Before he ever attempted a pass in the NFL, Joe Burrow won over his Cincinnati Bengals teammates for things much bigger than the game of football.
As the Bengals prepped for Super Bowl LVI against the Los Angeles Rams, ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler dug up the fantastic story that dates back to the summer of 2020.
There, Bengals players held a team meeting in the wake of George Floyd’s death and amid protests against racial injustice across the United States.
Burrow took charge in the meeting, according to Fowler:
“Burrow decided to address the team by telling a personal story about the racial injustice a Black teammate experienced during their high school basketball days growing up in Athens, Ohio. During one game, Burrow said, people in the stands yelled racial slurs at the friend. Burrow described feeling shaken and upset during the game, and what it felt like afterward as the two of them sat in the back of the team bus.”
The moment left a major impression on the locker room, with defensive tackle D.J. Reader telling Fowler the following: “He kind of broke down talking about it. He’s a guy who stood there and he supported his friend as he should because you know it’s not right.”
A staff member told Fowler that Burrow “won the team over real quick” exiting that meeting.
Around the time of that meeting, Burrow had gone public with statements on the same topic and it’s far from the first time he’s used his massive platform for good. At the time, a Bengals great like Hall of Fame finalist Willie Anderson was already publicly saying what Burrow’s current teammates were just finding out.
