The Cincinnati Bengals enter the 2024 NFL season with legitimate Super Bowl hopes, but those hopes live and die with the health of quarterback Joe Burrow. Burrow has played four seasons in the NFL, and thus far, when he manages to stay healthy, the Bengals have made deep postseason runs. When his year ends up being cut short due to season-ending injuries, the Bengals have missed the postseason altogether. It won't always be that cut and dry, but even still, the Bengals would be wise to do all that they can to protect their $275 million quarterback.
On Thursday morning, the Bengals announced a move that could go a long way in ensuring that Joe Burrow stays upright and remains healthy throughout the 2024 season. Veteran center Ted Karras, who came to the Bengals as a free agent just two months after their appearance in Super Bowl LVI, has inked a one-year extension that will keep him in Cincinnati through the 2025 season.
“I'm grateful the Karras family and the Brown family get to keep working together because we've both been in the league for a long time,” said Karras on Wednesday morning, per Geoff Hobson of Bengals.com. “It's the first time we've come together and been on the same team. I love what they're doing. The ultimate goal is to get it done. I want to get it done for Mr. Brown and the Brown family and we have the guys to do it.”
Ted Karras, whose father and grandfather are Super Bowl champions, earned a pair of Super Bowl rings as a back-up in New England in 2016 and 2018. Over the last two years, he has started 33 games at center for the Bengals, and hopes to be a key piece of the group that finally brings a Super Bowl title to Cincinnati, which has become home to Karras and his family.
“I couldn't have asked for a better city to welcome me,” said Karras, the Bengals 2023 nominee for Walter Payton Man of the Year.
The health of Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow
Joe Burrow's 2023 season was cut short in Week 10 loss to the Baltimore Ravens when he suffered a torn ligament in his right wrist that required season-ending surgery. Cincinnati was 5-5 at the time of Burrow's injury, but given what we've seen from him and the Bengals offense over the previous two seasons, it would've been foolish to believe that Cincy couldn't have made a run over the back-half of the season.
Although Burrow has acknowledged thinking about his “football mortality” in the months he's spent rehabbing his injured wrist, he's back on the practice field with the expectation that he'll be ready to go on a journey that starts in September and ends in February.
“We don't have to be ready to go in the middle of June,” Burrow said earlier this week, per NFL.com's Eric Edholm. “We have to be ready to go early September through February. That's how we're attacking this offseason and this rehab plan and these practices and training camp. We're attacking it like I want to be out there playing in February.”
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