Stephen A. Smith is ‘DEVASTATED’ for Joe Burrow needing surgery | First Take

Stephen A. Smith is ‘DEVASTATED’ for Joe Burrow needing surgery | First Take

Good morning everybody. Welcome into First Take on this Monday. Hope you all had a fabulous weekend. And boy, do we have a lot to talk about. Adam Sheper is in the building. Cam Newton in our new studios. Hello. Hello. Hello. So good to see you. D Wood and of course Stephen A joining us as well. Good morning gentlemen. I want to start with the breaking news Adam. That’s where we need to begin. Bengals star quarterback Joe Burrow will need toe surgery that will sideline him a minimum of three months. This comes after Burrow was helped into the locker room because of an injured toe in the first half of Sunday’s game against the Jags. Burrow was ruled out in the second half, but that didn’t stop the Bengals from pulling out a 31-27 win for their first 2-0 start in seven years. Adam, what more can you tell us? a seasonal altering injury, a massive blow to Cincinnati, Joe Burrow, and the National Football League. Nobody ever likes to see great quarterbacks, elite players taken out of the game. He’s going to have the surgery. The surgery is a minimum of 3 months. It could be even longer. Surgeries for this type of injury usually are 12 to 14 weeks. It is now September 15th. If we take the minimum time frame of three months, that puts them back December 15th. Who knows what the Bengals record will be? Who knows where he’ll be in his recovery? And Joe Burrow has to make sure that his toe, his feet are right for the future as well. This is an injury that could linger if it’s not addressed correctly. And so there are now major questions about when and if he will be back this season. And the irony is, Molly, as you mentioned, that the Bengals, who have started slower than any team in the National Football League in recent years, finally get out to a 2 and 0 start. finally are where they need to be and yet they lose their most important player moving forward. Absolutely devastating. Stephen A, your reaction? Oh, it’s definitely devastating. No question about it. But it does help. Two things help. Number one, they’ve started off the season 2 and 0 for a change. Instead of, you know, the first six years, uh, the first two games of the season combined, it was 12 games. They started out 1 and 11, which had me calling for an investigation into their coaching staff. This year, they’ve started out 2 and 0. So now, obviously, they’re in a better position. Secondly, this guy Jake Brown, he led him to a game-winning uh touchdown drive yesterday. And in 2023 when he had to play in nine games, seven of them starts, he was four and three, having completed 70% of his passes at that particular moment in time with a QBR of 98. He can play a little bit. And so when you look at his familiarity with this team, with this squad, with these players, you have to ask yourself based on what you’ve seen from them thus far, they’re better defensively in the regular season than we thought they would be because in the preseason, feeding off of last year, we thought they were god awful. They’ve been relatively decent thus far, the first two games of this season. Browning is is a a familiar source for them. He knows the personnel around them, so he seems to be the ideal quarterback. Now the question is for about what is it? What are we talking about here? You know uh nine 10 games what could happen? It remains to be seen. But if he can give you above 500 and you’ve got a chance to finish with a better than nine and eight record already 2 and 0 on the season they still have a chance knowing that Joe Burrow will come back. Adam so grateful we have you with the latest. I want to spin it forward now and come to our quarterback. Do you think Cincy could still make the playoffs having Burrow sideline this amount of time? Absolutely. I think what we’ve seen with Jake Browning is is some positive uh you know things. Do you have the skill set around him? Absolutely. I think really when you start identifying you know these type of question marks in the in the season and as we would say in the locker room handle the whatifs, right? What if certain things do happen? Well, for Jake Browning, you’re the starting quarterback now. Uh how do you manage, you know, the talent around you? You have dudes around you. You have, you know, Jamar Chase, you have T. Higgins. Those guys are very explosive and electrifying. And also the thing that I will be concerned about most is how do we protect the football? How do we have winning formulas going into each and every game? But this is the thing about Joe Burrow coming from a person who has suffered some type of foot injury as we call sensitive little nagging injuries. Toes, you know, I’ve suffered from Lind Frank. These things that you don’t really think about as a as a football player, but it’s nagging. how does he push off, you know, when he does come back and what does his recovery look like even the most? So, you know, I will really be concerned that that we don’t have no longlasting implications because you can make matters worse for this particular situation. Uh yeah, yeah, for me a couple things just speaking on Joe Burrow. Number one, I want to just let the audience know like you know this injury turf toe is a like a serious it’s a serious deal. I think sometimes people get this thing, oh it’s not a big it’s a big it’s a serious deal. I dealt with it u it’s you know this could be a serious deal for Joe Burrow move forward but spinning it forward uh to Jake Browning and company I I like I disagree I disagree like I think psychologically as a player you coming in obviously you win the game but to know like your most important player on the team is now possibly going to be out for the season that is a debilitating thing. Yes, those guys are going to rally. There’s no question about it. But the margin for error with the the Cincinnati Bengals. We’ve already had question marks about their defense. Now, we got to depend on our backup quarterback, okay, to play almost flawless football with this team because again, make no mistake about it, Jake Brown is not Joe Burrow, okay? Mhm. Regardless of the weapons that the that the Cincinnati Bengals have at their their disposal, he still has to play behind that cle that Cincinnati Bengals offensive line, which by the way, since Joe Burrow’s been in the league, has been one of the worst pass blocking units in the National Football League. And that’s where I think there is an issue. You talk about the lingering effects of turf toe and making sure it’s correct. What about the lingering effects of all of these injuries? The cumulative effect. Let’s take a look at this. In 2020, Joe Borrow gets hammered in the pocket, tears his ACL and his MCL. In 2021, he dislocates his pinky. He sprains his knee ligament in the Super Bowl. Plays through a calf injury suffered in training camp in 2023. Right wrist injury cost him the final seven games of the season that year. Now he’s got a turf toe injury that effectively is going to shelve him for a minimum of three months. We all know that. Uh but I would say this, we can’t completely absolve him from culpability. Most of it is not on him. It’s on the organization. They’ve got to do what they need to do. But he shares some culpability from this standpoint. Adam, you know, we’ve raved about the fact that he came on national television um and he went out there politicking and really really pushing for the Cincinnati Bengals, uh Terresan, Jamar Chase, T. Higgins, and of course, Trey Hendrickson. What we never heard him mention was his offensive line. And so, you know, again, what Joe Burrow wants in Cincinnati, he damn well should get. And the organization has tried to give it to him. And I’m certainly not trying to imply that it’s it’s mostly on him or all on him because that’s certainly not the case. It’s the organization. They get paid to run the team. He gets paid to be the quarterback. But in the same breath, while you speaking up for some of these other positions, maybe you should have reemphasized a bit more about the importance of that offensive line because without protecting you, what the hell are you going to be able to do? Adam, speaking of moving it forward, should the Bengals be looking at other quarterbacks? Well, they’re going to look at other quarterbacks. They’re going to have to bring in another quarterback. I don’t know whe they’ve called you yet, Cam, or not. No, no, I’m good right here on Okay, make sure about that. Okay, just make sure. Pair’s not an option. The Bengals, but they are. But like a Jameus Winston, someone like that. Listen, you could do that and they will bring in another quarterback, but they’re not bringing in another another guy to supplant Jake Browning. Jake Browning will be the guy. They’ve been through this before. When Burrow suffered that wrist injury, they rode Jake Browning. Jake Browning has all kinds of passing records in high school in the state of California. Jake Browning has got some tremendous accomplishments. They’re going to have to make do the way that any other organization would make do if and when you lose your starting quarterback. They don’t grow these starting quarterbacks on trees. It’s not like you just go pluck one off there, plug them into the lineup and think that you’re going to continue on. You lose an elite player like Joe Burrow, you suffer the conf. No, of course. I was just thinking a Jamus a Kirk Cousins is somebody somebody but it’s Jake Browning. I I’ll make this point. Do we know any of these names? Uh Dak Prescott, uh Sam Darnold, uh Brock Parody, uh Tom Brady. My point is this, right? They all came up for all came off of somebody else getting injured, right? Jake Browning, it’s your time, bro. Kurt Warner, Kurt. I mean, it we we’ve seen this time and time again. And we would like to support and we love underdog stories and this is no different. And we see it each and every year in this particular season or in this particular situation we’re seeing it in in Cincinnati. [Music]

On First Take, Stephen A. Smith, Cam Newton, Adam Schefter and Damien Woody react to the breaking news that Cincinnati Bengals QB Joe Burrow will undergo toe surgery and will be expected to miss at least 3 months of the season.

0:00 Breaking news
1:55 Stephen A. reacts to Joe Burrow needing surgery
3:28 Can the Bengals still make the playoffs having Burrow sidelined for so long?
6:00 Notable Joe Burrow NFL injuries
6:40 Should the Bengals be looking at other QBs?
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