There aren’t many people who understand what it is like to deal with fame as a professional athlete, but Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow has found three to rely on as his career continues.
Burrow revealed in a conversation with NFL Network’s Kyle Brandt that he has reached out to Tom Brady, Kevin Durant and Odell Beckham Jr. when seeking advice.
“I’m certainly getting more and more comfortable with it,” Burrow said of fame (50-second mark). “It is not a place I ever thought I would find myself, and it certainly comes with its own set of challenges. I would say the pros definitely outweigh the cons, but the cons are there. And you have to learn how to deal with them.
“And it’s not necessarily something that you can rely on with a lot of people to help you with. There’s certainly not a lot of other people in this position, so you just live and you learn and you go through all the mistakes you make and try to find people who have been there and done that.”
There is an LSU connection between Burrow and Beckham, and reaching out to arguably the greatest NFL player in league history in Brady makes perfect sense for a quarterback who has Super Bowl and Hall of Fame dreams.
Connecting Durant and Burrow may not be as obvious, but the Bengals star said, “Kevin Durant, I’ve developed a nice relationship with. He’s a good friend now, and we talk about a lot of different things.”
As long as Burrow continues to play at such a high level, the fame and attention will only increase.
He led the NFL with 4,918 passing yards and 43 touchdown passes last season while finishing fourth in the league in MVP voting. Had the Bengals made the playoffs, he might have taken the award home.
Burrow is widely seen as one of the best signal-callers in the league alongside Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson, and he has already been to the Super Bowl at this stage of his career.
While he hasn’t won the Lombardi Trophy just yet, it wouldn’t be surprising if he does in the coming years.
And he has a support system of athletes who he can turn to as that pursuit of a title continues.
