CINCINNATI, Ohio — Joe Burrow didn’t need to think much about his answer. There was no need to strain.
The third-year quarterback sat at his Tuesday press conference and answered questions on a variety of topics, and his answers were no different than if he’d been asked about the team’s run game or the atmosphere for Thursday Night Football. It was straight and to the point.
Burrow was two days away from leading the Bengals into a matchup with Tua Tagovailoa and the Dolphins, but quickly remembered the first time they had gone head-to-head:
A 2019 thriller in Tuscaloosa, Ala., where Burrow’s LSU Tigers edged Tagovailoa’s Alabama Crimson Tide, 46-41. The game helped catapult the Tigers, who were already ranked No. 1, to a national title, Burrow to the Heisman Trophy, and as it turned out, to Cincinnati.
Now, they’re set to play for the first time since that November day in Alabama.
“Back-and-forth, lot of points scored,” Burrow recalled. “That was kind of the moment we realized we could win it all, so that was exciting.”
That game was one of the moments that truly put Burrow on the map in college football and NFL circles as a potential No. 1 pick, putting pause on the notion that Tagovailoa was the far-and-away easy selection for the first choice in the draft.
For years, a rallying cry of “Tank For Tua” swept NFL fanbases to the point where rooting for losses became commonplace in the 2019 NFL season.
“That told me I could do what I thought going into the season,” Burrow said of the win. “Tua was the guy for two years, and to go in there and beat him, it kind of gave me validation of what I felt about myself.”
The next few months were a fairytale for Burrow. He led the Tigers to an undefeated season, gripped the nation with his emotional Heisman Trophy speech about his hometown of Athens, Ohio, and was later the No. 1 overall draft choice.
Almost immediately after the LSU-Alabama game, however, the next few months were anything but a dream for Tagovailoa.
The week after the Crimson Tide lost at home, Tagovailoa suffered a gruesome hip injury and missed the remainder of the season. The injury was so severe that doctors said it was most commonly observed in people that had been in traumatic car accidents. Tagovailoa fell to the Dolphins at fifth overall and began his career on a surprise Dolphins team that nearly made the playoffs in 2020.
Burrow’s year, naturally, was far more different. The Bengals went 4-11-1, and in a game against Washington, Burrow suffered a devastating left leg injury and missed the remainder of the season.
“He texted me when I got injured and I texted him when he got injured,” Burrow said. “And we’ve stayed in contact since we played against each other last.”
And aside from the quarterbacks’ history against one another, it’s not hard to remember the 2019 game between the Bengals and Dolphins that set both franchises on this track in the first place.
The Bengals traveled to Miami, and courtesy of 23 fourth-quarter points, nearly earned a comeback win before an overtime loss — a defeat that clinched the No. 1 overall pick and the right to draft Burrow.
“I know what the narrative is, but we were just trying to win,” coach Zac Taylor said. “We work so hard every week. Losing’s not fun. We did everything we could to get back in that game at 35-12. We still use a lot of those clips. (Tyler Boyd) catching the ball and being injured, (Tyler) Eifert helping him up, so we clock the ball and TB can get out and we didn’t lose 10 seconds. Then we hit Eifert on the four-to-go and we have a 2-point conversion to tie.”
That day, all Bengals fans knew what was at stake if the team did indeed lose. Taylor, though, wanted none of that conversation.
“There are no guarantees in this profession you’re going to be here next year. To say, ‘Why did you do everything to win a game’ is frustrating, to be quite honest with you. You don’t know what it’s like being in these offices when you’re not winning, so you do everything you possibly can to get it. … I just think it’s disrespectful to the game to not do everything you can to win. The fans, I get it, the fans probably wanted us to lose so we get the pick. But the coaching side of it, not for one second.”
After Week 17, the draft process started for both the Bengals and Dolphins — the former being much more certain of their future. The two teams played in 2020, but Burrow was injured by that point, making the 2022 matchup the first of their NFL careers.
“That determined where I was going, it seemed like,” Burrow said of the Week 16 game in 2019. “So I was definitely cued into it.”
Since then, the Bengals and Dolphins have taken wildly different paths. But it’s ended up with both teams where they thought they’d be with their new franchise quarterbacks.
The Bengals are a few months removed from a Super Bowl appearance, led by Burrow and their high-flying offensive attack. The Dolphins have started the 2022 season as one of the hottest teams in the sport, led by their explosive offense.
And as many thought, starting with that 2019 game in Tuscaloosa, both quarterbacks are leading the way.
“For us we just saw something in Joe we believed in,” Taylor said. “He needed to be the No. 1 pick. He was the right fit for us. Never wavered from that from the day we decided until now. That was the direction we went. Certainly saw there were other quarterbacks who could be really successful for other teams. Just not for us.”
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