While Christmas was just over a month ago, Cincinnati Bengals running back Chase Brown has delivered a late gift to Bengals fans in the form of a message regarding quarterback Joe Burrow and his future with the franchise.
Some of Burrow’s comments near the end of the regular season has led to speculation about his desire to remain in Cincinnati, who is coming off a third consecutive non-playoff season. Burrow is signed through the 2029 season, but that hasn’t stopped unfounded rumblings about whether or not he will seek a trade or even retire before his contract expires.
Brown, however, has made it clear that Bengals fans have nothing to worry about.
“Joe’s not going anywhere,” Brown told CBS Sports. “I think that was totally blown out of proportion. It was definitely a good talking point for people. … It gave the media a lot to talk about and probably made [Burrow’s] Twitter notifications go off, but Joe’s not going anywhere.”
“You heard it from my wing man right there,” added Bengals wideout Tee Higgins.
Speaking of wing man, Higgins and Brown are part of Bounty’s Wingman program in the run up to the Super Bowl, a game that Higgins, Burrow and the rest of the Bengals nearly won four years ago.
Against the Rams in Super Bowl LVI, Higgins caught a pair of touchdown passes that included a 75-yard score on a throw from Burrow that gave the Bengals a second half lead. Cincinnati ultimately came up short in the game, however, before losing another close game to the Kansas City Chiefs in the following year’s AFC title game.
Injuries to Burrow have largely contributed to the Bengals’ recent struggles. He missed the final seven games of the 2023 season after suffering a wrist injury that required surgery. This past season, Burrow missed nine games after injuring his toe in Week 2. The Bengals, who were 2-0 at the time of Burrow’s injury, went just 1-8 during his absence.
Burrow returned to the lineup in Week 13 and led Cincinnati to an upset win over Baltimore that kept their flickering playoff hopes alive. That hope was quickly extinguished, however, after the Bengals lost their next two games that included a 24-0 loss to the Ravens in what was arguably the worst game of Burrow’s career.
While their playoff hopes were dashed, Cincinnati still put together two of their most impressive performances of the season in wins over the Dolphins and Cardinals. And while their season ended with a loss to the Browns, the Bengals were nonetheless a much better team upon Burrow’s return, especially on offense.
“We picked up some momentum at the end of the season that we can carry into this coming season,” said Brown, who rushed for a career-high 1,019 yards this season. “There’s a lot that we went through this year. We lost our quarterback. We had multiple different quarterbacks, and that’s hard on everybody on offense and definitely hard on receivers.
“When you look at the season as a whole, we went through a lot. So I look forward to having a full season with everybody. Not that that’s promised, but that’s what I look forward to.”
Adding insult to injury was the fact that the AFC North — a division that had all four teams finish with a winning record in 2023 — had an extremely down year. The Steelers (the only team the Bengals defeated during Burrow’s absence) were the only team to post a winning record. Had Burrow stayed healthy, it’s quite possible that the Bengals would have won the North going away.
“I think the main thing is we always want to be in control of our playoff hopes,” Brown said. “The position that we were in, we didn’t have any control the last part of the season, so there were a lot of things that had to happen to go our way. It is hard to see it play out that way, though, because we know what we would have been capable of if we had made it into the playoffs.”
In addition to having Burrow and one of the NFL’s best group of skill players, the Bengals also have the division’s longest-tenured head coach in Zac Taylor, who was given a public vote of confidence from team owner Mike Brown this offseason.
Will that stability give the Bengals an edge this season?
“I don’t know if it can give us one,” Higgins said, “but I hope so.”
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