Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow will have to deal with something in 2023 that he hasn’t dealt with yet in his professional career (or his collegiate career).
It sounds weird to say, but the 2023 season will be the first time that Burrow is dealing with enormous expectations — Super Bowl/NFL MVP or bust type of expectations.
Stay with me here.
Sure, Burrow was the No. 1 overall pick in the 2020 NFL Draft. And typically being the No. 1 overall pick comes with ridiculously high expectations.
Burrow, however, avoided many of those expectations due to the weirdness of the COVID-impacted 2020 season.
Canceled/postponed games and players in the COVID protocol dominated the news coverage in 2020, taking some of the pressure off Burrow.
Just after the halfway point of the 2020 season, Burrow tore his ACL. Entering 2021, the story was Burrow’s recovery, not whether or not he could live up to the No. 1 overall pick hype.
Even in 2022, after the Bengals surprisingly reached the Super Bowl in Burrow’s second year, it didn’t feel like there was a lot of pressure on Burrow.
Instead, it was on Patrick Mahomes in the AFC West (due to not having Tyreek Hill) and Josh Allen in the AFC East (can he ever get to the Super Bowl?), etc.
Burrow and the Bengals were a great story in 2021, but not a lot of folks predicted that they would get back to the Super Bowl. Very few predicted that Cincy would win the AFC again. Many even predicted that the Bengals would miss the playoffs.
Even back during Burrow’s days at LSU, he didn’t face the pressure that he’ll face in 2023. Burrow was an unknown outside of Baton Rouge for much of his time with the Tigers.
It wasn’t until the latter half of the 2019 season that Burrow started receiving an inordinate amount of national attention.
By then, LSU was an unstoppable juggernaut that was cruising to a national championship
In 2023, things will be different. The expectation now is for Burrow and the Bengals to get back to the AFC Championship game annually. To be considered a future Hall of Famer, Burrow has to get over the hump and win a Super Bowl.
It might seem early in his career, but remember, Ben Roethlisberger, Patrick Mahomes, Tom Brady, and Aaron Rodgers were all Super Bowl champions by their third year as a starter.
Burrow is already behind that pace (not that I think that’s a negative against him — winning a Super Bowl is on more than just the quarterback).
So how does Burrow respond in 2023?
I think he’ll respond as he always does — by playing at an extremely high level. We’ve never seen Burrow rattled. We’ve never seen the moment be too big for him — and he’s faced some pretty big moments in his career.
Via @betonline_ag, 2023 NFL MVP odds:
Patrick Mahomes 5/1
Joe Burrow 6/1
Jalen Hurts 8/1
Josh Allen 10/1
Justin Herbert 14/1
Tua Tagovailoa 14/1
Aaron Rodgers 16/1
Lamar Jackson 18/1
Trevor Lawrence 18/1(The AFC relentlessness continues to pop off the page)
— Paul Dehner Jr. (@pauldehnerjr) February 22, 2023
But dealing with these enormous expectations — likely after receiving a mega contract extension at some point this offseason — can do weird things to the human psyche. And Burrow, despite the amazing things he does on the football field, is human. And he’ll have to figure out a way to deal with the pressure that comes with being superstar Burrow.
Again, I think he’ll handle it just fine. But he still has to go out there and prove it.
