A funny thing happened when the Cincinnati Bengals traded for quarterback Joe Flacco when it came to the conversation around Joe Burrow’s injury return timeline.
During the reporting of the Burrow injury across multiple outlets, it seemed like insiders kept talking as if Burrow would come back late this year.
Take, for example, a line from NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport at the end of this clip: “You give yourself a shot. Joe Burrow comes back in the middle of December if this team can just stay alive until then, Burrow will be back.”
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Or, another note the day of the trade, from Rapoport:
NFL Network’s Mike Garafolo said something similar while reporting on the injury: “If all goes according to plan for Cincy, it’ll be Joe Burrow starting that game.”
Similar notes have gone up elsewhere. It wasn’t totally fair to view the Flacco trade as a public sign the organization thinks Burrow will indeed be back. They simply had to make any move because Jake Browning literally was not playing at a pro level. It was unfair to the fans and everyone in the building to throw away the season during the first week of October by doing nothing.
But previous reporting around Burrow’s injury return timeline suggested that mid-December was a very, very optimistic, best-case scenario thing. And that was if he pushed it (which we all know he’ll do). Even if he got healthy by December, we then needed to discuss whether he’d be in game shape to get live reps after being sidelined with a foot injury, which would presumably make conditioning while rehabbing tougher than normal.
Alas, the commentary from insiders around the whole thing is, if nothing else, interesting. The Bengals effectively coughed up the value of a sixth-round pick to get some help in the door. That’s an easy decision to make if there’s even a 10 percent chance that Burrow can make it back this winter.
In the interim, keep a close eye on how reporters and people around the team talk about Burrow’s return. They probably won’t issue anything official, but the tone seems to have changed, at least a little.
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