On NFL Thursday, we always have pointed out the league’s interest in promoting Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow unevenly. Whether it was the laughable hype during his middling rookie season, the weird 2021 postseason that almost handed him an undeserved championship, or the 2022 postseason attempts to get him back to the Super Bowl, it’s been a never-ending suspicion here that the agenda is real.

Burrow had a good 2024 season, leading the league in several counting statistics, but his team lost seven times by single digits as December rolled around, putting the Bengals in a desperate position. The team was 4-8 and needed to run the table to even have a chance at the playoffs. Well, guess what? The Bengals somehow turned it around in the last five weeks, winning all their games—including two surprising wins.

In beating the Denver Broncos at home in overtime and the Pittsburgh Steelers on the road by two points, Cincinnati defeated two playoff-bound teams by this margins to keep their hopes alive. The defeat of the Broncos came in a game where the Bengals had 15 more minutes of possession and half as many penalties; the victory over the Steelers, Cincy again had 16 more minutes of possession and more turnovers as well.

Why was a team with a losing record favored over the Broncos on the road? Good question. Sharps have caught on to the NFL’s Burrow Agenda, no doubt; Pittsburgh had been struggling a bit coming into the finale, despite already clinching a postseason berth, so it’s possible to see the desperate Bengals favored in that game. But Cincinnati still ended up with the 25th-ranked defense, in terms of points allowed. Ouch.

The amusing thing is that despite all the machinations, Burrow & Co. still ended up missing the postseason when the Broncos secured the final playoff spot in the conference by beating the Kansas City Chiefs in Week 18—the defending champions that sat many of their key stars in a game that didn’t matter to them. In the end, the Bengals’ dismal start to the season doomed them just enough to guarantee tee times in winter.

Thus, for the second postseason in a row, Cincinnati sits at home watching on television despite the league’s desperate promotion of Burrow. His record as a starter in 2023-2024 combined? Just 14-13 overall, while the team went 18-16 in the two years together (4-3 without him). Like this year, though, we will await the NFL’s attempts in 2025 to make Burrow a “thing”—just as it did with Eli Manning in the late 2000s. Ugh.