It takes some guts (replace with any word you choose here) for a third-year quarterback to claim the following when asked about the Super Bowl window for his team.
“The window is my whole career.”
There is more to the quote than that – we will get to the rest of it shortly – but regardless of context, this is a stunningly cool quote from one of the most confident quarterbacks ks in the league. To be fair, Burrow has every right to feel this way. He and his Cincinnati Bengals almost won the Super Bowl last season. Burrow is heading back to the playoffs on the back of an MVP-level season, with the Bengals sitting as the No. 3 seed only because of how good the Kansas City Chiefs and Buffalo Bills were in 2022.
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Joe Burrow’s Window
The full quote – which has been doctored for its context in the media to make Currow sound like a one-man team is as follows.
“The window’s my whole career. And everybody we have in that locker room, all the coaches we have, things are gonna change year to year, but our window is always open.”
As tough as the first version of the quote makes Burrow sound, the full quote is cooler for Benals’ fans to hear. That version – the more extended version – shows that Burrow is a leader, a player his teammates can get behind and will work for because he is more about the goal of winning as a group than he is about personal achievement.
It is the quote a franchise quarterback should make and one that Burrow will have to live up to as he embarks on his second playoff run. It won’t be easy, either this year or in the future. Unlike the NFC, where the likes of Tom Brady, Kirk Cousins, Geno Smith, and Dak Prescott are all taking teams to the playoffs close to or after age 30, the AFC playoff quarterbacks are stunningly young.
Burrow just turned 26, and only Patrick Mahomes, at 27, is older than that. Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen are also 26, while Tua Tagovailoa (24), Justin Herbert (24), and Trevor Lawrence (23) are incredibly young by NFL quarterback standards. Heck, Stetson Bennett just quarterbacked the Georgia Bulldogs to the College Football National Championship, and he is already 25 years old.
Burrow will have to beat many great young talents over an extended period to keep that window open. No one would put that past him based on what we have seen to date.
Always remember, Joe Burrow is the Bengal King. Geaux Burrow!!
