Joe Burrow will be taking part in late-season games with nothing at stake for the first time since he started playing organized football.
It will be up to Cincinnati Bengals ownership, director of player personnel Duke Tobin and coach Zac Taylor to ensure this is the final lost season with Burrow as their quarterback.
Cincinnati (4-10) was eliminated from the playoffs with its 24-0 loss to the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday. The Bengals reached the Super Bowl after the 2021 season and the AFC championship game a year later, but haven't been to the postseason since.
For his part, Burrow is trying to put on a brave face, saying he has “a lot of confidence” in the front office and coaching staff to turn things around.
Burrow’s body language and comments at his news conferences will face scrutiny over the next three games, especially after the six-year veteran acknowledged on his 29th birthday, Dec. 10, that this season and recent years have taken a toll.
“It was probably as disinterested I’ve ever seen Joe Burrow look,” ESPN analyst Dan Orlovsky said on “Get Up” Monday morning. “Just did not look engaged in football. He just came across as ‘I don’t want to be here.’ And obviously, the play yesterday was just bad.”
Taylor said Monday that he expects Burrow to play the final three games. Cincinnati is at Miami on Sunday before hosting Arizona and Cleveland.
If Cincinnati hopes to end the year on an upswing, Burrow will need to play better. He missed nine games due to a turf toe injury but delivered hope when he returned and led the Bengals to a 32-14 win over the Ravens on Thanksgiving night.
However, his performance has dipped over the past five quarters, with four interceptions — including two that were returned for touchdowns.
Cincinnati led 21-18 going into the fourth quarter Dec. 7 at Buffalo, but Burrow threw two picks, one of which was returned 63 yards for a go-ahead TD by Christian Benford.
On Sunday, the Bengals entered Baltimore territory four times but didn't score — in part because Burrow threw a pick-6 in the red zone.
Burrow’s tone and the team’s record have invited comparisons to 2010, when the Bengals were projected to be a playoff team but finished 4-12. That ended up being the last straw for Carson Palmer, who demanded a trade after the season.
The Bengals haven't been built for sustained success. Even when they made the playoffs six times between 2009 and ’15, they lost in the first round. The 2021 and ’22 postseason runs marked the first time the franchise won playoff games in consecutive seasons.
Given their history, the organization now faces a critical assessment. Owner Mike Brown needs to look beyond the upcoming offseason to decide whether Tobin and Taylor can orchestrate another turnaround. With a franchise quarterback, two star receivers under contract and ample salary cap room for upgrades, Cincinnati is positioned for changes.
During the final three games, the coaching staff and much of the roster will be auditioning for next year.
The Bengals have 10 sacks in their last three games, including a season-high four on Sunday. Lamar Jackson was pressured on half his dropbacks and was 1 of 4 passing for 26 yards when he was able to get passes off. Myles Murphy led the way with four pressures and a sack, and rookie Demetrius Knight Jr. had a career-high three pressures.
Protecting Burrow, who took 10 hits in the loss. That included Ravens linebacker Tavius Robinson having a free run on Burrow before a rushed throw that Kyle Van Noy picked off. Van Noy handed the ball to Alohi Gilman, who took it to the end zone.
S Jordan Battle led the defense with eight tackles, including a tackle for loss, and got his fourth interception of the season.
WRs Mitchell Tinsley and Andre Iosivas. With Tee Higgins sidelined, neither player was able to pick up the slack. The pair was targeted a combined three times and had only one catch for 16 yards.
Higgins remains in the concussion protocol. WR Charlie Jones (right ankle), TE Noah Fant (right ankle), DT Kris Jenkins Jr. (left ankle) and RT Amarius Mims (right knee) were injured Sunday and will be limited to begin the week. DE Shemar Stewart could return this week.
4: Times the Bengals have been shut out by the Ravens.
7: Burrow's career total of interceptions returned for touchdowns. On Sunday, he threw a pick-6 for the second straight game, the first time in his career he's done that.
Cincinnati visits Miami for its final road game. Originally scheduled for Sunday night, it was bumped up to the afternoon. It’s Burrow and Tua Tagovailoa’s second meeting; Cincinnati won 27-15 in 2022.
AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/NFL
Cincinnati Bengals head coach Zac Taylor walks on the field before an NFL football game against the Baltimore Ravens, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Jeff Dean)
Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow (9) leaves the field after a loss to the Baltimore Ravens in an NFL football game, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Jeff Dean)
President Donald Trump’s top Cabinet officials overseeing national security are expected back on Capitol Hill on Tuesday as questions mount over the swift escalation of U.S. military force and deadly boat strikes in international waters near Venezuela.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others are set to brief members of the House and the Senate amid congressional investigations into a military strike in September that killed two survivors of an initial attack on a boat allegedly carrying cocaine. Legal experts say it could have been a war crime, or murder. On the eve of the hearings, the U.S. military announced three more boat attacks targeting “designated terrorist organizations,” killing eight more people.
Here's the latest:
As of 10:45 a.m. in Washington, Trump had not weighed in on the explosive Vanity Fair piece featuring White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, even as West Wing figures defended her.
Wiles herself called the two-part magazine profile, which featured months of her candid interviews, a “hit piece.” She did not deny anything specific, including quotations attributed to her.
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt followed with a defense, as did Russell Vought, the chief White House budget office who’s shaping Trump’s remake of the federal government.
Vought on social media called Wiles “an exceptional chief of staff” and said Trump’s West Wing through two presidencies has “never worked this well or been more oriented towards accomplishing what he wants to.”
In Vanity Fair, Wiles described Vought as a “right-wing absolute zealot,” while praising him and several other hardline Trump lieutenants.
Susie Wiles sharply criticized Attorney General Pam Bondi’s handling of the Epstein case and the public’s expectations in the interview with Vanity Fair magazine that was released Tuesday.
Wiles specifically mentioned earlier in the year when Bondi distributed binders to a group of political commentators that included no new information about Epstein. Wiles also raised the issue of Bondi suggesting that a list of Epstein’s clients was on her desk and awaiting her review.
“I think she completely whiffed on appreciating that that was the very targeted group that cared about this,” Wiles said of Bondi. “First she gave them binders full of nothingness. And then she said that the witness list, or the client list, was on her desk. There is no client list, and it sure as hell wasn’t on her desk.”
After Vanity Fair published the interview, Wiles criticized it as a “disingenuously framed hit piece” on her, Trump, the White House staff and Cabinet. She did not deny any of the comments that were attributed to her.
Trump doesn’t drink. But Susie Wiles, according to Vanity Fair magazine, says the president has “an alcoholic’s personality.”
It’s among the many unvarnished thoughts attributed to Wiles in a series of interviews Vanity Fair featured Tuesday in a lengthy two-part profile of the White House chief of staff.
Wiles has called the profile a “hit piece” but has not denied any specifics.
In one interview, Wiles says she recognizes characteristics in Trump that she saw in her father, sports broadcaster Pat Summerall, who was an alcoholic.
“High-functioning alcoholics or alcoholics in general, their personalities are exaggerated when they drink. And so I’m a little bit of an expert in big personalities,” Wiles said, adding that Trump has “a view that there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing, zero, nothing.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is defending chief of staff Susie Wiles after an explosive Vanity Fair piece that featured months of Wiles’ interviews with the magazine about Trump and his second presidency.
Neither Wiles nor Leavitt are denying any specific claims or quotations in the piece. But their pushback shows an effort to blunt potential criticism of Wiles, who to this point has maintained a low profile despite her considerable influence.
“President Trump has no greater or more loyal advisor than Susie,” Leavitt posted Tuesday on social media. “The entire Administration is grateful for her steady leadership.”
Wiles managed Trump’s 2024 campaign and then he tapped her as the first woman to serve as White House chief of staff.
Prosecutors are trying to convince jurors that Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan knew what was at stake when she directed an immigrant to a private door in the courthouse to evade agents.
Jurors on Monday heard audio from the incident in which Judge Dugan told her court reporter, “I’ll get the heat,” as they discussed who would assist Eduardo Flores-Ruiz.
The prosecution continued its case Tuesday with cross examination of an FBI agent who was part of the arrest team.
White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles is blasting a Vanity Fair piece that featured months of interviews about Donald Trump and his second presidency.
Wiles, in a social media post, called the two-part profile “a disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest President, White House staff, and Cabinet in history.” Wiles did not deny any specific quotations attributed to her, including criticism of Attorney General Pam Bondi, calling Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy “quirky Bobby,” and saying Trump has “an alcoholic’s personality.” (The president does not drink.)
“Significant context was disregarded and much of what I, and others, said about the team and the President was left out,” Wiles asserted without details.
The first woman to serve as White House chief of staff, Wiles previously has kept a low profile despite her considerable influence.
The United States gained a decent 64,000 jobs in November but lost 105,000 in October as federal workers departed after cutbacks by the Trump administration, the government said Tuesday in delayed reports. And the unemployment rate rose to 4.6%, highest since 2021.
Hiring has clearly lost momentum, hobbled by uncertainty over Trump’s tariffs and the lingering effects of high interest rates the Federal Reserve engineered in 2022 and 2023 to rein in inflation.
American companies are mostly holding onto the employees they have. But they’re reluctant to hire new ones as they struggle to assess how to use artificial intelligence and how to adjust to Trump’s unpredictable policies, especially his double-digit taxes on imports from around the world.
▶ Read more about how the uncertainty leaves jobseekers struggling to even land interviews
The Ukrainian president says proposals being negotiated with U.S. officials for a deal to end the fighting in Russia’s nearly 4-year-old invasion of his country could be finalized within days, after which American envoys will present them to the Kremlin before possible further meetings in the U.S. next weekend.
A draft peace plan discussed with the U.S. during talks in Berlin on Monday is “not perfect” but is “very workable,” Volodymyr Zelenskyy told reporters, while cautioning that some key issues — notably what happens to Ukrainian territory occupied by Russian forces — remain unresolved.
But as the spotlight shifts to Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin may balk at some of the proposals thrashed out by officials from Washington, Kyiv and Western Europe, including postwar security guarantees for Ukraine.
The security proposal discussed in Berlin will be based on Western help in keeping the Ukrainian army strong, an official from a NATO nation said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
“Europeans will lead a multinational and multi-domain force to strengthen those troops and to secure Ukraine from the land, sea and air, and the U.S. will lead a ceasefire monitoring and verification mechanism, with international participation,” the official said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov repeated Tuesday that Russia wants a comprehensive peace deal, and that if Ukraine seeks “momentary, unsustainable solutions, we are unlikely to be ready to participate.”
“We want peace — we don’t want a truce that would give Ukraine a respite and prepare for the continuation of the war,” he told reporters. “We want to stop this war, achieve our goals, secure our interests, and guarantee peace in Europe for the future.”
“It seems like another example of the pay-to-play administration,” said Kedric Payne, who leads the ethics program at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center in Washington. “There is clearly a perception that in order to get favorable policies and acts from the administration, a company needs to provide a financial benefit to the president.”
Trump Media did not respond to specific questions about the arrangement. “Neither the President nor his family have ever engaged, or will ever engage, in conflicts of interest,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
Crypto.com was under siege for more a year, told enforcement action was likely as part of an aggressive Biden administration push to regulate the cryptocurrency industry. Then Donald Trump won the 2024 election, and the company’s legal peril dissipated.
By August, Crypto.com announced it was plunging roughly $1 billion worth of assets into a venture with a new partner — Trump’s social media company, which had lost hundreds of millions of dollars since its 2021 launch.
Legal and ethics experts say Crypto.com’s journey from investigative target to Trump business partner provides a case study of conflicts of interest as Trump family businesses enter lucrative arrangements with federally regulated companies, some of which have benefited from action taken by his administration.
▶ Read more from the AP investigation into Trump’s relationship with Crypto.com
Hegseth, Rubio and others are set to brief members of the House and the Senate behind closed doors as the U.S. is building up its presence with warships, flying fighter jets near Venezuelan airspace and seizing an oil tanker as part of its campaign against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who has insisted the real purpose of the U.S. military operations is to force him from office.
Trump’s Republican administration has not sought any authorization from Congress for action against Venezuela. But lawmakers objecting to the military incursions are pushing war powers resolutions toward potential voting this week.
▶ Read more about the briefing
The Trump administration said in a court filing Monday that the president’s White House ballroom construction project must continue for unexplained national security reasons and because a preservationists’ organization that wants it stopped has no standing to sue.
The filing was in response to a lawsuit filed last Friday by the National Trust for Historic Preservation asking a federal judge to halt President Donald Trump’s project until it goes through multiple independent reviews and a public comment period and wins approval from Congress.
The administration’s 36-page filing included a declaration from Matthew C. Quinn, deputy director of the U.S. Secret Service, the agency responsible for the security of the president and other high-ranking officials, that said more work on the site of the former White House East Wing is still needed to meet the agency’s “safety and security requirements.” The filing did not explain the specific national security concerns; the administration has offered to share classified details with the judge in a private, in-person setting without the plaintiffs present.
▶ Read more about the court filing
Here’s a look at key moments in Trump fights with the media in his second term:
The 33-page lawsuit filed in Florida accuses the BBC of broadcasting a “false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory, and malicious depiction of President Trump,” calling it “ a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence ” the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
It accuses the BBC of “splicing together two entirely separate parts of President Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021” in order to ”intentionally misrepresent the meaning of what President Trump said.” It seeks $5 billion in damages for defamation and $5 billion for unfair trade practices.
The broadcaster apologized last month to Trump over the edit of the speech he gave before his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. But the publicly funded BBC rejected claims it had defamed him, after Trump threatened legal action.
BBC chairman Samir Shah had called the edit an “error of judgment,” which triggered the resignations of the BBC’s top executive and its head of news.
▶ Read more about the lawsuit
President Donald Trump speaks during a Mexican Border Defense Medal presentation in the Oval Office of the White House, Monday, Dec. 15, 2025, in Washington, as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, looks on. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
