I want you to take a deep breath, close your eyes and think about something. Joe Burrow just finished his third season. He just won the Bengals their first Super Bowl in team history. He was the Super Bowl MVP, has been to two Pro Bowls already, won a league MVP award and is the best quarterback in the league. It is the perfect scenario. Joe is up for a pay day and says that he wants to stay in Cincinnati the rest of his career and build a dynasty.
Read all of that again one more time. Patrick Mahomes just got a 12 year contract and a half of a billion dollars to play quarterback. The Chiefs can cut him fairly easily in the later years with no serious cap hit because his bonus money is front-loaded. This sounds like an amazing deal for Mahomes but the Chiefs were really the big winner in this enormous move.
It got me thinking, would I drop this much on my QB if it meant tying up so much cap room on one (but the most important) position on the field? The model is to draft a QB, hope they are a stud and try and win a title before their second contract is due. It is the way to have enough money to stack the defense, give him weapons and shore up the offensive line. I could over analyze the Mahomes deal and tell you why this one is different but I will just leave it at he got a good deal that will keep him a top 5 paid QB in the league for a while but also allows them to restructure along the way and convert salary into bonuses to make room for other players. It is an unselfish contract.
Joe Burrow has not taken one snap in the NFL and we all want to build a statue on Joe Burrow Way (sorry Pete, we changed it…just kidding, Peter Edward is a god). If Joe hoists a Lombardi just once he will go down as the greatest Bengal in history and perhaps the greatest Cincinnati athlete in history (up there with Rose, Morgan, Robinson and Steve Cadieux). I would be willing to drop a billion on Burrow and sacrifice cap room hell if that is what it took. He could play in a wheelchair in his 70’s if he wanted.
Bengals fans are thirsty for a title. We will sacrifice everything just to get one. I for one am not greedy and demand a dynasty. Just give me that one moment that the clock strikes zero and the game doesn’t end in a fumble, a torn ACL or a broken thumb. Write your amount Joe if you pull this off. Good on Patrick Mahomes for not screwing the Chiefs but I think that no matter what they would have paid the man. I hope if the time comes, and that is a huge IF, that we get the same class act treatment.