| LOS ANGELES — The start of Super Bowl week marks the time when the quirky questions become part of an NFL player’s immediate reality, which is how Joe Burrow got asked all kinds of things on Monday morning. There was “Access Hollywood” quizzing him about his first celebrity crush and questions about the genesis of his sometimes-wacky fashion sense. It was all pretty entertaining as the Cincinnati Bengals quarterback mostly handled the beginning of the Super Bowl circus with ease and humor. You can find out all sorts of unexpected snippets about a football athlete in such situations, but when it comes to Burrow, six days out from the biggest game of his life, there is only one thing you truly need to know. He believes that young quarterbacks are about to take over pro football. And he plans to be at the head of that pack. At 25, and with the Bengals coming off a postseason surge that involves a spectacular triumph over the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC Championship, Burrow’s stock has never been higher – not even when he led LSU to a national title and got snapped up with the top pick of the 2020 NFL Draft. Suddenly, with Tom Brady and Ben Roethlisberger retired and Aaron Rodgers probably not so far removed from it, the battle to become the NFL’s next dominant QB is up for grabs. Burrow knows all about it. He’s ready to swing for it. And, with this weekend’s showdown against the Los Angeles Rams, he has the chance to move to the very front of the elite young pack of signal-callers jostling for position. “With all of us playing the way we are playing, it is a great product for the NFL and it is great for the fans,” Burrow told me. “Quarterback play is what drives the league in my opinion and we have a lot of really good young players who I think are going to be here for a long time and continue to play well. “That is exciting for me as a fan. When I get home from a game on Sundays I enjoy watching football too and it is exciting to watch guys like [Patrick] Mahomes and Lamar [Jackson] and Justin Herbert, Kyler Murray. It is fun for me to watch as well as be a part of it.” Burrow has crept up on the broad NFL fan base a bit. Everyone knew he could play and he never looked like being a hit-or-miss proposition. It’s just that no one expected him – or the Bengals – to be this good, and certainly not this quickly. When your franchise hasn’t won a playoff game in forever and is coming off a 2-14 season in 2019, the first point of emphasis is stability. Everything that has happened this season — an AFC North divisional title, nail-biting wins over the Las Vegas Raiders, Tennessee Titans and Chiefs — has been ahead of the perceived curve. While the city of Cincinnati is celebrating the rewriting of the Bengals’ narrative, Burrow doesn’t think too heavily about what happened, or didn’t happen, in the past. Neither do his elite offensive pieces, Ja’Marr Chase, Joe Mixon, Tee Higgins and Tyler Boyd, nor the gifted and tenacious defense that flustered Mahomes to distraction at Arrowhead. “It starts with building that locker-room culture, everyone having the utmost belief in everyone else that they will get their job done,” Burrow added. “As a quarterback I am not afraid to make mistakes. That allows me to play freely and not be scared to make an interception because I know the defense will pick us up.” There has always been a reason to talk about other QBs. Jackson won a unanimous MVP in only his second season. Herbert looked effortlessly polished from his first NFL appearance. Murray’s Arizona Cardinals burst into a 7-0 start and he makes electrifying plays with his legs. Josh Allen continues to be habitually superb, even though he’ll be haunted by the thought of 13 seconds for eternity. Then there is Mahomes, who at halftime eight days ago looked firmly on course for a third consecutive Super Bowl appearance and probably a second title. Burrow has never been Average Joe, but the odds of the Bengals winning the Super Bowl of 200-1 near the start of the campaign sounded about right. Not anymore. Now he’s causing people to think differently. About him, and about what a modern QB should look like. He’s fearless and gritty, not afraid to take hits and absolutely riddled with belief in himself and those around him. “At QB, confidence might be the most important attribute that you have,” Burrow said. “I wouldn’t have as much confidence if I didn’t work hard and didn’t care, but I work hard to put myself in those positions.” It is hard to say exactly what the NFL will look like without Brady because no one has had to think about that for the past two decades. You can imagine, however, that there will be a vacuum of sorts. People aren’t going to stop talking about the NFL. New names will appear and current ones will get elevated. Burrow is well-positioned to take a leap forward and if the Bengals get it done on Sunday, he will be instantly among the very biggest superstars in the league. “I’m not saying Joe Burrow is Tom Brady,” FS1’s Skip Bayless said on “First Things First.” “He is the one young QB right now who is playing at that chess-master level already, where he can see it, speed-read it, find the most open receiver and deliver an extremely catchable ball right into the numbers. I am talking about leadership, aura.” Sure, Burrow doesn’t have the physical ferocity of Allen, the lightning feet of Murray or Jackson, or the electrifying playmaking of Mahomes, but he is performing with pure quality, under the most extreme pressure. Super Bowl rings are the hardest currency of all in the pro football world and snatching one would put him alongside Mahomes and ahead of the rest of the youthful pack. Nothing much can fluster him, although it should be noted that the “Access Hollywood” question did catch him off guard, so much that he couldn’t immediately name a celebrity crush and tried to play it off like he never had one. That’s clearly not true — everyone has one — but the good news is that the quirky questions only come if you make it to the Super Bowl. And once you’re there, it’s a small price to pay for a shot at a ring – and a path to superstardom. |
