Despite entering the final year of his rookie contract and not yet receiving a contract extension, Cincinatti Bengals star signal-caller Joe Burrow has reported to training camp, as expected.

The Bengals quarterbacks and rookies reported for training camp on Sunday with the rest of the team's players set to join them on Wednesday.

 

Cincinatti selected Burrow with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2020 NFL Draft out of LSU and haven't looked backed since. Over the past three seasons, Burrow has led the Bengals to back-to-back AFC Championship appearances against Patrick Mahomes and the Kanas City Chiefs, as well as a Super Bowl.

Amazingly, he's done so while being sacked 124 times in 42 regular season games and another 29 times in the NFL Playoffs. Burrow and the Bengals' pass protection has been so poor it even led to him tearing his ACL 10 games into his rookie season.

So, suffice it to say, Cincinnati would like to have Burrow — their best quarterback since 1988 NFL MVP Boomer Esiason — in a Bengals uniform as long as possible.

A contract extension is certainly in the works, as Burrow himself said in a mid-May news conference that he and the team were working on getting said deal done. To that end, Bengals running back Joe Mixon recently took a significant pay cut that brought Cincinatti up to about $19.2 million in cap space (per Over The Cap).

“He'll be paid well, and he's earned it,” Bengals director of player personnel Duke Tobin said on the Pat McAfee Show back in May.

“We plan on Joe Burrow being here a long time.”