Joe Burrow — Week 1: A Pick-Six, Then Third and Ten to Gesicki
2026 NFL Season · Half-PPR Scoring · Monday, Sep 14
Burrow completed twenty-five of thirty-five throws for two hundred fifty-four yards, one touchdown and one interception — the interception returned thirty-eight yards for a touchdown by Josiah Trotter with two twenty-four left in the third to cut a fourteen-point lead to seven. On the next possession, third and ten at his own twenty-two, he hit Mike Gesicki deep left for twenty-four, the biggest win-probability gain of any Cincinnati offensive play, and the Bengals kicked a fifty-eight-yard field goal on their way to a 33–27 win over the Buccaneers.
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Third and five at the Cincinnati 34, two 24 left in the third quarter, Bengals up 27 to 13, no huddle. Joe Burrow threw short right for Andrei Iosivas, Josiah Trotter intercepted it at the 38 and ran it back 38 yards for a touchdown, and a 14-point lead was seven. By expected points added — what a play was worth given down, distance and field position — that throw was −7.5, and it cost the Bengals 13.4 points of win probability, the biggest single swing against Cincinnati all afternoon. Burrow called it terrible afterward and said he could not make that throw, per John Sheeran at A to Z Sports.
What followed is the reason it is a footnote and not the story. On the next possession, a 33-yard completion to Tee Higgins on first down was challenged by Tampa Bay and reversed. Second and 10, incomplete to Higgins. Third and 10 at the 22, one 37 left in the third, Burrow deep left to Mike Gesicki, 24 yards to the 46. +3.1 expected points, +7.1 win probability — the largest gain on any Cincinnati offensive play in the game. The drive ended with Evan McPherson's 58-yard field goal for a 30 to 20 lead.
The full line: 25 completions on 35 throws, 254 yards, one touchdown, one interception, one sack for −9, 36 pass plays in all. The first half was 20 pass plays for a hundred 33 yards and +4.5 expected points, and it included the two-yard touchdown to Gesicki on third and one with one 51 left in the first quarter; the second half was 16 pass plays for a hundred 21 yards and −7.1, nearly all of it the interception. He also ran five times for 20 yards, and four of the five were first downs — a six-yard scramble on third and six, a two-yard sneak on third and one, a 12-yard run up the middle to the Tampa Bay eight with 43 seconds left in the half, and the one-yard sneak on third and one at the Tampa Bay 17 with one 12 left that let Cincinnati kneel out the game. Cincinnati converted eight of 14 third downs, and Burrow's legs got three of them.
Back in June the preview's whole bet on Burrow was availability — eight games in 2025, QB29, 80 percent of games over five seasons, elite when healthy and that was the entire case. Sunday he took all 36 Cincinnati pass plays and the kneel-down at the end, and the game was a full one: a touchdown, a pick-six, and the third-and-10 throw that answered it. One game is one game against the availability question, and it was a whole one. Cincinnati is at the Texans on Sunday the twentieth.
_Data via nflverse._
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