The Joe Burrow contract extension has reportedly arrived, according to ESPN Senior NFL Insider Adam Schefter.
Burrow, the first player drafted in a decade where his Pro Bowl emergence has led the Bengals to the NFL’s upper echelon, has reportedly agreed to a five-year, $275 million extension that makes him the highest-paid player in NFL history with an average annual salary of $55 million.
The deal hammered out by Bengals executive vice president Katie Blackburn and Burrow rep Brian Ayrault comes on the heels of Justin Herbert’s $52.5 million yearly strike in Los Angeles and Lamar Jackson’s $52 million per in Baltimore, as Burrow joins Herbert and the Eagles’ Jalen Hurts as $50 million quarterbacks selected in the 2020 draft. It also comes 17 years after Blackburn negotiated a contract that made Carson Palmer the richest player in the game.
Burrow and his raft of nicknames have taken the Bengals to great heights with the same charismatic leadership and swashbuckling passing that brought him the Heisman Trophy during LSU’s unbeaten season in 2019. A product of Athens, Ohio, the enormously popular Burrow (a.k.a. “Joey Franchise,” “Joe Cool,” “Joe Brrr,” “Joe Shiesty,” among others) has become the NFL’s all-time completion percentage leader with 68.2 in navigating the Bengals to the last two AFC Championship Games and AFC North titles.
“This is where I want to be. This is where I want to be my whole career,” said Burrow Wednesday in a Paycor Stadium news conference. “We have great people in the locker room that grind every day, that are excited to go and showcase their talents and excited to go and do it in the city of Cincinnati. We have the best fans and so this is where I want to be.”
Burrow’s arrival came a year after offensive guru and play-caller Zac Taylor became head coach and the two have thrived together. Taylor’s partnership with Burrow has translated into five postseason wins, the most in the AFC North in the last 10 years.
“He’s not a superstar in the NFL. He’s a superstar in all sports. He’s just so genuine,” Taylor told a podcast this summer. “There’s nothing about him that’s forced. Sure, he’s a talented guy that works just as hard as any person I’ve been around to make himself and the team better. He’s just genuine in every interaction that he has.
“He’s lived up to those expectations for us and I know that he feels like he’s got championships to win,” Taylor said. “It’s franchise-altering when you have a guy playing at that position the way that he does.”
In his 42 NFL starts, Burrow has marched through the Bengals record book. While leading them to the Super Bowl and winning the NFL’s 2021 Comeback Player of the Year, Burrow broke Bengals’ Ring of Honor member Boomer Esiason’s record for yards in a game with 525 against the Ravens, Andy Dalton’s record for yards in a season with 4,611, and Dalton’s passer rating record with 108.3. And his NFL-leading 70.4 completion percentage was second only to Ring of Honor member Ken Anderson’s 70.6.
According to Elias, Burrow is the fifth-fastest passer in history to reach 75 career touchdown passes. He did it in 40 games, trailing only two-time MVP Patrick Mahomes (30 games), Pro Football Hall-of-Famer Dan Marino (31), Herbert (34) and Kurt Warner (35), another Hall of Famer.
It also took Burrow only 40 games to reach 11,000 career passing yards. That ties him with Matthew Stafford and behind only Mahomes (37), Herbert (38), and Warner (39).
A self-proclaimed “Ohio guy,” Burrow said last season of the Bengals’ Super Bowl opportunities, “The window is my whole career.” Now the door is opened, too. Esiason, a long-time NFL analyst who became one of the richest players in the sport when he reached two of his own mega deals with Bengals president Mike Brown more than 30 years ago, had that sense during this year’s Ring of Honor announcement.
“If there’s one thing I do know, Mike Brown knows quarterbacks, he really does,” Esiason said. “And when you think about the stable of quarterbacks that the Bengals had, the stability at quarterback that the Bengals have had for most of their existence, that tells you that Mike knows exactly what a quarterback needs to look like, how that quarterback needs to act, and how he can get the best out of that player. Joe Burrow is a can’t-miss prospect. We knew coming out of LSU he was going to be a superstar. I have to say that he has exceeded every expectation that I had for him coming into the league.”
