteran QB. Flacco has turned back the clock in recent games, looking like the quarterback he was in his prime with the Baltimore Ravens. But even back then, he rarely had stretches where he looked this good.
That’s why McCoy wants to have a serious discussion about Burrow and whether he could ever carry a team without superstar receivers.
“We need to have this conversation, though. Is Joe really like that? Joe Burrow,” McCoy clarified. “Because I think Joe Burrow is a great quarterback, but you always got the top elite wide receiver core.”
It’s an interesting question to ask, and the former two-time Super Bowl champ pointed out other elite quarterbacks who have been getting it done recently with less talented receiving groups.
“If you have that same team that Patrick Mahomes has, do you ball out like that? If he had the same wide receiver core as Josh Allen, do you ball out like that? I don’t know,” McCoy continued.
All this led former Bengal TJ Houshmandzadeh to offer a rebuttal to McCoy’s points. He first tried to argue that Mahomes does have a good receiving group, but Shady immediately shut that down, listing Rashee Rice as the only real threat on the field for him right now.
After that brief discussion, TJ gave a more measured response to McCoy’s questions about Burrow in light of Flacco’s recent stretch of stellar play.
“I’mma say this, we’ll never really get a true answer to your question,” Houshmandzadeh stated, adding,
“Because Joe Burrow played at LSU with the top two receivers in the league now. He had them in college. And he’s going to play the foreseeable future with Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins, at least the next five years. So, we will never know. But Joe Burrow took the Bengals to the Super Bowl when nobody ever thought that was possible.”
This is indeed a great point to make. Chase and Higgins both signed massive contract extensions this past offseason. Now, both should be with the team until 2028 at least. But TJ forgot to mention the biggest separator between Flacco and Burrow: wins and losses.
It’s awesome that Flacco has been balling out lately, but the Bengals have also lost their last two games. The record-breaking performance almost ended with a victory, but Colston Loveland of the Bears caught a miraculous 58-yard touchdown pass with just 17 seconds left to win it. Last week’s heartbreaking loss to the New York Jets marked another low point in the Bengals’ season.
So, while Flacco is thriving, the rest of the team isn’t. Especially the defense, which looks just as bad as it did last season. Now, at 3-6 and with a tough stretch of games ahead, it seems Cincinnati’s season could be coming to an early end. But that doesn’t mean their games will stop being wildly entertaining.
