Joe Burrow's offseason everything Bengals could have wanted (2024)

CINCINNATI — Joe Burrow doesn’t need to prove his worth.

Not to the pundits ranking him below the top tier of NFL quarterbacks.

Not to voices from the past that questioned him and fueled his ascension to the highest-paid player in football history.

Not to his own internal wiring.

That was his life. That was what defined him.

The days of powering through pain, outworking every obstacle and harnessing perceived invincibility are gone.

Minicamp underway. pic.twitter.com/ee88BdKJmi

— Cincinnati Bengals (@Bengals) June 11, 2024

A season of mishandling his calf and popping his wrist changed him. The injury compilation and contemplation sent him to dark places.

“Whenever the injuries start to stack up, your football mortality kind of comes into the back of your mind,” Burrow said.

Burrow proceeds with a mature caution through Year 5 in the NFL and 27 on Earth. A man coming to grips with his mortality typically comes later in life, though in football years Burrow has crossed well beyond the average lifespan.

And he’s lived a football lifetime of adversity. From the pandemic to ACL to appendectomy to calf to wrist, adversity and rehab have been one and the same.

Burrow’s always had a way of saying the right things, making points that make people comfortable. He did it again Tuesday, kicking off mandatory minicamp.

They were the same points he made last month, but this resonated more. Mostly because they weren’t just words. They were actions. He backed off last week in practice. Even Tuesday was a tame version of himself, sticking with underneath passes and managing the offense through drills.

He’s planning a path to the start of training camp and the regular season that doesn’t involve grinding physically and mentally and football and rehab. He’s instead learning piano, plotting rest periods and planning trips.

He called it “my growth this offseason.” You can call it a sigh of relief for everyone invested in well-being (so pretty much all of Cincinnati).

He needed to stop being so obsessive about practice reps. He needed to stop being “stubborn,” and “hardheaded” as his buddy Ja’Marr Chase likes to call him. He needed to stop trying to prove himself and make gains every minute.

He needed to stop being, well, himself.

“For a long time that’s all I had, you know, I really wasn’t like … everybody knows my story,” Burrow said. “I didn’t play for three years. And so for that time, all I had was the thought that I was putting in the work that would eventually pay off and it eventually did. And so that’s all I’ve known for the last like I said 10 years. So that shift in mindset has been tough, but I think necessary.”

Dealing with injuries proved the personification of that mindset.

“You always forget how hard it is coming back from injury,” Burrow said. “Every time it happens, I think the same thing because there’s always peaks where you’re like, ‘I’m feeling great.’ And then a couple months later you have a couple 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.”

He did that with the calf last year and the problem persisted and nearly tanked the season before it started. That was the catalyst for this change. He doesn’t want this year’s wrist to be last year’s calf. That means this year’s Joe can’t be last year’s Burrow.

The Cincinnati Bengals paid him more than anyone in NFL history because they are lost without him. He doesn’t need to prove his worth every day anymore. He just needs to make it to February.

Perspective in a news conference sounds good but means little. Sitting out practices while hysteria takes over #BengalsTwitter and ESPNers rank him on the back half of the league’s top 10 QBs means much more.

“It’s always hard to change your mindset when you’ve done it one way for so long and that’s gotten you to where I’m at now,” Burrow said. “I feel really good about the player that I am, because of that work that I put in. Now, I feel like I’m transitioning more to listening to my body and making sure that I’m feeling 100 percent so I can go out and perform, and I’m not making these big leaps year to year. I feel really good about where I’m at as far as how I’m going to play. Now it’s just about making sure my body is in the right place to be able to do that.”

This was why the Bengals placed a $275 million bet on Burrow. The elite processing, freakish accuracy and fearless killer instinct were nice, but inevitably, they invested in his willingness to grow, adapt and work — even if working means, well, not working.

They expected he’d eventually get here. No matter what transpired in his career, he’d work the problem and locate the necessary humility and perspective to achieve the ultimate goal.

That part never left him.

“I’m built for it,” he said.

Early indications of how he handled this challenging offseason and uncertain rehab were as good as one could hope. Burrow came out the other side having shown plenty with his wrist and even more with his mind.

The perspective of age and experience look even better on him than his cascading curls.

“I’ve always prided myself on my mental toughness to be able to push through pain and push through those injuries,” Burrow said. “Whenever you fight through adversity and come out on the other side it definitely gives you a feeling of invincibility at times. Obviously, you know that is not the case. So, it’s always a balancing act. That’s what this offseason has been about for me. It’s not pushing through some things that I have pushed through in the past.”

(Photo: Albert Cesare / USA Today)

Paul Dehner Jr. is a senior writer and podcast host for The Athletic. He's been covering the Bengals and NFL since 2009, most notably, for six seasons with The Cincinnati Enquirer. He's born, raised and proudly Cincinnati. Follow Paul on Twitter @pauldehnerjr