The Cincinnati Bengals should be feeling themselves any time Joe Burrow is firing on all cylinders. With the offense implementing more under center snaps into the playbook, Burrow should be better protected by the running game and the best offensive line of his career.
Those schematic tweaks alone are reason enough for fans to be excited. Despite being saddled with an oft-poor defense that's contributed to his compromised pass protection by putting him in obvious dropback situations, Joe Shiesty is 10-3 in his last 13 starts.
Thanks to the presence of Chase Brown in the backfield, and what Brown himself deems to be a top-10 or top-five Bengals defense led by a wave of newcomers starring Dexter Lawrence, this could be Burrow's best year yet.
It goes beyond the obvious personnel upgrades flanking Burrow, though.
Albert Breer's reporting on Burrow is nightmare fuel for Bengals' adversaries
Sports Illustrated's Albert Breer is a venerated insider who's more or less a household name as far as the sports media space is concerned. Breer doesn't project false hype or gas folks up just for the sake of it. Not that it's hard to buy into Joe Burrow's stock at any given time.
Point being, check out what the veteran NFL reporter said about Joe Brrr and how the already-elite QB feels like he's about to unlock another level to his game:
"He feels like he's able to do as much as he's ever been able to do as a quarterback. [...] Last year, coming back from the turf toe injury, he was limited in his movement, which forced him to grow as a pocket passer. As a result, now he feels like he's taken another step at the position and is in for a big year."
I've been shouting some version of this talking point from the virtual (and IRL) rooftops for months. Burrow is a better quarterback, nay a far better one, than the player who led the Bengals to two AFC Championship Game appearances and Super Bowl LVI.
To his vast credit, every time Joe Shiesty has gone down with a major injury, he hasn't gone into the tank. By this point it would've been easy to. The Andrew Luck comparisons will still persist.
The difference here is that there is no world in which Burrow retires early unless he's unable to physically play. Look at what he's overcome so far:
- Multiple shredded knee ligaments from his rookie year.
- Not mere appendicitis — an exploded appendix.
- A scary calf setback that he played through even with the inherent Achilles risk.
- A career-threatening torn ligament in his throwing wrist.
- Last year's turf toe injury of uber-rare severity, requiring surgical intervention.
Joe Burrow is the epitome of, "Built different."
Where many would despair and be devastated, Burrow dusts himself off, attacks rehab, scoffs at traditional recovery timelines, and improves his body and his craft any way humanly possible.
That's why Burrow isn't resting on any laurels. He's widely renowned as the closest play style/proficiency comparison to Tom Brady among active QBs.
How would Joe look at that? Tom has seven Super Bowls; Joe has none. Might be time to start cutting into that massive deficit this year in Cincinnati. It would be far from the first time Burrow has willed himself to defy the odds.
...And entering 2026, you're telling me he's about to have the best roster of his career, his mobility restored, and his football IQ even sharper? It's wild to me that so many folks out there discount the Bengals as a Super Bowl contender. Those contrarians look stupider by the minute.
Good luck to any opponents in Burrow's path this season. Cincinnati's rather soft schedule is setting the stage for a resurgence from "Burrow 2.0" that I don't reckon the rest of the league is prepared for whatsoever.
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