Joe Burrow was handing out touchdowns in the first half of Sunday's 35-17 victory over the Atlanta Falcons like Oprah giving away gifts.
The Cincinnati Bengals scored a touchdown on their first four possessions of the game, including on passes of 60, 32 and 41 yards from Burrow.
After Burrow missed training camp time due to an appendectomy, Cincy is kicking it into gear following a slow start to the season.
"I'm feeling comfortable," Burrow said after the game, . "We're getting our timing down. We're finding a rhythm and the defense will keep doing what it does. We're finding our stride."
Burrow finished 34-of-42 passing for 481 yards, three TDs and a 138.2 passer rating and added one rushing score. His 196 passing yards in the first quarter set a team record, as did his 344 yards in the first half.
With the three 30-plus yard TDs, Burrow has tossed 49 touchdown passes since the start of last season with an average of 27.6 yards per score. The last passer to average 27-plus yards per TD pass over a two-year span was Randall Cunningham in 1998-1999 (27.9 average on 42 TDs).
All the Bengals ate. Tyler Boyd went for 155 yards and one TD on eight catches; Ja'Marr Chase added 130 yards and two TDs on eight grabs; and Tee Higgins fell just shy of making it a trio over the century mark, earning 93 yards. Chase and Boyd are the fifth pair of Bengals wide receivers with 100 yards and one TD each in a game and the first since 2010 (Chad Johnson and Jordan Shipley against the Falcons).
"[There is] no defense in the league, or whatever you do, that can stop what we got," Boyd said. "We got a great quarterback that can always make the right read every single time and make our jobs easy."
When Burrow is rolling like Sunday, it's fun to watch. The QB passed Hall of Famer Dan Marino for most 400-plus yard games in a player's first 33 games. It was Burrow's fifth such game.
