Cincinnati Bengals QB Joe Burrow partook in meaningful football activity for the first time since his injury last season. Suffering an injury to his wrist on his throwing arm in the middle of the season, Burrow’s affliction ended the Bengals’ ambitions for 2023. Understandably, they awaited the return of the man who took them to two consecutive conference finals. And they came away impressed with what they saw.
While not necessarily the unvarnished truth, the team’s website is slathered with glowing reviews from his pass catchers about how Burrow’s passes looked. One in particular stood out to me from Andrei Iosivas, however.
“He was pushing it on the deeper throws down the field”, the wide receiver said of watching Burrow throw. “He was slinging it and really putting some heat on those”. Earlier in the piece, Geoff Hobson quotes him as liking “the amount of power” on Burrow’s throws. “You like to see the velocity”.
The former first-overall pick, Burrow was one of the rare all-consensus players to come out of college football in years. Nobody questioned if he would be great, and there was no debate whatsoever over who would go first in 2020.
After returning from a season-ending injury suffered during his rookie year, Burrow nearly led the Bengals to the Super Bowl in 2021. They came up only a Matthew Stafford game-winning drive shy of winning it all. The following year, they returned to the conference finals, only to lose to the Kansas City Chiefs. After Burrow’s second injury of the 2023 season, they only managed a 9-8 record and missed the playoffs.
Obviously, a fully healthy Joe Burrow instantly makes the Bengals one of the Super Bowl frontrunners once again. Healthy has been the big caveat of his career, of course, though I don’t suspect he’ll have another burst appendix. Consequently, you’re always going to have some reservations when a quarterback returns from an injury affecting his throwing. That makes yesterday’s first throws a big deal, for the Bengals, and for the NFL as a whole.
“That might hurt your hands”, new Bengals TE Mike Gesicki said of Burrow’s passes. “Whatever he did in the offseason worked”, WR Kwami Lassiter added.
Joe Burrow never quite looked himself, at least not fully, during the 2023 season. A lower body injury suffered in training camp really hindered him through the early portions of the year. He and the Bengals began turning things around before too long, though.
During one four-game stretch, all wins, Burrow went 119-of-157 for 1,133 yards with 10 touchdowns and 2 interceptions. Put up those numbers over the course of a full season, of which he’s capable, and you have a pretty good year.
