The Cincinnati Bengals didn’t make the playoffs last season despite quarterback Joe Burrow completing 70.6 percent of his passes, passing for 4,918 yards, recording 43 passing touchdowns, and nine interceptions.
As a result, there’s pressure on the Bengals to qualify for the playoffs this season, or changes should be coming in Cincinnati. Nonetheless, one former NFL player is warning owner Mike Brown that they could be following the New Orleans Saints’ path with Drew Brees.
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Former NFL pass rusher Chris Long stated that he’s seeing similarities between how the Saints wasted a lot of Brees’ prime years. He noted that the only saving grace that New Orleans have that the Bengals don’t is winning the Super Bowl in 2010, which Cincinnati lost in 2022.
“Remember the Drew Brees era in New Orleans?” Long said on his “Green Light” podcast. “Huge success, right? Hall of Fame quarterback, won a Super Bowl, just monster numbers every year. And he didn’t have Ja’Marr Chase. He didn’t have Tee Higgins. He had Jimmy Graham. He had [Marques] Colston; he had some weapons. But he didn’t have these guys.
“But imagine in [2010], let’s say they don’t win that game in the Super Bowl. Let’s say they don’t recover the onside kick. And you look back at Drew Brees, Hall of Fame, quarterback, monster numbers, threw for 50 miles.
“You’re going to tell me he didn’t win a Super Bowl? You wasted that. Well, obviously, he won a Super Bowl. We’re not doing revisionist history. But I would liken where Burrow’s tenure in Cincinnati is headed to an alternate universe where Brees doesn’t win a Super Bowl.”
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Furthermore, Long didn’t hold back on his criticism of the Bengals’ handling of Joe Burrow, warning that failing to win a Super Bowl in this era would be a disaster for the franchise.
“They had Drew Brees at quarterback and were home in the playoffs five times,” Long added. “And there were good quarterbacks in the NFC, but it wasn’t like being in the AFC. So you actually had an opportunity to really make runs with that quarterback, and he was sitting on the couch in January that many times… And that, to me, [is] a waste of elite quarterbacking years.
“Joe Burrow is going through the same thing. Now, when the Saints had good defenses, when Gregg Williams in 2009 elevated that defense and they became a top-five unit, they went to the Super Bowl, they won it… But there were a lot of years the Saints didn’t make the playoffs. And so I look at the Bengals and I’m like, ‘Bro, you’re flirting with that without the ring,’ and that would be a disappointment of epic proportions.”
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