Cincinnati Bengals QB Joe Burrow has already grappled with two season-ending injuries in his young professional career. He tore his ACL and MCL during his rookie season and tore a wrist ligament last year. In between, he even managed to suffer a burst appendix. The availability issues that have plagued his early career, he confesses, does get him thinking.
“Whenever the injuries start to stack up, your football mortality kind of comes into the back of your mind,”, Burrow said earlier this week as he works to return from the aforementioned wrist injury, via the team’s website. “That’s definitely something I’ve thought about and something I have had to fight through”.
The mental battle of returning from a physical injury can be just as severe at times, especially for professional athletes. Your livelihood depends upon your ability to perform athletic feats at the highest possible level. Burrow has experienced having his profession taken away from him by an uncooperative body multiple times now. Of course he thinks about it from time to time, but it’s just another obstacle to overcome.
“You always forget how hard it is coming back from injury. That’s every time it happens”, Burrow confessed. “There’s always peaks where you’re like, ‘I’m feeling great’, and then a couple of months later you have a couple of days where it’s like, ‘Man, I’m not feeling that great’. In the past, I pushed through that and caused problems for myself, and this year I’m not doing that”.
Burrow doesn’t elaborate on exactly what he means here, but it obviously pertains to the mental battle. Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin always talks about not “riding the emotional rollercoaster”, and I think that applies here. In recovery processes of any kind, you can only take it each day at a time, with the long game as the aspiration for which to strive.
A four-year veteran, Joe Burrow is 1,288-of-1895 passing in his career for 14,083 yards. He has thrown 97 touchdowns to 37 interceptions and owns a 29-22-1 record. He went 12-4 during the 2022 season but struggled through much of last year due to a calf injury, going 5-5 prior to the wrist injury that landed him on the Reserve/Injured List.
The Bengals are being cautious about working him back, as Burrow made clear. “We don’t have to be ready to go in the middle of June”, he said. “We have to be ready to go early September through February. That’s how we’re attacking this offseason and this rehab plan and these practices and training camp. We’re attacking it like I want to be out there playing in February”.
Burrow only has one February game on his resume so far, on the 13th in 2022. That day, the Bengals narrowly lost the Super Bowl to the Los Angeles Rams, who came from behind in the waning minutes. Burrow by and large did his job that day, but it was not enough.
And since he still lacks a Lombardi trophy, Burrow knows the job very much remains undone. But the first step is getting back on the field in a sustainable way, and that means being smart about his injury now to be prepared for those incredibly rare February nights.
