NFL Week 4 reactions and overreactions

Let's talk some more football.

Yes, Week 5 is starting on Thursday night but I fell a little behind this week. So let’s get rolling with this.

1. The Cincinnati Bengals getting absolutely humiliated for the second week in a row since Joe Burrow’s injury is really a sight to behold, and only further adds to the comment I made a week ago — they don’t have a Joe Burrow injury problem. They have a “bad team” problem. Obviously there is nobody on the Bengals roster that is going to be a suitable replacement for Burrow. There are probably only two or three quarterbacks in the entire NFL that are on his level. But even with that being the case a good football team should be able to withstand the loss of a top-tier quarterback and at least be able to compete. It should be able to win a few games. The quarterback being out should not result in the team giving up 76 points in consecutive weeks to Carson Wentz and Bo Nix.

It’s just a poorly built roster that put all of its eggs into a basket made out of a quarterback and two great wide receivers and just figured that would be enough.

Offensive line? Defense? Minor details.

Head coach Zac Taylor is now 8-24 in his career with the Bengals when Joe Burrow is not his quarterback. If you remove the 2-14 season in his debut season, and the year before Burrow arrived, he is still only 6-10 without Burrow. I’m not saying I expect them to be 10-6 or 11-5 or 12-4 in those games. But if they are the Super Bowl contender they like to THINK they are they should at least be competitive without Burrow. They should be in games. The fact they are not, and the fact they were only a .500 team WITH Burrow in the lineup the past years, is, again, testament to how bad the rest of the team actually is. The record with Burrow the past two seasons is the true sign of just how mediocre the rest of the team is.

2. It also brings me to another point related to the Steelers, and how good Mike Tomlin’s record has been without (and since) Ben Roethlisberger. I know anything that resembles even the smallest praise of Tomlin sends people into a frenzy anymore, but his team doesn’t get crushed like the Bengals are when he doesn’t have his franchise quarterback in the lineup (unless it’s a playoff game — oops).

Including Sunday’s win over the Minnesota Vikings, Tomlin’s career record without Roethlisberger as his quarterback is 50-38-1. That’s … actually really good when you consider the list of quarterbacks that have won games during that time. In fact, the only quarterback that Tomlin has had a losing record with is Mitch Trubisky.

I know Steelers fans like to associate Tomlin’s record with having a franchise quarterback for most of his tenure, and there is a lot of truth to that. But there is truth to that for every winning coach. Andy Reid isn’t the owner of three Super Bowl rings without Patrick Mahomes. Bill Belichick is probably just some guy that coached in the NFL without Tom Brady.

But if you look at what a lot of top coaches around the NFL have done *without* their franchise quarterback, few have handled that as well as or better than Tomlin has in terms of maintaining competitiveness.

When Roethlisberger retired I think there was a heavy population of the Steeler fan base, and the NFL as a whole, that expected the Steelers to just suddenly end up at the bottom of the league, winning four or five games every season. Instead, they’ve mostly remained competitive and have gone (entering the bye week) 32-23 and average close to 10 wins every year while mostly making the playoffs (and losing). Only seven teams in the NFL have won more regular season games than the Steelers since Roethlisberger retired.

That’s not normal for teams that lose a quarterback of that level.

• Since Tom Brady’ retirement the New England Patriots are 35-53 (.397)

• Since Drew Brees’ retirement the New Orleans Saints are 28-42 (.400)

• Since Eli Manning’s retirement the New York Giants are 33-70 (.320)

• Since Philip Rivers’ retirement the Los Angeles Chargers are 45-43 (.511) … and that is WITH another franchise-level quarterback (Justin Herbert) taking his place.

• After Peyton Manning’s retirement the Indianapolis Colts went 65-63 (.507) in the first eight years … and that was WITH another franchise quarterback (Andrew Luck) coming in. Speaking of….

• After Andrew Luck’s retirement the Indianapolis Colts are 51-52-1 (.490) with a yearly revolving door of quarterbacks.

The gold standard for this sort of transition is obviously the Green Bay Packers, having gone from Brett Favre, to Aaron Rodgers and now onto Jordan Love. They are an extreme outlier in terms of quarterback success.

Seattle has been very similar to the Steelers in sense that it has been around a 9-10 win since Russell Wilson left, owning a 29-24 record.

Let’s talk about some more football stuff this week, including whether or not the Baltimore Ravens are in trouble, the best and worst divisions in football (so far), the bad advice Shedeur Sanders got looks even worse now, and the previously unbeaten teams that both impressed and disappointed me on the Week 4 schedule.