CINCINNATI -- The first time I asked to interview Joe Burrow, in early August, the answer was no. This was a point in training camp when Burrow was, by his own admission, struggling with some stuff.
Working to return to the field following last season's significant knee injury, the Cincinnati Bengals' second-year quarterback was wrestling with some psychological aspects of his recovery.
By the second time I asked, a couple of weeks later, all of that stuff was an eye-roll-inducing memory.
"That was about four days of camp," Burrow told me Wednesday during an interview after the team's morning walkthrough at Paul Brown Stadium. "And everyone wanted to write a bunch of articles about it. And then, you know, the other 25 days of camp, I was back to my old self -- slinging the ball around, reading the coverages, feeling great. Nobody wanted to write about that."
Consider it written about. Here are some of the impressions I got from the time I spent with him for a SportsCenter interview: