Last season’s Super Bowl team no fluke as confident Burrow, Chase, Taylor and rest of Bengals prepare for ’22

Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow is riding a wave of extreme popularity as the defending AFC Champions get ready to kick off the 2022 season.

And he’s putting smiles on the faces of everyone — from Bengals head coach Zac Taylor to any little kid that crosses his path these days.

“I love seeing the looks on kids’ faces when I throw them a towel or I sign something or get a picture,” Burrow said after a video of him signing autographs went viral.

“I love doing stuff for the kids, just thinking about myself in that situation when I was little. I would have been ecstatic if somebody did that for me. If I see a kid, I always try to put a smile on their face.”

He’s also putting a smile on Taylor’s face because of all of Burrow’s titles, from Joe Cool to Joey Franchise. His most important moniker is locker-room leader.

“It’s go time. We’re locked in,” Burrow said as the team headed into a six-week break before training camp. “I’m thinking about football every day. This month, leading up to camp, it’s more intense in practice, more intense in the meeting rooms and my workouts and all of the above. It’s go time.”

So when Burrow went to Las Vegas to watch a UFC fight or took a holiday getaway with family, he brought his trainer because he says 40-plus days until the start of training camp is too close to miss a workout.

Taylor loves to see the dedication.

“That’s a great message for our team,” he said. “The time for vacation was in March and April. So when your leadership is making those statements, it trickles down to the entirety of the roster. If they want to keep up, they got to get on that level. That’s what we want as a team. That’s where we want to get to, and we just got to be prepared when the first day of training camp rolls around that we don’t skip a beat.”

Burrow is feeling pretty good these days. It’s the first NFL spring he’s had in three seasons on the job, and the knee surgery of 2020 continues to be an afterthought and not a story line.

“I’ve just been able to focus on the entirety of myself, weight room and conditioning, on field, throwing, mechanics, all of it’s not really focusing on the knee,” Burrow said. “It’s just getting back to where I was prior. And I’ve been able to focus on the entirety of myself as a player.”

The entirety of Burrow?

That’s endless acres for one of the princes of the NFL as he heads into his third season off the best year a Bengals quarterback ever had with the league’s longest yards per attempt and best completion percentage.

But with Burrow, doesn’t his entirety always start with his toughness?

“As a quarterback, you’re not playing the same game as everybody else on the field. You’re back there, and it’s more of a mental chess match than it is a physical toll on your body,” Burrow said. “So when you get a chance to show your toughness, I think as a quarterback, you have to. And that’s popping up and not having bad body language if you get hit and popping back up, getting back in the huddle and doing it again.”

Burrow joked that he’ll bring the trainer now on trips but won’t consider also taking a chef until “the second contract.”

“I mean the market is just exploding,” he said. “It’s crazy the number that these guys are putting up, and I think it’s well-deserved. All those guys are playing at the top of their game. They’re being paid accordingly. But I’m not worried about it. I like to make jokes about it, but really, I haven’t thought about it much right now.”

What he is thinking about — and Taylor is convinced of it — is simply trying to get better.

“Continue to be critical of yourself and the things that you can improve on and continue to raise the level of play of your teammates,” Taylor said.

“I don’t think he has any hesitancy to do that,” he said of the next step for a guy that has already taken a giant one.

“That’s what’s encouraging. You want a guy who’s really got the mental makeup of exactly what you want from your quarterback. We have extremely high expectations for Joe, but I don’t think anyone has higher expectations than he has for himself. And that’s a great starting point for a guy that’s leading your team like that.”

The team came within 39 seconds of winning the Super Bowl, and they’re using it as fuel.

“We have the experience now,” Burrow said about the team. “Going into last year, we knew we were good, but I think going into the playoffs, we knew we could win, but we weren’t really sure what it took. We just went out there and played really hard and together as a team, and it worked out. Now, we know what it takes, and we have that experience in our back pockets going forward.”

The quest to repeat as AFC Champions and return to the Super Bowl starts on Sunday, Sept. 11, with an AFC North rivalry matchup against the Pittsburgh Steelers at Paul Brown Stadium [9/1 Edit: Paycor Stadium].

“Now we just have to add to the expectation we’re one of the best in the league, and we have to keep that expectation and roll with it,” wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase said. “Every game’s a tough game in the NFL. We’re not worried about our X. Everybody has an X on their back.

“I feel confident about how far we went last year, if we’re being real honest. That’s all the confidence we need right there.”

This content is provided by the 2022 CINCINNATI BENGALS TEAM GUIDE & SEASON PREVIEW.