Joe Burrow is usually pretty coy about his play game-to-game, but there was no hiding his excitement about Sunday's showing. Burrow didn't get many chances in the first half across the 35-13 bullseye on Baltimore, but he lit them up in the second half.

The veteran MVP candidate passed for four TDs in consecutive games to round out 292 yards in the air (22-30 completions). Most of that in the final 30 minutes.

"I think I played really well," Burrow said. "The first half was what it was, and obviously would have liked to have some of those back, but we didn't turn the ball over. That played a big part, and the second half I think I was pretty lights out. Yeah, I'll watch the tape and ask me again on Wednesday, but I think for the most part I was pretty good.

"Just trying to treat every play like it's its own universe and trying to critically think about what's required of me on the play and where the defense is going to tell me to go with the football, and they're going to have to adapt quickly sometimes in a play depending on what the defense is showing or what presents."

Rare Showing

According to Sumer Sports, Burrow went 16/18 for 249 yards and 4 touchdowns in the second half against the Ravens. Burrow's 21.24 Total EPA in the second half is the 4th best second-half performance out of 2,204 qualifiers since 2022.

When Cincinnati's back sat firmly on the wall. He answered the call and diced up the home team.

The Bengals had to win that game to keep a majority percentage playoff projection on the board and not fall to the bottom of the division. Add in no Lamar Jackson, and the opportunity was too good not to see vintage Burrow.

His Week 7 outing notched a 92.6 ESPN QBR, the second-best outing of the week so far and good enough to launch him up to third among all QBs on the season tally (77.6 overall).

If he keeps playing like this and the Bengals win at least 12-13 games, keeping the MVP trophy out of his hands will be hard.

"We know who we have to be, and we let our big-time players go and make big-time plays. That's what the NFL is all about. You know you can do all these different things, but at the end of the day, you just gotta go make plays, gotta execute what's called, and that's what we did," Burrow concluded.

Onto Tennessee and Week 8.

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