Bengals Demolish Dolphins In the First Meaningless Game of Burrow's Career
- Ian Altenau
- 8 minutes ago
- 5 min read
Through the ups-and-downs of Burrow’s six-year NFL career, one thing had remained, impossibly, true: Joe Burrow had never played in a meaningless regular-season game. That remained true until Week 16 of the 2025 NFL season, Burrow’s sixth season in the NFL, when the 4 - 10 Cincinnati Bengals, fresh off being shut out by the Baltimore Ravens and seeing their playoff chances end with a whimper, faced the 6 - 8 Miami Dolphins. It’s the kind of game the Cincinnati Bengals and their fans are intimately familiar with, but one in which Joe Burrow, incredibly, had yet to appear.
During Burrow’s rookie season in 2020, the Bengals were eliminated from the playoffs in Week 13 following their 19 - 7 loss to (who else?) the Miami Dolphins. Burrow’s season was already over, having suffered a knee injury two weeks prior in Washington. Burrow’s career-defining bad luck had just started, but the 2 - 6 - 1 Bengals entered their Week 11 matchup with the Washington Football Team still remotely in the playoff hunt.
In 2021 and 2022, the Bengals reached the Super Bowl and AFC Championship Game, respectively, and obviously didn’t play in any meaningless regular season games. In 2023, the 5 - 4 Bengals were still in the thick of the playoff picture when Burrow suffered his second season-ending injury of his career, this time a wrist injury, and in 2024, the Bengals kept their season alive until the very last moment, as a Kansas City Chiefs loss to the Denver Broncos in Week 18 was ultimately the reason the Bengals fell short.
So, when the Bengals squared off against the Dolphins on Sunday afternoon, it was the first time we’d get a good look at Burrow in a game that didn’t matter. The results looked, well, pretty good.
The Bengals annihilated the Dolphins 45 - 21 in a game that wasn’t even as close as the 24-point margin suggested. The third quarter, in particular was where the Bengals really came alive. Burrow had three touchdown passes in the quarter alone, and running back Chase Brown had three total touchdowns of his own in the 3rd, two receiving and one rushing. The defense, meanwhile, forced the Dolphins into four consecutive 3rd quarter possessions that ended like this: lost fumble, interception, turnover on downs, and interception. It was a complete implosion by Miami, but also the peak of complimentary football that’s basically been non-existent all year in Cincinnati.
(An interesting side-note, the NFL witnessed its first-ever virtual measurement on Quinn Ewers’ third quarter QB sneak. It was probably unnecessary. Ewers, who was making his first-career start for the Dolphins, slipped and fell exactly 10 inches short of the first down, according to the virtual measurement, which means the annoyingly-long and unconvincing virtual measurement could/should have been easily replaced by a simple and efficient visual measurement.)
This was the quintessential Bengals game (in a positive way) for every Bengals fan – and it's a miserable shame it happened after the Bengals were eliminated from the playoffs. Burrow shook off his first career shutout last week and diced up a vulnerable Dolphins secondary that was without All-Pro safety Minkah Fitzpatrick. Burrow was subbed out of the game in the fourth quarter with the Bengals leading 45 - 14. He’d already thrown for 309 yards and four touchdown passes.
It wasn’t just Burrow who looked at his best. Chase Brown, in particular, was outstanding, scoring his aforementioned three touchdowns, while compiling 100+ scrimmage yards for the seventh time this season. Meanwhile, Ja’Marr Chase went over 100 yards receiving for his seventh time, and Tee Higgins, having missed significant chunks of the last few weeks with two head injuries, added 55 receiving yards and a spectacular, toe-dragging touchdown in the red zone that gave the Bengals their first points of the day. The Bengals offense was awakening against Miami after being completely dormant last week against Baltimore.
Defensively, it was the exact performance the Bengals had been hoping to get all year, but have been far too few and in between. The Dolphins had benched long-time starter Tua Tagovailoa for a seventh-rounder in Ewers, but this was a team built around doing damage on the ground. They were more than capable of imposing their will on this Bengals defense – and besides, backup QBs haven’t exactly found the Bengals to be a stiff challenge over the years.
Instead, it was the Bengals who, for the most part, feasted. The vaunted Dolphins run game was, outside of a 48-yard run by De’Von Achane in the first quarter, held in check. Achane finished the game with 81 yards on 15 carries, but throw out his 48-yarder and Achane managed just 33 yards on those other 14 carries, good for a meager 2.4 yards per carry. With the Dolphins run game a non-factor, the Bengals secondary took advantage of its opportunities in the passing game.
Safety Jordan Battle continued his stretch of quality play with a forced fumble that started the defensive festivities in the third quarter that was recovered by rising fourth-year defensive end Myles Murphy. That was followed by an interception on the Dolphins next drive by Bengals rookie linebacker Barrett Carter off of a deflection created by cornerback Josh Newton. Slot corner Jalen Davis added another interception two drives later. Many of these same players have been culprits in some of the Bengals worst moments on defense in 2025, but here they were making an impact in a game that, frustratingly, had no bearing on the season’s outcome.
Where was this all year? Why has it taken so long for the defense to click? What’s made this kind of complimentary football so rare for the Bengals over the last three, tortuous seasons? How different could this season have been?
We’ll never know the answers to these questions, but at least we know that, even in the bleakest moments, Burrow and the Bengals will still play (and perform) for pride. They proved as much today with their beatdown of the Dolphins on a balmy Sunday in Miami. There was never any thought in Cincinnati of tanking for draft position. This team had Super Bowl aspirations before the season, and they weren’t calling it quits even when a loud portion of the fanbase was begging them to do exactly that.
So, in the end, the Bengals treated their fans to a throwback performance that brought back memories of the explosive, unrecoverable offense and opportunistic, timely defense that defined those special Bengals teams in ‘21 and ‘22. There hasn’t been a lot of that recently, but this week was a happy exception.
Will the Bengals regret this win when they fall into the middle of the first round of the 2026 NFL Draft? More than likely, no. The Bengals haven’t shown the ability to draft immediate contributors anyway, and there’s no reason to expect a top-ten pick to be any different. If changes are really going to happen in this very important offseason, it starts with how the Bengals operate in free agency and in the negotiating room, not on draft day.
It remains to be seen if the Bengals will ever live up to the promise of Joe Burrow. 2025 is another complete and pathetic waste of Burrow, Chase, and Higgins’ prodigious talents. Three consecutive seasons without a playoff appearance, even with Burrow sidelined for much of those games, is inexcusable. One blowout win over a shambolic Dolphins team with the playoffs already out of sight does not diminish that fact one iota.
Still, the win felt undeniably good. It was a reminder of the good old days. It was a reminder of just how potent the Bengals used to be – and perhaps, how potent they still could be.