Joe Burrow tried to take his ACL tear in 2020, as a Bengals rookie, in stride, as the kind of thing most NFL players will have to deal with at some point. His wrist injury of 2023 was worse, the kind of hit that, for a quarterback, leads to existential questions, because it came at the expense of his ability, at least in short-term, to throw the ball.
So you can imagine what was running through the sixth-year star’s head when another freak injury—a severe case of turf toe necessitating surgery—hit in September.
“This one happened,” Burrow told me, over the phone from a raucous locker room in Baltimore on Thanksgiving night, “and I was like, .”
How did handle that? You saw it, in full color, against the Ravens.
The version of Burrow that John Harbaugh’s crew was dealt on Thursday looked eerily similar to the one we’ve all seen going back to his last year at LSU. He completed 24 of 46 throws for 261 yards and two scores as you were dozing off on your couch—average numbers, by his standards, that wouldn’t catch your attention once you woke up.
But if you actually watched, what you saw was a difference-maker returning, and delivering a 32–15 rout of a really good Ravens team. Even better, Burrow felt like one, finally again, after enduring a really rough couple months.
Just that he was back on the field two months, a week and six days after the injury (and two months, a week and a day after surgery) was an incredible triumph for Burrow—initially, the prognosis was for three months recovery, minimum, with a possibility that the injury would be season-ending. That he played as well as he did? Even more remarkable.
