CINCINNATI — PFF analyst Dalton Wasserman is convinced Joe Burrow would be the NFL MVP frontrunner right now if Cincinnati’s record were flipped.
Burrow didn’t lead Cincinnati to many points this past Sunday night, but he found a way to keep the season alive with a 17-7 win over New York.
“If they were 4-2 instead of 2-4, we would call him the MVP right now,” Wasserman said on the PFF NFL Show.
The stats don’t lie as he’s one of the league’s highest-graded players on PFF (third overall), owns the second highest ESPN QBR (75.1), and is first in Sports Info Solutions IQR metric (According to our Taylor Cornell, seven of the past eight MVPs finished first in IQR).
The wins are what’s missing.
“Let’s be real, when the Giants didn’t get the pass rush going, 16-of-19 (completion rate) in a clean pocket for 163 (yards) and a 91.5 overall grade in a clean pocket,” Wasserman noted. “This is what Joe Burrow does. I mean, if there’s any doubt that he’s an elite quarterback, I’m not sure what part you’re doubting.
“He’s just one of the, what? Three or four best quarterbacks in the league. And teams like that don’t usually get off to these types of starts, and they’re usually at least in playoff contention, right? So if the Bengals are going to get back in this, obviously, Burrow’s raging hot right now this game, not a lot of points, but he was still the best player on the field. The defensive line’s a huge key. Because that was the one problem that I wasn’t sure that they were going to fix, they’re passing game was going to get fixed.”
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