Cris Collinsworth, who caught the first completion of Ken Anderson's MVP season of 1981 and was the target of Boomer Esiason's last pass in his 1988 MVP run at the end of Super Bowl XXIII, knows an MVP when he sees one. Joe Burow, he says, is looking every bit the part.
Indeed, the Bengals offense has been so good that it's got the game's best analyst wondering if he has to re-think some of his oldest principles.
"I mean, he's there right now," says NBC's Collinsworth on Friday, watching the Burrow Bengals go through their last practice of the week. "Every time I get a new data point on this guy, it's just been unbelievable. In the last month, it's been beyond unbelievable."
Except, Collinsworth sees more Joe Montana, the 49ers quarterback who ended both of those MVP seasons by winning a Super Bowl outdueling Anderson and then Esiason seven years later.
"(Burrow) is such a student of the game. What he's doing right now is kind of reminding me a little bit of Joe Montana," Collinsworth says. "A lot of his was under center, but he would drop back five steps, and it wasn't like there was a hitch step. He just hit the back leg, and the ball was out, so you couldn't get there.
"Joe (Burrow) does the same thing in shotgun, and it's only three steps back, but the timing is so exquisite with his two receivers."
Burrow is taking his final flings of the week in the CBTS Field House, which has become a greenhouse for the NFL's most prolific offense during the last month and tended by the league's most dangerous quarterback.
Collinsworth is here, of course, to call the Sunday night Bengals-Steelers game (8:20-Cincinnati's Channel 5) at Paycor Stadium.
What's nice is that in the middle of an 18-game push through the NFL schedule, Collinsworth, the very best there is, can leave his multiple Emmys on the bookshelf and commute from Northern Kentucky for Friday's production meeting and Sunday's AFC North title game. Or something pretty close to it.
Collinsworth is also at home among Ja'Marr Chase and Tee Higgins, the wide receivers who have spent their careers climbing past him on the Bengals' all-time lists. Chase has already done it with all-time leader Chad Johnson and No. 2 A.J. Green the only ones left. In the last three weeks, Higgins just passed Collinsworth into seventh on the all-time receptions list and is fewer than 500 yards from passing Collinsworth into sixth place.
Paycor's sea of white during White Bengal night provides Collinsworth with a full-circle moment in technicolor. A three-time Pro Bowl wide receiver and the first Bengal to catch 1,000 yards in a season, Collinsworth is watching their two latest 1,000-yarders looking to do it in the same season.
"Whatever they're doing, we never did," Collinsworth says, shaking his head. "I can tell you that we had two MVPs, and I've never seen anything like this."
During his career here, Collinsworth played in some of the most decorated Bengals receiving tandems. In '81, he and tight end Dan Ross set the club's single-season yardage and receptions record, respectively. Also on that team, four-time Pro Bowl receiver Isaac Curtis passed the torch to Collinsworth still leading the team with 16.5 yards per catch. Then on the '88 team, Collinsworth romped with Pro Bowlers at wide receiver, Eddie Brown, and at tight end, Rodney Holman.
"These guys are better," Collinsworth says. "I get paid to give honest opinions, whether I like them or not, or somebody else likes them or not.
"I don't think there's ever been close to a pair of receivers like this. You take them one at a time, and they're in the argument for the best (Bengal) there ever was, too. Chad was so good; he was great. Isaac was phenomenal. But these guys (together) have made catches that are just mind-boggling. It's a remarkable show."
Collinsworth has enjoyed watching a healthy Higgins put together his career year.
"I think we all lost track of what Tee Higgins is capable of doing," Collinsworth says. "To see Tee healthy for the whole year now is like, 'Oh yeah, I forgot about that,' because it just seems like every year he's had a little something.
"Just Tee's presence on the field. You can almost throw it anywhere to him, and he's going to get it. And that's the number two guy. So now you've got to make up your mind. Are we going to somehow try and double- team both of those guys? And if you do, (tight end Mike) Gesicki and (running back Chase) Brown and all those other guys beat you up."
No. 1?
"Ja'Marr, the run after the catch stuff that that guy does. I mean, he's a running back," Collinsworth says. "He's the best wide receiver and maybe the best running back at the same time."
All of it has Collinsworth thinking. He recalls '81, when they had massive Pete Johnson barreling for 1,077 yards and 12 touchdowns on the ground. In '88, he remembers running back Ickey Woods shooting to Rookie of the Year with 1,066 rushing yards while recent Ring of Honor member James Brooks very nearly matched him with 931.
But maybe, just maybe, these guys don't need the ground game those teams had.
"Every championship team or AFC championship team that I was a part of, we had balance. We ran the ball, we threw the ball," Collinsworth says. "That's just what I believe. I think you've got to have good everything. It can't be bad. You've got to have a passing game, a running game, stop the run, good defense.
"And between these guys and Green Bay this year, I'm starting to lose faith in that."
It has Collinsworth going back to even before '81 and '88. It's got him going back to the mentor for both Kenny Anderson and Joe Montana. Bill Walsh, Bengals founder Paul Brown's top lieutenant on those first Cincinnati teams that introduced the accurate, precise passing of the West Coast offense.
"It reminds me a little of Bill Walsh and his group when the running game was a short pass, and they're kind of getting back to that," Collinsworth says. "Which is ironic because Bill Walsh started that here."
Like any Bengal, Collinsworth is wary of any matchup with the Steelers. "As hot as the Bengals are passing the ball, the Steelers running game and defense are just as hot. And, oh, by the way, they've got Aaron Rodgers playing quarterback, so there's a reason they're 6-2 as well."
Burrow, he says, is MVP good. He just digested another Burrow data point, this one offered by ESPN's Adam Schefter:
"Joe Burrow now averages 2.118 touchdown passes per game, the highest of any quarterback in NFL history."
But Collinsworth also knows about that old AFC Central data point,
"The standard is always going to be, yeah. But what did you do against the Pittsburgh Steelers?" Collinsworth says.
But then, he wouldn't be surprised if his White Bengal descendants have fine-tuned the standard. Collinsworth says this isn't the '81 team with cutting-edge Lindy Infante calling plays, or the '88 group that led the NFL in rushing with the help of Sam Wyche's ground-breaking no huddle offense. Meanwhile, Burrow's operation is high-octane creativity.
"I thought Lindy came up with some things that were completely different. Some of the ball control, the underneath passing that led to big plays down the road," Collinsworth says. "I thought 88 was a little bit more how good Ickey and James Brooks were, and then when teams started coming down to try and stop those guys, Eddie Brown and Tim (McGee) and those guys were right over the top.
"That was two different teams, and this one's different too, just because it's so much more passing game, quarterback-centric than I think anything we've seen."
What's not different is a Steelers defense trying to defuse a state of the art Bengals offense.
"It's been fun to watch," Collinsworth says here in this offensive greenhouse. "I don't know how long this can keep rolling, but it has been fun to watch."
