It’s always something with the Cincinnati Bengals. A franchise that has found its way into some truly high-end talent over the last five years, but at the same time, is constantly either getting in its own way or falling into the worst possible bad breaks. The latter outcome reared its head on Monday morning, as it was reported that Joe Burrow’s toe injury suffered in Week 2’s win over Jacksonville will require surgery and he’s set to miss at least three months.
The 2025 season was supposed to be a relatively normal campaign for Cincinnati. They got both star wideouts under contract, bending to the wishes of the franchise quarterback, and settled a holdout with Trey Hendrickson to get him into camp and happy for the season. The Bengals even went out of their way to play the starters in the preseason to avoid their usual slow starts. Now, after narrowly escaping Cleveland in Week 1 with a one-point win, they’ve lost their franchise-defining figure after just 36 pass attempts.
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A three-month return would slot him in for a return sometime mid-December. That might as well be another lifetime from now.
From a fantasy football standpoint, you can go ahead and prepare for Burrow not to be a part of your plans in the short or medium term. Looking three months ahead is far too much. It’s worth saying that the Bengals are 2-0 and if they survive the next few months without Burrow, he could conceivably look to return sometime in late November or early December — an aggressive projection on that timeline —when they face the Ravens, Bills and Ravens again from Weeks 13 to 15. There’s also every chance that a team with significant holes, often papered over by having Burrow and his cast of pass-catchers, is out of contention by then and we don’t see Burrow again in the 2025 NFL season.
Let’s double back to that word “survive,” because that’s exactly the best-case-scenario fantasy players can hope to get from the players involved in any situation where a top-five quarterback is removed from the equation. I do think there’s a chance of survival in this particular situation.
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What to expect from the offense
We’ve seen backup quarterback Jake Browning play an extended stretch with this team back in 2023 when we last saw Burrow miss time with a major injury. As far as backup quarterbacks go, you could do a lot worse.
Since 2023, Burrow has averaged 7.54 adjusted yards per attempt with a 50% success rate. In that same timespan, obviously in a smaller sample, Browning has posted 7.3 and 47.7%. We’re not talking about a cataclysmic dropoff; far from it.
Part of that is because Burrow wants the offense called a specific way with a more true dropback game where he can be that “field general” type of quarterback. He’s the quarterback; he gets to decide what the offense looks like, even if it makes it more difficult. They’ve made a more concerted effort to meet in the middle but still, when Browning is in the game, the Bengals make a concerted effort to push some of the easy buttons from a play-calling standpoint.
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Back in 2023, the Bengals didn’t necessarily call more play-action with Browning but they simplified the reads and focused on quick-hitters on those looks. Browning was much more effective on play-action throws than dropbacks without it, per PFF, as his completion percentage rose by 5.8% and his yards per attempt by 2.2. Cincinnati also used more motion once Burrow was out, as Browning averaged 16.5 dropbacks per game (45%) with pre-snap or at-the-snap motion in his 2023 starts compared to 15.4 (36.3%) with Burrow.
What the injury means for Ja’Marr Chase
All of these wrinkles make life easier on both the quarterback and frankly, the offensive line. So Browning should be able to keep his head above water, just like we’ve seen before. This allows the quarterback to get the ball in the hands of the playmakers a bit easier via layup targets. All of that is a big deal for Ja’Marr Chase, who is being used in a more dynamic fashion now than he was back in 2023.
Chase ran just 20.2% of his routes from the slot in Browning’s starts last time around. So far this year, he’s taken 30.5% of his snaps from the slot. His route tree is much more vertical now, as shown above, and his deployment allows him to get fed the ball in more advantageous situations for yards after the catch. Chase might not have WR1 overall ceiling with Browning under center but he is still a top-10 wide receiver in my books and the player I’m worried about the least. Chase held a 34% target share from Browning in Week 2 and I expect him to continue being absolutely peppered by the backup quarterback.
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What the injury means for Tee Higgins
The equal and opposite effect is that the more scheming the Bengals do to give Chase this dynamic deployment, the more Tee Higgins has to play as a pure boundary receiver. Higgins took more snaps on the line of scrimmage in his games charted for Reception Perception last season than any previous year to afford more off the line work and pre-snap movement for Chase. Through two weeks, he’s taken just 12.5% of his snaps from the slot and has the highest air yards per target (12.8) on the team. Higgins will have his moments but that more pure X-receiver usage is going to be a much more volatile proposition with Browning under center running a more schemed-up offense with designed reads. Higgins will still be playable but expect variance, which likely slots him more as a low-end WR2 or WR3 in weekly rankings. With such fantastic depth at this position, I can see folks at some point breaking ties against him if he has some slow weeks against an upcoming stretch of particularly tricky defenses.
How will injury affect RB Chase Brown?
The most difficult player to project coming out of this is running back Chase Brown. Much of the argument in Brown’s favor coming into the season was about projected volume. Through two weeks, that’s been a huge hit. Brown is the lone NFL back to have a whopping 100% share of his team’s carries and leads the league with a 95.1% share of the running back touches in Cincy. The problem is that the Bengals offensive line has gotten almost no push in the running game, as they rank 31st in yards before contact per running back rush attempt (the Raiders rank 32nd heading into Monday Night Football).
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Something that’s worth noting is that the Bengals also put Browning under center much more than Burrow at 23.1% since 2023, to 13.8% for Burrow. Having your quarterback under center more often allows you to marry your run and pass game a little bit easier from a conceptual standpoint, in addition to permitting more motion and play action. There’s a chance that the Bengals’ run game becomes slightly more efficient with this style of offense. However, this is mostly just a pet theory of mine.
From a bottom-line perspective, as long as Brown continues to maintain this workload and Browning is the player we saw on Sunday and back in 2023, he will remain a fantasy starter. He may not have as high a touchdown ceiling because this team is going to score fewer points overall, but volume is the king of propping up anyone to RB2 status.
How can fantasy managers replace Burrow?
Lastly, if you lost Burrow for what will likely be the vast majority of, if not outright all of your fantasy season, there are plenty of available options. For starters, if you’re in a tough spot, Browning himself has proven to be a viable option in fantasy football for those in dire need.
Otherwise, there are a variety of low-rostered players that can help. Skepticism about Daniel Jones (17% rostered on Yahoo) should be much lower after he carved through a difficult matchup against a blitz-happy Broncos defense on the back of a brilliantly-designed offense from Shane Stiechen that’s littered with playmakers. So far, Jones has been good enough to clear the “Minshew Minimum” in this offense while adding rushing appeal on top of that designation. He’d be my top choice.
Geno Smith is only 31% rostered heading into Monday Night Football and the Raiders led the NFL in neutral pass rate in Week 1. The veteran passer is going to have some big weeks. Bryce Young would be the least appealing of this bunch but he did rebound to throw three touchdowns on the road in Week 2. It’s been a rough start for Carolina but I had more hope than this coming into the season. If you can’t secure any of these guys and frankly, even if you do, you’re likely headed for a one-way ticket to StreamerLand at the position.
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Make no mistake, nothing good ever comes out of losing a top-five quarterback. No offense just keeps on chugging at the same clip, unless they have some special sleeping superstar waiting in the wings. The Bengals might not have that but they do have a capable backup who can keep the train on the tracks for the offense. That is enough for fantasy managers to at least get by, I can’t say the same for the Bengals, as they stare down yet another frustrating circumstance to manage.
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