Ryan Fitzpatrick thinks the “Joe Burrow isn’t clutch” talk needs to be put to bed, and he backed it up with a number he says changes the whole conversation.
On the Fitz & Whit podcast, the former quarterback said Burrow has tied the game or taken the lead in the final four minutes in 18 of 27 chances. That was Fitzpatrick’s response to the stat that has followed Burrow around: a 1-34 record with eight minutes left in the fourth quarter.
“I needed to do a deep dive, I needed to put an end to this nonsense,” Fitzpatrick said of the narrative against Burrow. “There are 27 times when Joe had the ball with under four minutes, but had the ability to tie the game or take the lead, he did it 18 of the 27 times.”
Fitzpatrick didn’t stop there. He broke those 18 games down further, saying five of them ended with a blocked PAT, a missed game-winning field goal, or a failed two-point conversion. He also pointed to five more in which the opponent scored with less than 30 seconds left or won in overtime.
“Let me tell you what happened in those 18 games, five times they either had a PAT block, they missed the field goal they were put in position to take, or they didn't convert on the two-point conversion, there are also five times that they lost because the opponent scored with less than 30 seconds remaining or they scored in overtime,” Fitzpatrick said of his findings.
That left eight games, and Fitzpatrick said those were all wins. In seven of those eight, Burrow got the ball in a tie game and drove his team to the winning score. Fitzpatrick added that Burrow was only in position to trail late and still win outright once, but that still meant he was doing his part in two-thirds of those 27 chances.
“That leaves eight of those, and those were eight wins, and so seven of those eight wins they were tied when he got the ball and went down there and won,” Fitzpatrick said. “So there has only been one instance where they were behind and he scored and they won the game outright, so that's where the 1-34 comes from, but in the 27 instances I looked at, he did his job two-thirds of the time, pretty good rate if you ask me so I wanna just kill the narrative right now.”
The takeaway from Fitzpatrick’s dive is simple: the late-game story around Burrow looks a lot different when the whole picture is laid out.
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