Bengals Beat: Joe Burrow Knows ‘A Lot Of Things’ Need To Change To Get Bengals Back To Championship Level In 2024

CINCINNATI — In the moments after the 31-14 season-ending win over the Browns, Zac Taylor promised loyal Bengals fans “championship-level” football next season.

Joe Burrow believes there needs to be a serious commitment by everyone to get back to that level.

Burrow, after all, is the face of the Bengals. And when he speaks, everybody in the organization listens. He spoke in a season-ending press conference Monday at Paycor Stadium.

“We know that’s the standard here. That’s what we gotta get back to,” Burrow said. “We’re going to take our couple weeks off. Everybody is. But as soon as everybody gets back to it, you just gotta focus on getting better every day. And that’s how you get to where you’re going to get to. You can’t focus on the end goal. That’s not a recipe for success. You gotta focus on the day-to-day and getting better and improving yourself and doing everything with intent to get better. That’s all that matters.”

The Bengals had to overcome a lot this season. Burrow’s calf in training camp. His season-ending wrist surgery in November. DJ Reader going down with a right knee injury against Minnesota in December. Tee Higgins missed five games. Cam Taylor-Britt missed a quarter of the season with an ankle injury. They were playing with two brand new safeties. Their veteran edge Sam Hubbard played through a painful ankle/foot injury.

Rookie Chase Brown was just getting ready to become a huge part of the run/screen pass game to take the heat off Burrow when the rookie went down for four weeks with a hamstring injury.

While it could be easy to point to serious injuries as a reason for the drop-off in 2023, Burrow wasn’t nearly as comfortable using that crutch.

“Every year, injuries happen. But there were a lot of things that went into this year that were not up to our standards,” Burrow said. “We’ve gotta get those things fixed and we’ll go from there. Obviously, we’ll find out more once the roster is settled. You get into OTAs, free agency ends, combine is over, draft is over. Then you can really sit down and focus on the guys we have.”

Joe Burrow has spoken. His eyes were wide open this year, especially when he had the chance to sit back at his locker when he wasn’t getting ready to play and watch how everyone was going about their jobs.

Something clearly stuck out to No. 9. Something was off. Too many explosive plays allowed on defense, not enough on offense, specifically the run game. Too many mental errors on both sides of the ball. A lack of complementary football. And surely a number of things behind closed doors that fans never get a chance to see.

The frustrating part for Burrow is that he felt like the team was starting to approach its potential during its five-game win streak, starting with the victory in Arizona and ending with the win over Buffalo. The team was doing all the right things in a 24-18 throttling of the Bills in a game that really wasn’t that close.

“Yeah. That five-week stretch, I think we were playing some pretty good ball,” Burrow said. “The Houston game was a step back as a team. And then going into Baltimore, I felt really good about where we were. Obviously, it didn’t play out the way we wanted it to. It was a weird year. Never really felt like we really reached our potential to what we were. Obviously, an injury happened right where we usually start to take that jump in the year where we have in years past. It was a tough year.”

Yes, a healthy Burrow is a must-have in 2024 when it comes to getting the Bengals back to the aforementioned championship level. But so too, is a revamped running attack, a defense that doesn’t give up explosive plays on a regular basis that flip the field, a young roster that matures with new leadership.

The Bengals are entering an offseason where they were the only member of the AFC North not to qualify for the playoffs. It’s like the poor stepchild left out of a family reunion.

“Obviously, it’s not ideal. But my motivation, year in and year out, never changes,” Burrow said. “The external factors are what they are. They’re never going to make me work harder or not work as hard. The motivation for me is internal. I have my own goals. I have my own aspirations, just like everybody in that room. I have individual, team, organizational goals. Those never change.”

But deep down, Burrow still loves the culture of the Bengals locker room. That includes the likes of Ted Karras, Sam Hubbard, Trey Hendrickson, DJ Reader (if he returns), BJ Hill and Logan Wilson. But others, like Ja’Marr Chase, Cam Taylor-Britt, Dax Hill and DJ Turner will have to step forward.

“The locker room. That’s really why we’ve won, in my opinion,” Burrow said. “We have the right guys to do it. You got guys that never fold. We’ve been through a lot of adversity the last couple of years. When you go through that kind of adversity, it’s the people that you have around you to help you bring you out of it. And we had all the right people in the locker room.

“We’ll see who’s back and who’s not. The offseason is an ever-changing thing that you go through every year. And so once you get to OTAs, you gotta go through that process again. You gotta build the trust. You gotta build that relationship in the locker room so it translates onto the field.”

And Joe Burrow will be watching closely the whole time.

Teeing off:

Despite the fact that Tee Higgins is not signed for next season, Joe Burrow believes that the star wide receiver will be back in 2024.

“He’s a big part of what we have done here. It’s no secret our relationship. I expect Tee to be back,” Burrow said. “I think that’s the sentiment in the locker room. We all want Tee back. We know what kind of player he is. We know what kind of person he is. He’s what being a Bengal is all about. We’ll see, but I think we should have a good opportunity.”

Burrow confirmed that there were concessions made in his $275 million contract extension to leave money for re-signing both Ja’Marr Chase and Higgins.

“We made sure things were in place that we could if we needed to,” Burrow said.

The Bengals could franchise Higgins for an estimated $21 million and keep him for at least one more season or tag him and then trade him, or not franchise him at all. Simultaneously, Chase has already indicated he’d like an extension done in the offseason.

Health update:

Joe Burrow is hopeful to have his surgically repaired right wrist to the point where he can start throwing around OTAs in April, but cautioned there’s no official timetable to begin tossing the football.

“Good, getting better every day,” said Burrow. “I have to see I think I think I should be good by OTAs. But we’ll see. It’s pretty early on to really tell you.

As for his own personal conditioning to perhaps give him a better chance to get through camp clean, Burrow said there’s some thought to ease up before going full force in late July.

“Early on it’s not going to change. The weeks leading up to training camp maybe will. That will be something I decide as we get closer depending on how maybe my body is feeling. But we will take that a step at a time. Maybe a couple weeks before just laying off the gas a little bit. I don’t know. We’ll see. Depends on how the body is feeling.”

Burrow still can’t grip anything with his right hand to work on his upper body but he knows he has to be patient.

“Lifting legs, doing a lot of core, you know, doing the upper body where we can tough without being able to grab or do anything like that,” Burrow said. “But we’re modifying it in ways that keeps me in good physical shape, and just going to keep getting better as the wrist gets better, too.

“We’ll have to see it’s, it’s going to be a couple months from now,” Burrow said of using his hands again.