SI: Joe Burrow and the New Normal

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Just a few days before Super Bowl LVI, Burrow sent a text to his closest confidantes, confirming their weekly ritual was still on. His firm grasp on sanity amid sudden, uncomfortable fame depends in part on Xbox Live nights. That’s when the boys from Athens High all hop on. These days it’s Star Wars Battlefront II, but last winter it was Grand Theft Auto V’s fist-fight death matches, where they would embody their digital avatars and beat the hell out of one another while trash-talking over their headsets.

“That’s what I look forward to during the season,” Burrow says. “Get in on Monday, watch the film, then get away from football a little bit. Hang out with those guys.” As Burrow explains this, it dawns on him that the Bengals’ status as reigning AFC champions has earned Cincinnati two Monday Night Football appearances this year among their five total prime-time games—that’s after they had just one (a September Thursday Night Football victory over the Jaguars) last season. It will wreak havoc on the Xbox schedule, but special accommodations will be made to fit in game night.

In this space, everything is like it was before LSU, before the national title game and the cigar, before they couldn’t go to the bars without a Burrow-hunting Snapchat mob flooding the place. Here, those surrounding him won’t hesitate to poke fun at the NFL superstar. They’ll adopt a doofy voice and say, Ohhhh, look at me, big Mr. Quarterback!

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For his part, Burrow established himself as one of the NFL’s elite quarterbacks. Going back to his breakout senior season at LSU, his mastery of the modern game looked as though it came from nowhere, but it had always existed, waiting for someone to yank it out of him. In 2018, his first year starting at LSU, he completed just 57.8% of his passes for 2,688 yards, 16 touchdowns and five interceptions. In ’19, under a new coordinator, Sean Payton disciple Joe Brady, Burrow threw for 5,671 yards, 60 touchdowns and six interceptions.

The aggressive spread scheme allowed Burrow to maximize his greatest strengths. With near-flawless throwing mechanics and a textbook foundational platform on seemingly every throw, his ball placement is impeccable. He has a fast release (last season it was just 0.19 seconds slower than that of the famously decisive Tom Brady). He is athletic, but in a hyperfunctional way for the position, which allows him to keep plays alive just as efficiently as a more mobile quarterback while maintaining a perfect stance from which to drive accurate passes.

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