Pro Bowl left tackle Orlando Brown Jr. has already blocked for two MVP quarterbacks in his young career. Now on his third team, he believes that he has arrived in Cincinnati just in time for fourth-year Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow to take that same step.
Speaking to James Rapien for Cincinnati Bengals Talk recently, he discussed his relationship with his past quarterbacks, about where he and Lamar Jackson were in their respective career while he was with the Baltimore Ravens, and how Patrick Mahomes was already established in Kansas City.
“Coming in on the beginning of really where Joe’s about to hit stardom and have that opportunity to go out there and win that MVP, to win that Super Bowl, to win that Super Bowl MVP, it’s special”, he said of Burrow. “What I see in him is I see true poise, I see real confidence. I see the confidence from the staff in him and the ability that he has to truly go out there and be himself completely”.
Burrow was the first-overall draft pick in 2020. He took the Bengals to the Super Bowl in his second season, the team coming up just a minute shy of hoisting the organization’s first Lombardi Trophy. They stalled out in the conference finals in 2022 against Brown’s former team, Mahomes and the Chiefs, but he intends to help Cincinnati get back over that hump.
Burrow made his first Pro Bowl last season, going 414-for-606 passing, throwing for 4475 yards with 35 touchdowns against 12 interceptions. He also played in one fewer game because their game against the Buffalo Bills was suspended.
Notably, he also finished fourth in the MVP Award voting last year after not qualifying in his first two seasons, garnering 128 total vote points. Mahomes won handily with 490 vote points, followed by Jalen Hurts of the Philadelphia Eagles with 193 and Josh Allen of the Bills with 151. These four quarterbacks comfortably paced all other vote-getters.
More important than awards of course, is on-the-field success, and Burrow has won five postseason games over the past two seasons—even if he doesn’t as of yet have any hardware to show for it. In seven career postseason games, he has gone 169-for-251 passing for 1826 yards with nine touchdowns to four interceptions, including two game-winning drives, with a 5-2 record.
The Bengals are the favorites to win the AFC North for the third year in a row, with most surely expecting them to make another run into the postseason. Still, with competition from the likes of Mahomes and Jackson, not to mention Hurts, Allen, and others, it won’t be easy to secure that MVP trophy, which no Bengal has won since Boomer Esiason in 1988, nor a Super Bowl trophy, which as of yet remains absent in franchise history.
