Burrow continues to talk Super Bowl aspirations
Mike Florio and Chris Simms react to Joe Burrow's recent interview with Sports Illustrated in which the Bengals quarterback discussed his ultimate goal of winning a Super Bowl.
Video Transcript
All right, he does wanna get to a Super Bowl and win it, and he's been very open about talking about it.
I remember when Denny Green coached the Vikings, he talked openly about going to a Super Bowl and win it, and he said, "Hey, somebody's gotta do it, and we're gonna talk about it.
You gotta get comfortable with the idea."
That's fine, but you got 31 other teams that all have the same objective.
That's what makes me a little skittish, and we know how tight the margins are, and it's stuff that you can't control.
Like, you bust your ass, and you work out, and you train, and you practice, and you strategize, and you do all those things just so you put yourself in position so that something you can't control decides the game.
That's what happens more often than not in the NFL, 'cause the margins are so close.
It's gonna be a weird bounce.
It's gonna be a bad call, which is a good call for the other team.
It's gonna be something you can't control that's gonna control the outcome of all Unless you're so good that you just show up and you dominate, but there aren't many teams like that, that are just dominant.
It's margins.
But despite that, Joe Burrow says, "I've never understood why people are scared to say it.
I guess people get scared of how the media will portray them or their team in a certain way, but you have to set expectations with yourself, your teammates, your organization.
Everybody says they wanna win the Super Bowl.
You talk about it every day.
You set that expectation every day.
You go to work, and you go for it every single day."
And I get that to the extent that that becomes, you know, the Rocky pushing up the bar yelling, "Creed."
Like, if that's the thing that "Creed," if that's the thing that gets you to get up early, show up early, hydrate, d- do the right diet, all the little boxes you gotta check when no one's watching- Yeah that's how you stack your days toward a championship caliber team.
Yeah.
I get it.
That's it.
Yep.
But you're, you're also setting yourself up for a hell of a disappointment- Yeah because only one is gonna get it, and other teams are doing it, too.
Yeah, I, I, I hear you.
And, but, but, you know, I think, that's what great players do.
They h- they hold themselves to expectations that are extremely high.
And just to correct, I believe he's lifting it up and he's saying, "Drago."
I think it's Rocky IV, not Rocky I or II.
No, it's Creed.
I- It's Creed.
I- Rocky IV sucked.
Oh, what?
He's saying, "Creed."
Rocky IV was great.
He's saying Creed.
Rocky IV was great.
Get out of here.
That was a great movie.
It was- What a jerk Rocky IV was a cartoon.
Ha.
Rocky IV was a cartoon.
No, I disagree.
But, but back to the point of, Joe Burrow and that, it, it, you know, it, it feels like, one, he's trying to talk it into existence.
Two, it feels like he's trying to be a leader of his team and get it into everybody's head a little bit, like, "This is, this is where we're at.
This is where I wanna be at.
Defense, you hear it?
This is where we wanna be at.
This is what we're doing."
And I do think other quarterbacks, speaking of a guy like Mahomes, he says things like this, too, I think, around the locker room and whatever.
"We gotta get to the big game.
We gotta get to the Super Bowl.
We're trying to win it all," blah, blah.
I mean, so the, that's, that's what the great ones do.
They have that expectation, and they try to bring everybody along with them.
And within making comments like that, and then like you said, the day-to-day attitude and work you put on and show everybody like, "Hey, I'm going for something," every day, that stuff does filter throughout the football team and wear off on other guys to kind of get that, that mojo and that energy and that mindset, and I think that's what it feels like Joe Burrow's been trying to do all off-season, is put his team in that type of mindset.
It's a bold move for a team that has missed the playoffs for three straight years.
That's right.
But when they get there under Burrow, they get to the Super Bowl one year and almost win it, they get to the AFC Championship the next year and almost win it, and I thought they were gonna win both of those games- Yes while I was watching those games unfold.
Now, a couple of other things that he said that I found interesting and relevant.
He was comparing this year's Bengals team to the 2019 LSU team because he said there was a sense that it was inevitable that that team was gonna win the national championship, and he's feeling the same thing with the Bengals this year because of the changes they've made on defense, what they already have on offense.
He feels that inevitability.
So that's more tangible than just, "We wanna try hard and win the Super Bowl."
He has something he can point to, a life experience from seven years ago where he was getting a vibe at LSU, and no one expected it.
No one expected that from LSU.
He came out of nowhere.
Nobody knew who he was.
It was Tank for Tua, not Blow for Burrow.
And then, and then I just came up with that, too.
I like it.
And, and then, and then, and then they, and then they, they, they get all the way to the, to the top.
Yeah.
And he's the guy.
Right.
And so if he's sensing something now Now, I don't know how much of that I'd talk about openly.
That's a personal choice.
Part of it is I wouldn't want, I wouldn't want to self-molocchio by talking about it.
That's something I learned from my dad.
You, you don't talk about what you wanna do because you jinx it by talking about it.
But he talked about it, and he said it felt inevitable then.
It feels inevitable now.
Yeah, i- it's interesting.
I mean, that, that, that, you know, to your point, first off, Joe Burrow went into that year, he was, maybe a mid-round pick.
That's how he was viewed, so there wasn't hype around him like that.
And then of course, he has one of the greatest years in the history of college football and becomes the number one pick, and Joe Smooth and all that.
That team was stacked down there.
I mean, that was one of the greatest teams I c- I can remember, especially definitely one of the best offensive teams I can remember in college football history.
I mean, when you look over and go, "Oh, hey, oh yeah, my number one over there is Ja'Marr Chase.
Oh, wait, over here is my number two.
Oh-" No. "
that's Justin Jefferson."
No.
Justin, Justin was number one.
Yeah, may- Justin was number one m- m- maybe.
I don't, I don't know about that.
But regardless, they were freaking awesome with Clyde Edwards-Helaire in the backfield, and then of course, a number of awesome defensive players to go along with that.
I, I can understand those feelings about his offense.
Their offense, has a chance, and we know when he's out there, they're special.
They move the ball at will.
They can do it all.
But it's the defense that we gotta see before I start to go, "Oh, Super Bowl, Super Bowl."
I mean, they were sucky ducky for a good part of the year last year.
And, you know, they have made adjustments, we know that, and it's Al Golden in year two as being the defensive coordinator there, too, and I'm sure he's gonna make his adjustments as well, but that's the big unknown about their team, is, yeah, they got Dexter Lawrence.
Great.
All right.
Jonathan Allen, they got him.
He's really good, but he's at the end of his career.
How good is he anymore?
We're not really sure.
They paid a lot of money- I mean, the Vikings said after one year- They said, "Si" you know.
Right.
I know.
Yeah.
Exactly.
So that's where we're at with that.
They've overpaid for Boye Mafe because they were desperate for a pass rusher, and he was a backup for the, the Seattle Seahawks, and they paid him 20 million a year.
So Brian Cook in the saf- in the secondary, he's a damn good player.
That'll help.
But yeah, those are big questions.
And so I, I love their chances of, of course, being a player in the AFC North and possibly being a playoff team, but I have a hard time putting them in the Super Bowl window Because of that defense, yeah.
It's a little bit like I, I wanna see it first before I just say, "Oh yeah, the Bengals and Joe Burrow are, are of that caliber."
One last thing that caught my attention, he was talking about his playing style and that he learned last year when he returned from the significant toe injury that required surgery.
When he came back later in the year, he couldn't move like he used to.
Yeah.
And it forced him to not try to extend plays, to take what was there, dirt the ball if he had to.
And I think his plan now, based upon how he explained it, is early in the game, he's not gonna try to do too much 'cause that puts you in harm's way.
Yeah, sure.
When it's nut-cutting time- Yeah as Jason Garrett would say, that's when you're gonna- Yeah, make it happen you're gonna take a few more chances with your body.
Yeah.
So he learned, so he says, last year how to manage and kind of stay within the, the, the safety zone and not put himself out there where he potentially gets injured.
Because, you know, I think one of the reasons he was so upset last year, 29th birthday press conference, he was just He was sad.
He was sad because when you're injured, when you get surgery, when you're rehabbing, you are detached from your team, and that gets lonely.
Yeah.
Yeah, it does.
It gets lonely.
You, you, you feel like an outcast.
And, and Joe is, as we know, and I think anybody that watches or can tell, you know, he's, he's a very cerebral type of guy.
He's a deep thinker.
I mean, he's a great interview because he, he really lets it out.
You, you go, damn.
I mean, he says things that you just go, most quarterbacks wouldn't say that or open up to that degree, and that's what, is really cool about him.
But yeah, they, they got some challenges here.
And, you know, he's always thinking about adjusting his game.
That's cool to hear him say that.
You know, I love the Quarterback series.
I loved watching him watch Joe Flacco.
I thought that was really cool.
He was sitting back kind of taking notes, going, "You know, hey, he's not as good as me, but damn, this guy's been good for a long time," and I'm, I'm kind of enjoying it.
And he, he even got into, you might remember, talking about, like, getting his front foot down and he's throwing.
And he goes, "You know, I really just tried to get my foot down just so I could start throwing and getting the motion."
He goes, he says something to Flacco like, "You, you really are, like, deliberate and push to the target and do that."
And he kind of adopted that a little bit from Joe Flacco at the end of the year, I think, to throw the ball with even more power on out routes and down the field.
And my point just being that he's always looking and thinking and trying to adjust.
He's that kind of guy.
I mean, again, Joe Burrow is first-ballot Hall of Famer type talent.
Now it's just like we gotta get wins in the playoffs and maybe win a Super Bowl and do that type of stuff, but that's the kind of player he is, and that's where he gets frustrated and has these great expectations he's got right now.
The thing that makes him rare is when the lights get brighter, he gets better.
Yeah.
And when you get to the playoffs, he morphs into a higher level of superhero, and it's the flip side of the mindset that can creep in where you're a little tight, you're a little nervous, you're thinking too much, everybody's paying attention.
Yeah.
We're gonna get scrutinized, and we got this narrative developing that we can't win.
They j- they get there.
That's the great irony of the Bengals.
They can't get there.
If they get there You know, that year- Two years a- 24.
Yeah, two years ago.
Yeah.
The, if they had gotten there, they almost got there.
If they had gotten there- Yes they could've run the table.
I agree.
Remember, that was the year I picked them to go to the Super Bowl, and Jason Garrett and Devin McCourty kept making fun of me on, on Sunday Night Football every week for doing it.
And then we got to the end of the year, and they started looking at me going, "Uh, I think the Bengals are the best team in the AFC."
And they, you know, looking at me in the corner of the eye like, "Yeah, we made fun of you the whole year, but, oh crap, here they come."
That felt like a year where you're right, if they snuck in.
Because that Chiefs team, that was, again, that was the year that they won all those close games and really were never impressive, and of course, got blown out in the Super Bowl, where you'd go, "Yeah, the way Cincinnati was playing at the end of the year, there's no doubt they could've beat any team in the AFC."
But again, like you said, couldn't get there and get in there to, to make that run.
