Mike Trout is one of the greatest players in the history of baseball. But the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim superstar has played in only one postseason series (three games) in his entire career, and that was way back in 2014.
Joe Burrow is tracking to be one of the NFL's legendary quarterbacks. But if the Cincinnati Bengals aren't careful, he could have a career like Trout's.
There's some good news to start off with before digging in deeper: QBs have much more control over a given game than any single baseball player, so Burrow can likely overcome more team-wide hardship than Trout could.
But the 2024 season showed us how Burrow could be a lot like Trout.
Burrow threw for a career-high 43 touchdowns, 4,918 yards and 70.6 completion percentage. The Bengals went 9-8 and missed the playoffs because their defense got shredded again and again.
It felt similar to Trout's 2019 season, when he won the AL MVP Award despite the Angels going 72-90.
Given that, the Bengals' first order of business should be fixing the defense.
Yes, it was important to extend receivers Ja'Marr Chase and Tee Higgins to help Burrow. But now it's team-building crunch time.
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Cincinnati hasn't reached a deserved extension with Trey Hendrickson, their best and most important defensive player.
The Bengals just released Germaine Pratt on Monday, leaving a 143-tackle void at middle linebacker.
At this rate, Burrow is going to have to put up 42 points every game just to have a chance to win. And sometimes, he'll do it, but that doesn't make it a good strategy.
The Bengals have many years with Burrow ahead. They've already been to a Super Bowl, which is already a check box that is ahead of where Trout has ever been.
But if they want to avoid Burrow's next few years from being immensely frustrating, the Bengals have to start making more positive decisions on their defense, or it won't matter how good Burrow is.
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