It took nearly four full games for Joe Burrow to throw his first interception of the season. Hey, no quarterback is perfect. It had to happen at some point.
The nature of the interception, however, was surprising. Burrow seemed to throw a pass directly to the Carolina Panthers as there were no Cincinnati Bengals in sight when the ball started going the other way. Upon watching it immediately afterwards, Burrow let out some intense frustration on the sidelines.
Upon first glance, it's very apparent that Burrow wanted to target Ja'Marr Chase going towards the middle of the field. Chase ended up going the opposite direction after Burrow released the ball.
Burrow and Chase not being on the same page is as a rare as anything you could see in the NFL, but they proved it to be possible on Sunday.
"That was just a miscommunication between me and Ja'Marr on a scramble drill," Burrow said after the game. "He, you know, I'm throwing it to him, and then as I'm throwing it, he starts running to open field. So I don't blame him for that. That was just an unfortunate miscommunication. I wouldn't have done anything different. Sometimes, stuff like that happens."
It wasn't a run of the mill play, either. Burrow had to buy time in the pocket and extend the play. He's one of the more effective passers in these scramble scenarios, and Chase has six years of experience knowing how his QB operates.
When Burrow believed he was going to find his trusty partner in crime after evading pressure for another signature moment just to find saftey Xavier Woods, that's when the anger was released.
"That was why I was so frustrated, because, you know, I felt good about that," Burrow said.
Burrow's leadership has gone under the microscope over the last six days. An 0-3 start begged the question if he needed to switch things up and wear his emotions on his sleeve a little bit more as a way of galvanizing his teammates.
Sometimes the fire gets released in other ways as well.
Burrow and Chase are as locked in as any QB-WR pairing you'll find. These types of moments are far and few between the highlights like Chase's 63-yard touchdown from Burrow a couple quarters earlier.
Now there's tape to make the needed corrections going forward so those moments can happen even more frequently.
