5 overreactions from Bengals Week 1 loss to Browns

The Cincinnati Bengals fell 24-3 to the Cleveland Browns on Sunday afternoon in a game that Bengals fans are hoping to forget about quickly.

Monday morning is prime time to overreact to everything that happened during the previous day of wall-to-wall NFL football. It's even better when it is Week 1. A one-game sample size with players that could be rusty or on new teams or rookies leads to weird outcomes. These wild outcomes will cause major overreactions, which is the purpose of this post.

Here are some overreactions from the Bengals' Week 1 loss to their in-state foes. Remember, these are overreactions so if I seem harsh at times, I'm playing it up.

Bengals overpaid Joe Burrow

A common theme that will play through this entire write-up is that the Bengals offense was terrible. A major part of the offense's poor play was Joe Burrow. We have never seen Burrow play as poorly as he did on Sunday in Cleveland.

Burrow had 82 passing yards, a career low. He was sacked twice, with a bright spot being no turnovers. Even with no turnovers, Burrow gave arguably the worst quarterback performance in Week 1, maybe only eclipsed by Daniel Jones.

Joe’s performance was bad and when you add the fact that Cincy just made him the highest-paid quarterback in league history, it looks really bad.

Joey B signed a five-year, $275 million extension with $219 million guaranteed. With this price tag comes more pressure for Burrow to deliver a championship to the Queen City. Anything less than a Super Bowl win is unacceptable and a failure. Going off of one one-game performance, Burrow seems to be crumbling under the pressure but it's only one game and that's what people need to remember.

It’s fine to pay for a quarterback if they can deliver, but if they can’t, and now, unless the other key players take pay cuts Cincinnati won’t be able to hold on to their best role players. This makes it harder for Burrow to deliver a championship, but it makes his contract look worse. Did Cincy just saddle themselves with an overpaid/underperforming quarterback? Probably not but again, this is tackling overreactions after the loss.