The moment came for the Cincinnati Bengals’ coaches at the beginning of August. The Joe Burrow they knew, the one who led their franchise out of the woods, and onto the NFL’s biggest stages for the first time in three decades, was back. And in complete and total command.
Yes, it had to do with his health, as he returns from another injury, this time a torn wrist ligament. But that wasn’t really it. It was how this quarterbacking prodigy—with a scheme decoder in his head—was returning to his element and reaching a new level in the part of the game he’s long seemed to have mastered.
He was manipulating his protection. He was moving skill guys on his own. He was using the pieces to figure out what the defense was doing.
The incredibly smart QB showed he’s getting even smarter. Get past that and, sure, the injuries he’s sustained come into focus. That he could physically cash the checks his mind was writing, as he processed what was around him, was, indeed, a good sign that he was getting back to being himself. And the fact that all the time he spent unable to do this didn’t go to waste was cool, too—clearly, he used it wisely.
But in the end, the headline for those watching was how Burrow, once again, got tougher to defend in a way that wasn’t going to be readily apparent to the crowds of fans gathered for a training camp workout.
“I had a lot of time coming back to think about checks against certain defenses that I like,” Burrow said, in a quiet moment, a couple of days later. “That’s been a big emphasis for me over the last month and a half. I’m seeing things really well right now. The throwing part is getting better and better, each day the more reps that I get. My arm is really strong down the field right now, which I’m really happy with.
“That was the one thing I was worried about with this injury. I would say it’s as strong as it’s been in that department.”
Soon enough, he and the Bengals trust, he’ll show all of this to the rest of us.
It’s why, when we publish our 2024 staff predictions for the site later this week, I’ll have Cincinnati going to the Super Bowl—and Joe Burrow to be the NFL’s MVP.
The 27-year-old’s been through a lot as a pro. The ACL tear as a rookie, and the rehab going into the Super Bowl year. The appendicitis going into 2022. Last year, the calf injury, and then a scary wrist injury from which he’s finally close to 100% recovered. Yet, with all of that change, one thing hasn’t shifted much. Burrow has always been focused on getting better. It’s why he was at his best before he got hurt last year.
It’s also why, as I see it, he has the best shot of any quarterback at challenging three-time Super Bowl champion Patrick Mahomes to be the game’s MVP over the next five months.
The first key to knowing where Burrow is now is to remember where he was when his wrist popped on Nov. 16, 2023.
That Thursday night, the Bengals were moving the ball consistently on what might’ve been the best defense in the NFL, on the road in Baltimore. Burrow’s last possession covered 82 yards in 12 plays. His last throw was a four-yard touchdown to Joe Mixon that put Cincinnati up 10–7 against the AFC’s eventual top seed.
And while having his wrist go the way it did—he immediately knew it was bad, as athletes usually do in these situations—would’ve been bad under any circumstance, the real kick in the you-know-where for Burrow came in that he’d just started to feel like himself again after fighting a calf injury for much of the summer, and having it linger a bit into the fall.
“I think that’s the best I’ve played in my career, those last couple games,” he says. “I feel like I was really hitting my stride, which is the most disappointing part. … I was throwing on the run and making plays the best I have in my career, which was really a big emphasis going into last year, just making more plays. The calf hindered me early in the year, so I wasn’t able to show it. Those last couple games, I was able to show what I had been working on all offseason. That felt great.”
It wasn’t just in the Ravens game, either.
It was also a near-perfect afternoon against the San Francisco 49ers in Week 8—Burrow threw for 283 yards, three touchdowns and a 134.8 rating on 28-of-32 passing in a 31–17 win. He threw for 348 yards and two touchdowns in a 24–18 win over the Buffalo Bills and Josh Allen in Week 9. And he threw for 347 yards in a 30–27 loss to the Houston Texans in Week 10.
“We had gone out to San Francisco two weeks prior, and we played lights out—he played as good as he’d ever played,” offensive coordinator Dan Pitcher, then the quarterbacks coach, says. “That was off the bye. You could tell that his lower body was finally starting to feel better. We played Houston here. Came down to the wire. He led a comeback and should’ve won the game. We had an unfortunate drop. That was really him and C.J. [Stroud] back and forth. …
“That made it even more tough when it [the wrist injury] happened. It was like all of a sudden you go from being really optimistic about what the rest of the season’s going to look like to the stark realization that you’re not going to have him. He was playing, certainly, his best football of last year, and I would put it up against prior years as well, leading into when he got hurt.”
And just like that, Burrow was back in a dark place that had become all too familiar over his four-year NFL career, the place where a star is still on the team, but not in nearly the same way. Where you can help your teammates, but not as much. Where you can work on yourself, but without the payoff every Sunday.
What was worse? The injury was what every quarterback fears—one to his money-making throwing arm—and that it was one where the more he researched it, the more he realized there was no precedent for a quarterback going through it. Earlier in the year, when he hurt his calf, Burrow called New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers for advice, knowing Rodgers had calf issues earlier in his career. He leaned on Tom Brady, too, after he sustained his ACL injury.
With his wrist injury, there wasn’t anyone to call.
But as a guy who’s described himself as “addicted to getting better,” it didn’t take long for Burrow to get back on his horse—and find an interesting silver lining. As he explains it now, he thought to himself, “I have 10, 12 extra weeks of offseason on everybody else.” And the seriousness of the injury wound up coloring how he’d use the wealth of time he’d suddenly come into.
“It’s scary for Joe, and really everybody—coaches, us,” says his dad, Jimmy Burrow, a long-time college coach. “And yet there was never a time to my knowledge that he said, Hey, maybe I won’t be able to do the things I’ve done in the past. It was, I’m gonna do everything I can to come back just like I was, and even better. The one thing about Joe’s injuries in the past, and it’s been well documented, he does come back quickly. I guess if you get hurt here and there, it’s a good quality to have.
“But I think this particular one he was, and probably because it was his throwing side, really conscious about not coming back too fast or pushing too hard. I’m sure he heard it from Zac [Taylor] and the trainers and [Bengals director of rehabilitation] Nick [Cosgray] over there, and he heard it from me, too. I think he took it to heart.”
So Burrow had to be creative in how he used his time, knowing that getting back to where he was physically on Nov. 16, 2023, wasn’t going to happen overnight.
Burrow’s addiction to get better is a double-edged sword.
On one hand, it’s led to him pushing and clawing to find the best road back to the field, and how he could make the most of a challenging situation. On the other, it stood to crush him, temporarily, for everything that he was missing. And while the stoic quarterback didn’t show that part much, those around him the most knew him well enough to know that, for a period there, he’d have to mourn the loss of the 2023 season.
“You’re probably in about as dark a place as you can get because of how much of your life you dedicate to this,” Pitcher says. “But once you are able to turn that corner? It’s all those positive traits that made you the player you are, that made it so hard when it happened, that are going to allow you to build yourself back into the player we all know you are. It’s all positive. It’s all evidence for why we believe he’s one of the best in the league right now, if not the best. We’re fortunate to have him.”
“He’s so driven and so motivated to always get himself to the best spot he can be,” Taylor says. “There have been setbacks with the injuries and stuff, but I haven’t seen how it’s changed him. He just, above the surface, does a great job at leading this team through his own actions.”
At first, that’s just where he pointed his focus—to helping the 2023 Bengals.
While he wanted to help backup Jake Browning, he didn’t want to take all the oxygen out of that space. Having been around locker rooms since he could walk, Burrow knew he had to give Browning a chance to make the quarterback room his room. So Burrow would be in there some, but there were also days where he was in the receiver room, or the offensive line room or the running back room.
And while he’d help as needed, he was getting as much from it as he was taking. It was good, if a little difficult, to be around his teammates. There was also something he felt like he could take from every meeting that, perhaps, he’d be able to draw on in 2024.
“When you’re on IR, it’s tough to be in the building—so those first couple weeks, it was nice to see a different perspective,” Burrow says. “We have really smart coaches in every room. I’d give my perspective on what I see from a quarterback standpoint for that room, and then hear how they coach things, how they see things. I think it was beneficial.”
Then, there was finding something, anything, he could do physically to make himself better.
With throwing out of the question, and having the three months between his injury and the Super Bowl, time he normally wouldn’t have, he worked around his surgery to put on a little more muscle mass and strength. He started to build a base for that before the surgery, took two weeks off after the surgery, and then got back on his plan with about three weeks left in the regular season.
“I wanted to get bigger, try something new,” he says. “I hadn’t been healthy for a couple years. I figured I’d give it a shot. I’m feeling pretty good right now, so I’m going to keep that the way it is right now. If my legs start to feel heavy, I might lose a couple pounds.”
As his workouts ramped up, so too did his drive toward the summer of 2024.
The one thing Burrow couldn’t turn off through all of this, the way he had to with his desire to throw, was how he thought about football. Which is to say pretty much nonstop.
Given more time, he was always going to spend it this way.
“I do that pretty consciously—I go home and think about all the reps that I got and what I can do better,” he says. “I go home and think about my motion. I go home and think about, Maybe do this route better, or maybe if Ja’Marr [Chase] ran the route this way, it could be a little better. I’m just constantly thinking about ways that we can improve and ways that I can improve.
“You got to get away from it sometimes, but sometimes an idea will pop into your head and you go down that mental rabbit hole. That’s what I love about this. I love fixating on it. I love the feeling of getting better at something. My mind is going to continue to improve the more reps I get, and my body is going to continue to improve the more I invest in it.”
So with a wealth of time, what the coaches saw in that single third-down period in August, the thing that no one else watching noticed, was coming together.
To those in the know, the progress was unmistakable.
“He was awesome in his manipulation of the protection, moving players in different spots to try and uncover the look from the defense, doing it crisply, doing it with command,” Pitcher says, describing that third-down period. “You can tell he’s committed himself to really being at the top of that element of his game, which is something I’m sure he’s thought about a lot over the course of [the time he’s had] since the season ended.”
A couple of days after that third-down period, Taylor was in a meeting room with Pitcher, quarterbacks coach Brad Kragthorpe, Burrow and Browning, having presented a new concept to his quarterback. He then ceded the floor to Burrow, allowing for Burrow to identify any issues he saw with the idea. The coaches took the feedback, and applied it to the concept, before installing it with the team.
This, of course, isn’t brain surgery, nor is it a rare sight—it’s more of an everyday one in the Bengals’ building. But it encapsulates where Burrow is as a player, and with all he worked on this offseason.
Asked if that makes Burrow more partner than pupil, Taylor couldn’t get the words “one-hundred percent” out of his mouth fast enough.
“He’s an extension of the coaching staff,” Taylor says. “He needs to understand why we’re doing something. I need his input. If I like a play, and he doesn’t like a play, I shouldn’t call that play. If there’s something he loves, I need to start to love it. I get that. [Ex-Dolphins QB] Matt Moore always helped me with that. If a quarterback loves something, he’s going to make it work. You’ve empowered him.”
And the more Burrow has become capable of speaking up, and leading those discussions, the more the offense has become his offense, as much as it is Taylor’s offense or Pitcher’s.
That, in turn, winds up being felt through the entire team.
"You feel his urgency at all times,” Taylor says. “It’s go time. We’re not messing around here. We just had to punt on this drive in practice. That’s not good enough. You can feel the anger that just happened. Where’s the extra 1%? I think he continues to grow on how to attack defenses, putting himself in the coaches’ shoes—What checks do I anticipate them giving me? How do I proactively start to move that direction? We have that trust with him.”
Which is why that little third-down period mattered so much.
Jimmy Burrow’s had plenty of moments of pride stemming from his youngest son, but there was one that really stuck out this summer.
The Indianapolis Colts were in Cincinnati for a joint practice, and the quarterback’s dad made the drive from Athens, Ohio, to watch. One reason to do it was the Burrow family’s connection to Indianapolis defensive coordinator Gus Bradley. In 2003 and ’04, Jimmy Burrow was defensive coordinator at North Dakota State, and Bradley was his linebackers coach. Joe Burrow was a first- and second-grader for those two football seasons.
The Burrow and Bradley families got close over that time, and Jimmy Burrow actually wound up recommending Bradley to then Buccaneers defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin—who was Burrow's coordinator when he played at Nebraska in the 1970s—for a job at the end of the 2004 season. Bradley took it, and has been in the NFL since.
Because of all of that, what Bradley said to Jimmy Burrow at the end of the practice carried as much weight as you could possibly imagine.
“I was visiting with him afterwards, and there were a couple of plays where he says, You know, I didn’t think he’d be able to see what we’re doing and make those checks,” Jimmy Burrow says. “And me, being a defensive coach and somebody who’s grounded with the same background as Gus, because we did a lot of coach Kiffin’s things in the past, you just go, If Gus is seeing those things he did as special, then that means a lot to me.”
Then, after his son came over to say hello, Colts head coach Shane Steichen made his way over and drove the point home.
“He said, Joe, how did you know that we were going to that coverage? We don’t play them this year, so it’s not a big deal, and Joe told him,” Jimmy continues. “And he just said, I’m not sure another quarterback in the league could’ve seen that. And the coaching comes out in my blood there—I’m proud that he’s able to do things like that in the NFL.”
Joe Burrow’s aptitude for the game, coming up in it like he did, with a coaching dad, and linebacker brothers, is a factor when it comes to that stuff, for sure.
But so, too, is the offseason he just had.
And just as the added strength training made him sturdier, the added practice time he lost over his past three camps (due to the ACL, appendicitis and calf) made him sharper, and even added time to go to Europe for a week made him more mentally prepared to lock in, the more he’s studied, the more he’s shown just what he can become with everything he’s invested to becoming the very best player he can be.
“I have the finances to hire my own nutritionist, get my own chef that’s in-house, I think that’s been a big difference,” he says. “My trainer and I have really put together a great plan for the offseason to build my body up. As we got closer to camp, backed off and did a little more work in on-field stuff. I took a little more time off this year. I had a longer offseason. After OTAs and minicamp, it got to the point where I was like, I kind of need a week off. I took that, went to Europe. Came back refreshed. My body was feeling great.
“This is the best my body’s felt in two or three years."
As for the wrist, while I was there in early August, he was still working his way back, saying, “The ball’s going where I want it to, but there’s been some throws where it didn’t spin quite the way I want it to, a little wobble. It’s getting less and less each day. I’m getting where I want to be.” And after checking back in over the past couple of weeks, indeed, those sorts of throws came fewer and further between.
In fact, it was at that joint practice with the Colts that his status was cemented in the coaches’ minds. While Burrow was pushing to play in the preseason game against Indy two days later, the coaches looked at the tape from that workout and saw a quarterback and offense that were exactly where they needed to be, mentally and physically. So just as they disappointed Burrow in saying he couldn’t play, they tacitly affirmed that he was back where they needed him to be, both mentally and physically, and the 10 days to follow only strengthened those feelings.
What’s left now is to see where Burrow can take his recovery and his mastery of the offense.
The Bengals, suffice it to say, already have an idea.
“He started to take that step of, I really understand how the defense is attacking me,” Taylor says. “He knows all that, but also how to factor in the run game. He’s done a good job of that. He’s started to evolve that way. He’s started to check to some runs over the last year where I’ve called a play, I know what play I’ve called, and all of a sudden, the ball’s handed off for an 11-yard gain. I think that’s the next level for him that he’s really embraced.”
Since that night in November, Burrow has embraced all of it.
But, really, that’s always been the case with the Bengals’ quarterback. While how he’s done it, and the circumstances dictating that each year, have changed, the idea for Burrow really hasn’t, making it a good bet the results on the field won’t, either.
He was among the game’s best when he got hurt. He should be right back there in the aftermath.
“I have more reps invested,” he says. “I treat the game the same way, attacking it with a mindset to be the best that I can be. The more reps that you get invested, the better you’re going to be. I have four years of those under my belt now. You’re constantly honing your process from your offseason to your in-season with the team. I’m just finding that as we go, and it’s getting better and better, doing things more efficiently. …
“And that [efficiency] leaves time for other things where maybe I haven’t invested quite as much time. I’m just doing it more efficiently. That’s where we’re at.”
It’s a good place to be, for sure.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Bengals QB Joe Burrow Is Back and Better Than Ever.
