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Just a Fantastic Burrow Article (free to read)


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Here's a taste. Chills and what not:

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Joe Burrow calls his shots. Take a Week 17 game against the Kansas City Chiefs when, at the start of the third quarter, he looked at Ja’Marr Chase on the sideline and said, “You’re about to score a touchdown,” Chase remembers.

 

These moments are not predicated on a feeling or some whimsical desire for badassery. This is not Babe Ruth pointing toward center field at Wrigley Field. Burrow just knew the following: That in the first half, the Cincinnati Bengals had run “pressure routes” against the Chiefs, 10- to 12-yard speed-outs with Tyler Boyd. And that Daniel Sorensen, one of the Chiefs’ two deep safeties, wasn’t in position to get to the sideline. There was space on the left side—where Chase was running as a glorified decoy. “He’s not getting enough width,” Burrow told the offense of Sorensen.

 

There is a saying among those in the Bengals quarterback room that Burrow has taken to heart—something Peyton Manning used to say and Brian Callahan, who coached Manning in Denver and is now the Bengals offensive coordinator, brought with him to Cincinnati: “They can’t play like that. We can’t let them play defense like that. If they’re gonna play like that, we’re going to teach them a lesson.”

 

“There are not,” Callahan said, “a lot of people who can put that into action.” But Burrow is one of them. He doesn’t talk on the sideline often, Callahan said, but when he does, he’s adamant. This was one of those times.

 

Burrow asked to run the play again and for Chase to do the same thing—what coach Zac Taylor calls a “run for the love of the game” route. Burrow approached Chase, the receiver remembers, and in a strangely calm manner, explained he would throw it toward him, and that it would be a sure score. Chase believed him. He was, of course, right. Sorensen couldn’t make it to the sideline, and Chase tore down the left side for a 69-yard touchdown.

 

 

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It should not surprise anyone that Burrow led the NFL in deep touchdown passes last year. He does not have the league’s strongest arm, but he has perfected the art of getting the ball where it needs to be, enough to helm a prolific offense that brought the Bengals to the Super Bowl. His three top receivers are some of the very best in football, and their relationship and chemistry are huge parts of the story of Burrow’s deep passes. I went to Cincinnati this month to find out how this all happened for a team that entered last season with the third-worst Super Bowl odds and came back with stories that would sound like tall tales if there weren’t video evidence readily available. The receivers and I ran through every deep touchdown they scored last year, as well as some other big plays, and what they described was a quarterback unafraid to do anything on a football field. Burrow is part football genius, part point guard, part chaos agent.

 

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