Back in 2020, before the Cincinnati Bengals drafted Joe Burrow, PFT’s Mike Florio was one of the voices spearheading a movement around whether the LSU star really wanted to return home and play pro ball there. 

Fast forward to now, when times are tough for the eliminated Bengals, it’s more of the same story. 

Burrow’s recent obvious messaging to the Bengals organization in press conferences has been under the microscope. He wants change, which points an arrow right at the league’s smallest scouting department, (not) GM Duke Tobin and how ownership runs things. 

At PFT, though, Florio raised an almost outright conspiracy theory while offering up what he thinks is going on in Cincinnati: 

“Burrow doesn’t want to demand a trade, but he’d like the Bengals to decide to make the move on their own. That would allow him to exit Cincinnati without being regarded as a villain in his home state.”

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Barring an April Fool’s-style thing here, the idea is that Burrow wants out, but doesn’t want to ask out, for fear of being the bad guy in Ohio. 

This has been a common conspiracy, too. 

Last March, Florio said that if Burrow had been from Athens, Georgia, and not Athens, Ohio, Burrow “would have refused to play for the Bengals.”

We can go back to before the draft, through, for the sake of paper trail. In February of 2020, PFT penned this headline: “If Joe Burrow wants to play for the Bengals, why hasn’t he simply said so?”

Exhausted yet?

For outsiders, this is a small encapsulation of what Bengals fans have had to deal with ever since that fateful game in December of 2019 against the Miami Dolphins in overtime that secured the No. 1 pick. 

Make no mistake: Since that day, it was cemented Burrow, the Ohio storyline and best quarterback in the class, was the pick. But since that day, these narratives have chased the club and fans. 

We’d be remiss not to name-drop Carson Palmer, of course. And if in a few years the Bengals have yet to make the playoffs again or heed Burrow’s warnings, everyone agrees he could look for an exit ramp and see what else is out there. 

And if that happens in two years or so? By then, he wouldn’t be the bad guy in Ohio. That title would belong to the Bengals, with local fans fully understanding. 

But the consistent peddling of theories about location being the determining factor in how Burrow approaches his life and football career is a reach. And the fact it latches on at a national level is a shame. 

Again, there’s immense pressure on the Bengals. They deserve kudos for modernization during the Burrow era, too. Practice bubbles, stadium upgrades, paying big on contracts and free agents, etc. 

A Mike Brown team wanting to win their way or not at all is still a problem. 

Hence, Burrow’s public pressure. They need outside voices to help steer the football operation. The almost historically bad defense this year and the laundry list of failed draft picks say as much. Blowing up the coaching staff and getting a new energy in the building couldn’t hurt either. 

But, unlike this latest theory, the Bengals don’t need any help being the bad guy in the greater tri-state area. They do that to themselves. Burrow is good in Ohio, regardless. And there’s not a better fanbase built for gritting through this type of national scrutiny and almost praying-on-downfall narratives, either. 

Burrow’s most important comment of the last two weeks, for what it’s worth: “What we’ve been doing hasn’t worked the last couple of years. We have to think outside the box and get creative about where we go from here.”

Indeed.

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