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Joe Burrow remembers the feeling he had in the summer of 2019.
He’d had a good first year starting at LSU—after transferring from Ohio State—and was projected to be a mid-round pick in the April 2020 NFL draft. Justin Jefferson had emerged in 2018 as a true No. 1 receiver, but Ja’Marr Chase’s freshman production had been modest. The Tigers were bringing back seven starters on offense and eight on defense.
To outsiders, that was enough for measured optimism. But inside the facility, Burrow felt something different.
“I don’t know, it just felt inevitable,” Burrow said during training camp, leaning back in his chair in an office off the Bengals’ locker room. “We finished stronger the year before. I knew how good Justin was. I didn’t quite know how good Ja’Marr was going to be yet because his superpower is after the catch, and in practice you can’t really see that. He was getting open and making plays. Obviously, that’s what he does, but what makes him one of one is after the catch. I realized that somewhere in the early 2019 season.
“But, yeah, I just knew how things felt around the building. I knew how practices were going. I knew that offense fit my skill set more so than any one I had been in. It just made sense to me. As I said, there was just a feeling around the building that it was inevitable.”
Indeed, Burrow broke FBS records for touchdown passes and passer rating and won the Heisman Trophy. Jefferson and Chase combined for 195 receptions, 3,320 receiving yards and 38 touchdown catches. Clyde Edwards-Helaire rushed for 1,414 yards and another 16 touchdowns. At times, the season looked like an old NCAA video game set on easy mode. LSU went 15–0, scored over 100 points in two playoff games and won it all.
Seven years later, that team’s triggerman has that feeling again.
Burrow, with the regard he has for that LSU group, would not make the comparison lightly. Even still, just as that college team hit America with all the subtlety of a Mike Tyson uppercut, he thinks the 2026 Bengals have a shot to do the same.
Inevitable? It’s tough to say that about any team in today’s NFL. But with the scars of the past three years carried and a ton of talent around him, Burrow has not been shy about sharing his feelings entering this season.
Given who he is, his experience is worth listening to.
‘Those guys all know how to do it’
Burrow is also not making these comments on feeling alone. The basis, as you might imagine, is rooted in detail and experience, and now in knowledge of what it takes to get to February.
“The vibe of the defense is really good right now,” he said. “Our defensive line is so deep this year. The depth of that unit was a weak point last year, [but] now we have nine or 10 guys that we feel good about putting out there in five-down sets. Obviously, Dexter [Lawrence II] plays a big role in that. Jonathan Allen plays a big role in that. And those guys have been vocal leaders for us to start this out, which is something that we needed.
“We know what we have on offense, so we can take care of and experiment with things right now that we want to be better at, but we always know we have something in the back pocket that we can pull out and go to, that we’ve done for years at this point. And now we have more flexibility as far as style of play on offense to win a game.
“The last couple of years, it felt like every possession was do or die—you’ve got to go make a play on third down. Otherwise you’re going to fall behind. It doesn’t really feel that way this year. I think we can commit to the run; we can commit to play-action. As I said, we’ll drop back and throw it 60 times if we have to, but I don’t think that’s a recipe for success week in and week out. That’s something I have experience doing.
“I think in 2020 and 2021, we were a run-the-ball, play-action team, and so I’ve done that. I’ve done the go-play-Superman when you have to. I’ve got a lot of different experiences that I can pull from, too. As you get older, that will help you win ballgames.”
In other words, the defense is better to the point where it’ll allow for the offense to play a more-balanced, less-desperate game, which in turn should make a great offense even better.
The Lawrence trade—the Bengals dealt the 10th pick for the mountain of an interior defensive lineman in April in a very un-Bengals-like move—was the offseason’s crown jewel. Allen gives the team a rugged 10-year vet. Boye Mafe and Bryan Cook bring championship credentials to needed areas on the roster, and the hope is that young guys like DJ Turner II, Dax Hill, Demetrius Knight Jr., Barrett Carter and Shemar Stewart develop.
It’ll take time to see if that part comes along.
But what’s already obvious, to Burrow anyway, is that the mentality is in the right place, both with the holdovers who’ve taken their lumps and the new guys coming in.
“We brought Bryan Cook in; he’s been there and done that,” Burrow continued. “Dexter and Jonathan, they’ve been on teams that haven’t been the best. They know the opportunity that we have, and they’re putting urgency on guys to go and seize that. DJ Turner and Dax Hill are in contract years. They want new contracts, so we’re gonna get the best out of them. Ja’Marr and Tee are gonna be Ja’Marr and Tee.
“All the veteran guys understand the opportunity that we have and understand the things to say, the energy to provide the younger guys. And we could do it on offense to a degree the last couple of years, but offense and defense, you’re so separate day to day. You don’t see each other that much. And so having Dexter, having Jonathan, having Boye come in after winning the Super Bowl, those guys all know how to do it, when to do it, who to do it with.”
Injuries forced Burrow to play QB differently
Of course, Burrow knows too, having been so close to the summit—and there was a time in his career when it seemed like every year would end that close. After tearing his ACL as a rookie, he got the Bengals to the Super Bowl in 2021 (and was perhaps one block of Aaron Donald away from a Lombardi Trophy), then returned to the AFC title game the next year and lost 23–20 to the eventual champion Chiefs.
From there, he missed seven games in 2023 with a freak wrist injury, had an MVP-level season in 2024 that was sunk by a defense that had aged out, then missed nine games last year with turf toe. So the idea that team success is a given is gone, replaced by an understanding of how fleeting opportunity can be.
“I mean, I told Ted [Karras] the other day, when he got here, it was Year 7 for him, and it was Year 3 for me,” he said. “And I was like, Man, we got a grizzly veteran coming in, seen it all. And I’m going into Year 7 now, and it’s like, Man, that’s crazy; I viewed Ted that way at the same time that I am now. I’d say that’s changed my perspective more than the outcomes.”
And he has learned along the way that he needs to use those outcomes to keep taking steps.
He hasn’t just gained perspective. Every year, there’s a functional part of it, too, that he believes will make him an even better quarterback. Last year, while dealing with turf toe, Burrow said, “I couldn’t really move around.” As a result, on the fly, he had to learn to play a different style at quarterback—and got better operating from the pocket as a result.
One example came in Week 16, on a relatively random first-and-10 in the third quarter, with the Bengals running a downfield pattern to try and stretch Miami’s defense. Burrow quickly saw the Dolphins were ready for it and checked the ball down to Chase Brown.
“It was just, Eh, I don’t like this, and when he’s got time to turn and go make somebody miss and go, instead he turned it into an explosive play off a checkdown,” offensive coordinator Dan Pitcher said. “It’s just like feeling like, if the run game is as good or better than it’s ever been and the protections are as good or better than they’ve ever been; that allows you as the quarterback maybe to not feel like every down is do or die. That’s a comforting place to be.”
Brown went for 23 yards. The Bengals scored a touchdown on the next play. And, importantly, Burrow didn’t get hit—something that wasn’t lost on the quarterback.
Still, he has missed significant time in three of his six NFL seasons, and worked on every detail to try and fix that problem. He’s, in his words, “so dialed” in on nutrition. He’s tried different strategies to his body ready for the rigors of the season. And last year, with that experience, he added another layer to his effort to stay on the field.
“It’s where there’s a free runner in the pocket and I just dirt it, or a keeper and I get pressure, and I just throw it away, where normally my physical ability would have let me make that guy miss and go make a play; last year I couldn’t,” he said. “I had to get rid of the ball and live to see another down a little bit. Not being able to move around, I had to tailor my game to that. And so, as I said, I can play quarterback a lot of different ways. When it’s needed in the fourth quarter, I can go and do that.
“I can mitigate risk early in the game until it’s needed.”
By the end of the season, it was pretty obvious to him that he could do that without compromising his standard. Over the Bengals’ final three games, he hit on 78-of-102 attempts (76.5%) for 850 yards, nine touchdowns, one pick and a sparkling 125.9 rating.
Health permitting, this year, with that new club in the bag, we’ll get to see what it looks like when Burrow puts this piece with all the rest that have put him among the NFL’s elite.
‘I always expect to be the best’
The 29-year-old smirks when asked if, through camp, he has his best football coming.
“Yeah, I’m feeling really good about it,” Burrow said.
How good?
“I always expect to be the best,” he said. “The best version of me is going to be the best. I always expect to be the best version of me.”
Then, I asked if that means the best player in the league, to which Burrow replied, “I think that’s so … arbitrary. It’s like, every Sunday, there’s going to be a different best player in the league, depending on who you’re playing. I really want to win games. I want to be playing when it matters, January, February; that’s why you do it.”
And, again, he hasn’t been shy about sharing his confidence that it’s going to happen.
The LSU comparison came up because Burrow himself offered it up the spring, and he’s never backed even a step off that stance. The guys around him have embraced it. The coaches, forever programmed to watch what they say, have too.
“I want confidence in our team,” Bengals coach Zac Taylor said. “And it’s one thing when it’s a guy who maybe hasn’t earned it that says something, where you’re kind of like, Ahhh, that’s a little frustrating. But when it’s a guy who knows what it’s supposed to look like, who has done everything he can to put himself in the right position, that says something; I’m good with that. … Somebody who’s been there, done that and knows what it’s going to take to get there, we shouldn’t shy away from anything he says in that regard.”
So through spring and summer, the Bengals have lived in that expectation.
Super Bowl or bust may not quite cover it, but there’s no question that the results of the last three years aren’t good enough. The organization’s actions since last year ended with Pittsburgh and Baltimore playing for the division title. “It sucked watching,” Taylor said. The Bengals restructured Burrow’s contract in a way they never would have before. The Lawrence trade happened. They spent liberally on Mafe and Cook.
And if anything, as Burrow sees it, putting pressure on now will only suss out who can and can’t handle the intensity of the NFL’s winter months. Better now than when it’s too late.
“I’ve never understood why people are scared to say it,” he says. “I guess people get scared of how the media will portray them or their team in a certain way. But you have to set expectations with yourself, your teammates, your organization. Everybody says they want to win the Super Bowl, you talk about it every day, you set that expectation every day, you go and work for it every single day. I mean, I don’t know the answer to that for everybody, but that’s what I want to do, that’s what I’m trying to do, that’s what I do this for.
“I won the championship in college, and there’s no freaking better feeling than that. And if you don’t talk about it, I don’t know how you can do it.”
So the Bengals are talking about it. To whoever will listen.
Burrow’s last Super Bowl wasn’t ‘good enough’
Here’s another thing not lost on Burrow: The Super Bowl is back at SoFi Stadium, where he and the Bengals had their hearts broken in February 2022 by the home-standing Rams.
His memory of that one: “I just didn’t play good enough.”
Reminded that he threw for 263 yards, a touchdown and had a 100.9 rating while completing 22 of 33 passes, he doubles down on the notion.
“I mean, I played fine,” he said. “Not good enough to win a Super Bowl against Matt Stafford. And as far as my game now, it’s so much more evolved, and I’m such a better player than I was at the time, and I understand what it takes to do that. The better and better I get, the more I realize I wasn’t good enough.”
Not very many folks felt that way in the game’s aftermath, after an Aaron Donald sack short-circuited one last Cincinnati comeback bid. Had Burrow gotten another second, he may have hit an open Chase, running free on a post, for the game-winning touchdown.
But not many folks would talk like Burrow is now, either, and that’s part of who he is, too.
Nor would they necessarily have the appreciation Burrow does for what’s ahead.
I asked at the end of our conversation, since he’s turning 30, how long he wants to play. He answered, “I used to think I didn’t want to play very long, and now I’m like, I’m just going to go until I can’t do it anymore. This is fun to do. What the hell else would I do? I used to want to go and maybe play a different sport after a couple of Super Bowls, but now I’m like, I’m just going to play until I can’t.”
And with that wisdom comes the best part of all this for him.
He knows how he’ll be measured after the year. Did he stay healthy? Was he MVP-level Joe? Will the season end again at SoFi Stadium? He wants those questions asked. He’s running from none of it. But for now, he can’t wait to see this vision he has for the team come to life.
“I’m just excited to play, man,” he said. “Two out of the last three seasons, I’ve missed extended time. I’ve put a lot of work into this. When that happens, that sucks, quite frankly. So I’m just excited to play. When you’re hurt, you’re away from the team, you’re away from the guys. You’re not going through it like they are. It’s a lonely process.
“I’m just excited to be out there.”
There’s plenty for him and his teammates to be excited about. And for the rest of us, thanks in part to Burrow’s honesty, it should be awfully compelling to watch.
That much, at least, is inevitable.
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ALBERT BREER
Albert Breer is a senior writer covering the NFL for Sports Illustrated, delivering the biggest stories and breaking news from across the league. He has been on the NFL beat since 2005 and joined SI in 2016. Breer began his career covering the New England Patriots for the MetroWest Daily News and the Boston Herald from 2005 to ’07, then covered the Dallas Cowboys for the Dallas Morning News from 2007 to ’08. He worked for The Sporting News from 2008 to ’09 before returning to Massachusetts as The Boston Globe’s national NFL writer in 2009. From 2010 to 2016, Breer served as a national reporter for NFL Network. In addition to his work at Sports Illustrated, Breer regularly appears on NBC Sports Boston, 98.5 The Sports Hub in Boston, FS1 with Colin Cowherd, The Rich Eisen Show and The Dan Patrick Show. A 2002 graduate of Ohio State, Breer lives near Boston with his wife, a cardiac ICU nurse at Boston Children’s Hospital, and their three children.
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