Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow threw five touchdowns to power a blowout win over the Raiders on Sunday, but you wouldn’t have known that it was a positive day by looking at Burrow on the sideline.
Burrow looked like he was on the wrong side of the 41-24 final score throughout the game and he was asked about his dour expression when he spoke to reporters at a press conference after it was over. Burrow said that the team didn’t play well in the third quarter and that there was “just a combination of things that I felt like we didn’t do good enough” over the course of the afternoon.
“I’m not just going to ignore the bad and dwell on the great that we did today,” Burrow said, via a transcript from the team. “I don’t think that’s a recipe for improvement. I don’t think that’s a recipe for getting better. I’m going to be hard on myself. I’m going to be hard on us to execute the way that I feel like we need to. And I feel like we didn’t put ourselves in great positions in times of that game to finish off the right way. We ended up doing it. The defense came up big, but I think we could have done better.”
The win moved the Bengals to 4-5 on the season and they have a Thursday night game against the Ravens on tap, which provided further reason for Burrow not to rest on how things went against a two-win Raiders team.
“Yeah. I think just how the season has gone, knowing what’s ahead of us, knowing what we’re going to have to do to get back into this,” Burrow said. “One win isn’t going to make or break our season. So, I’m going to strive for perfection every — every day and every game. So, until that happens, what’s there to be happy about?”
If the Bengals can find the kind of form that Burrow is looking for, there’s an opportunity for them to be a playoff team in the AFC. This week would be a good time to show that they’re capable of that kind of performance.
