Just a passing comment or a window into the mind of an unhappy quarterback?
That’s the question football fans are asking after Joe Burrow’s eye-raising response on Wednesday as the Bengals star discussed the rumors around his NFL future.
Burrow, 29, stirred up drama when he made comments last week, when he suggested he was no longer having fun playing football.
Asked to address the topic again, the two-time Pro Bowler told reporters there wasn’t a scenario in his mind where he wasn’t the quarterback in Cincinnati next season. But it was when he was asked if he had ever thought about “not being the quarterback here in your career,” that Burrow caught some off guard with a surprise response.
“You think about a lot of think about a lot of things,” Burrow replied.
This season has been particularly rough for Burrow, who suffered a foot injury in Week 2 and was out until Week 13.
In that time, the Bengals struggled with a losing record.
Cincy then fell to the Bills two weeks ago, with Burrow throwing two late picks in the game. This past week, the Bengals were shut out while Burrow threw two interceptions, including a pick-six, as the team fell to 4-10.
It was after the disappointment in Buffalo — where Cincinnati was outscored 28-13 in the second half — that Burrow made the comments about “fun.”
“If I want to keep doing this, I have to have fun doing it. I’ve been through a lot, and if it’s not fun, then what am I doing it for? That’s the mindset I’m trying to bring to the table,” he told reporters after the loss. “… I think I’ve been through more than most, and it’s certainly not easy on the brain or the body, so I’m just trying to have fun doing it again.”
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The comments even took Burrow’s LSU head coach Ed Orgeron by surprise, with Orgeron telling Fox News that he’d “never heard Joe sound like that, so it did strike me.”
“But Joe’s going to bounce back. Joe’s a fighter,” Orgeron said. “He might have had a bad day, so somebody might have told him something that p’d him off on the way over there. I don’t know, but I do believe he’s a fighter and I do believe he has a lot of football left. I do believe he’s going to fight through it.”
Burrow insisted Wednesday that he “expected to play for a long time” and that he could “play well and consistently great for a long time.”
