How do you know when you’re watching the making of a franchise quarterback? For Breiden Fehoko, it’s when he’s willing to put his hands on the star linebacker. The Pittsburgh Steelers NT recalled the time Cincinnati Bengals QB Joe Burrow once punched ILB Patrick Queen in the face.
Fehoko and Queen are teammates now with the Steelers after Pittsburgh picked the latter up as a free agent. However, all of them shared two seasons together at LSU in 2018-2019. And they won the national title in that second season, Burrow and Queen going on to become first-round picks. The two of them got that stunning season rolling during a scrimmage altercation before touching an opponent.
“I remember in training camp that year, Patrick Queen having a late hit on Joe Burrow during the red-zone period”, Fehoko recalled to Gabe Kuhn on ESPN Radio 92.9 FM. “Usually o-linemen are the first to get into the skirmish, go shove him. Joe Burrow gets in Patrick Queen’s face and decks him in the chin. And Patrick Queen, he’ll never tell you this story, because he’s gonna be chicken about it. ‘Man, Joe didn’t punch me’. Joe punches him in the chin and everybody’s like, ‘Holy cow, this is our quarterback. What are we doing?’”.
It ended there, more or less, and practice nearly did as well, but Burrow wasn’t having it, as Fehoko recalls. “Ed Orgeron wants to stop practice and make everybody run. Joe Burrow goes, ‘F that’, runs the period back, and he dices us up the rest of practice. Doesn’t talk to nobody. Just laughs as he walks off the field”.
Burrow went on to have a historically great college football season before going first-overall in the 2020 NFL Draft. He went 402-for-527 passing for 5,671 yards with 60 touchdown passes to 6 interceptions and a 202.0 quarterback rating.
And Burrow has looked like the real deal since stepping onto an NFL field. Whenever he has been healthy, which hasn’t been often enough, he’s had the Bengals in the mix. They reached the conference finals in both 2021 and 2022, nearly winning the Super Bowl in 2021.
Queen reached the conference finals with the Baltimore Ravens last season. That’s the first postseason game he’s won since they drafted him in 2020, but the third time he’s made it. Now he’s hoping to help bring the Steelers their first playoff win since 2017. You know, the year before any of these guys in this story were even at LSU.
That’s how long ago the Steelers last had any tangible success. Breiden Fehoko watched Joe Burrow punch a man he became NFL teammates with half a decade later in between. I do wonder if anybody asked Patrick Queen at OTAs about how Burrow’s sweet chin music sounds, though.
It’s not true that he won’t talk about it, however. Queen actually acknowledged it last year while with the Ravens, but his version of the story is quite different. He claims to have won the fight. But either way, when your quarterback is taking swings, you know there’s something different about him.
