Bengals QB Joe Burrow Emphatic About Playing a Long Time, But Less So About Where

CINCINNATI – Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow addressed some of the rumors that have been swirling since a series of out-of-character news conferences thrust him into the A block of numerous talking head shows.

The most noteworthy one had to deal with his love of the game and his timeline for continuing to be a part of it.

“I’m going to be playing for a long time,” Burrow said Wednesday after practice.

“And I expect to play well and consistently great for a long time,” he added.

Burow was equally as definitive when asked if there was any circumstance where he could see him playing for a different team in 2026.

“I can’t see that. No,” he said.

It would take a trade, of course, for that to happen because Burrow is under contract with the Bengals through the 2029 season.

But has he ever thought about the possibility of not being the Cincinnati quarterback at any point of his career?

“You think about a lot of things,” Burrow said cryptically.

“A lot of crazy things happen every year,” he added, referencing the Micah Parsons trade days before the 2025 regular season began.

While there was a healthy amount of ambiguity and speculation, the main thrust of the 20-minute news conference was that Burrow wants to play – in the final three games, next year and beyond.

And that his reaction to so many people suggesting he might not ranged from bemusement to irritation.

“It feels like everybody's trying to do everything in their power to make me not play football, and I feel like I'm fighting it,” he said. “I'm fighting everybody else. I just want to play ball. That's all I want to do.”

The refrain that’s grown louder the last few weeks is that the Bengals are wasting Burrow’s prime by saddling the team with a subpar defense and missing the playoffs in three consecutive seasons.

Burrow turned 29 last week.

There are some quarterbacks who have played – or are playing – their best football in their 30s.

Does he accept the premise that he’s currently in his prime?

Or could that still be ahead of him?

“I think people have proven that you can play at a high level for a long time,” Burrow said. “Tom Brady proved it. Peyton Manning proved it. Drew Brees proved it. Aaron Rodgers is proving it. Joe Flacco is proving it.

“So I want to be in the conversations with people like that, and I do everything I need to do for my body to prepare it for these games and for long term success and so I plan on doing it for a long time at a high level.”

That doesn’t sound like someone thinking about hanging up his cleats.

And Burrow again said that as he continues to play, he wants to do it with the same group of coaches and teammates.

“We have great coaches. I think we’re consistently put in good positions to make plays and do our best,” he said. “Obviously, there’s good games and bad games, just like players have good games and bad games. But I have a lot of confidence in everybody that’s putting together the plans for us week in and week out.

“That’s not to say that changes don’t need to be made,” he added. “I’m not saying personnel or people. I’m just saying 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.”

And that, he said, includes people outside of the locker room.

“We all want to win. We all want to do whatever it takes to win,” Burrow said. “We have a lot of smart people here that know how to put the right people and decision-makers in place to try to be our best. We’ve done it before. We’ll have to do it again.”

And it starts Sunday in Miami, where Burrow will start at quarterback, just as he plans to do in Week 17 against the Arizona Cardinals and Week 18 against the Cleveland Browns even though the Bengals and all three remaining opponents have been eliminated from the playoff race.

“I like playing football,” he said. “For the same reasons that I wanted to push to come back from injury, same reasons I want play this week.”

There’s also the added caveat of not wanting to end his season with the clunker of a performance he delivered Sunday in a 24-0 loss to the Baltimore Ravens.

Burrow called it one of the worst games of his life in the immediate aftermath, and nothing he saw on film the last couple of days was changing his mind.

But he also isn’t going to wear that disappointment into Sunday’s game.

“I've played good football for a lot of years. I'm not going to overreact to an outlier game in my opinion,” Burrow said. “Obviously I’ve got to address it and talk through the things that needed to be better, but it's certainly not a trend and not going to keep happening going forward.”