Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow is pushing back a bit against the idea that he took too many sacks last season.
Burrow says that some sacks aren’t so bad, and that a lot of his league-leading 51 sacks last season (plus another 19 in the postseason) weren’t of the bad variety.
“Here’s the thing about sacks. So there’s good sacks and bad sacks. You look at the stats, yeah I got sacked a lot. But you look at when they happened: Third-down sacks? Who cares about third-down sacks? I’m going to try to extend the play as long as I can to get the first down on third down, unless I’m in field-goal range, then I’ll throw the ball away and get some points,” Burrow said on the Full Send Podcast.
It’s certainly true that some sacks aren’t as bad as others, and taking a sack is better than throwing an interception. But it’s hard to call any sack “good,” and the Bengals don’t want to see Burrow getting sacked at all. The team invested in the offensive line this offseason to try to reduce the number of sacks Burrow takes, but a big part of it will be on Burrow himself to get rid of the ball more quickly, and avoid taking even the sacks that he may be able to justify as good sacks.