{"id":31573,"date":"2023-09-22T01:40:53","date_gmt":"2023-09-22T07:40:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/joe-burrow-says-its-too-early-to-tell-if-a-calf-injury-will-keep-him-out-of-monday-nights-game\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T01:42:57","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T07:42:57","slug":"joe-burrow-says-its-too-early-to-tell-if-a-calf-injury-will-keep-him-out-of-monday-nights-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/joe-burrow-says-its-too-early-to-tell-if-a-calf-injury-will-keep-him-out-of-monday-nights-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Joe Burrow says it’s too early to tell if a calf injury will keep him out of Monday night’s game"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Cincinnati
Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow (9) walks off the field after an NFL football game against the Baltimore Ravens on Sept. 17 in Cincinnati. The Ravens won 27-24. (The Associated Press)<\/span>Jeff Dean<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

CINCINNATI \u2013 Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow said he’s day to day and doesn’t know yet if a lingering calf injury will keep him out of Monday’s night’s game against the Los Angeles Rams.<\/p>\n

Burrow said he \u201ctweaked\u201d the calf injury late in Sunday’s loss to the Ravens. He wore a compression sleeve on his entire right leg Thursday but said the calf \u201cis not as sore.\u201d He did not participate in practice.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m preparing like I\u2019m going to go out and play a Monday night football game,\u201d he said. \u201cWhether that happens, I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

\u201cTime heals,\u201d he said, \u201cso we’ll see.\u201d<\/p>\n

Burrow strained his right calf muscle on the second day of on-field workouts in training camp on July 27. That sidelined him for more than a month, depriving him of valuable preseason reps with his offense.<\/p>\n

Burrow said he aggravated the injury on the Bengals\u2019 final drive of Sunday’s 27-24 loss to the Ravens. He found Tee Higgins in the end zone for a 4-yard touchdown, then limped to the sideline favoring his right leg<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Asked if the Bengals’ 0-2 start creates more urgency for him to get back on the field, he said: \u201cIt’s in my head, for sure. I’m thinking about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he said he’s not panicking and nobody else is, either.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the ups and downs of the year,\u201d Burrow said. \u201cThe teams that come out on top at the end of it are going to be the teams that handle that adversity the best. You can\u2019t let it snowball on you. That\u2019s what we\u2019ve done in the past. And if you go back and look year to year, the teams that are still in at the end, everybody has adversity at some point in the year.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Burrow can\u2019t go Monday, backup Jake Browning, who was on the practice squad last season, would get the nod.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you don\u2019t have your starting quarterback, that\u2019s a challenge,” coach Zac Taylor said. \u201cBut again, you\u2019ve invested time and effort into Jake, and Jake\u2019s matched that. The guys on our 53-man roster are here for a reason. We believe in them. We know we\u2019re going to call upon everybody at some point, and the quarterback position is no different.\u201d<\/p>\n

Browning is not used to the media attention he received in the locker room Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s my job to be prepared if Joe goes down, and so really for me, the week is no different,\u201d he said. \u201cEven when I was on the (practice) squad, I knew there was zero chance of me playing, but I was fully prepared and I would go through the whole game plan like I was going to be the backup, like I had a chance of playing. It\u2019s my job to be ready if Joe goes down, and I\u2019m in my third week of doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Burrow’s teammates are worried, they’re not showing it.<\/p>\n

\"Cincinnati
Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow throws during the second half of an NFL football game against the Baltimore Ravens Sunday, Sept. 17 in Cincinnati. (The Associated Press)<\/span>Darron Cummings<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cCoach is going to put us in the best position to win, and it\u2019s our job to go out and execute,\u201d Higgins said. \u201cIf Joe doesn\u2019t play, at the end of the day, we still have to go do what we do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thanks in large part to rain in Cleveland during the opener, Burrow never could find a rhythm and passed for just 82 yards, the lowest total in his pro career. The Browns thumped the Bengals 24-3.<\/p>\n

He came out flat again last Sunday against the Ravens, passing for 35 yards in the first half. He began to look like his old self in the second half, moving the ball and throwing a pair of short touchdown passes to Higgins \u2013 but also throwing an interception in the red zone when a score would have given the Bengals the lead.<\/p>\n

The highest-paid player in the NFL has some experience with health issues. During the 2021 season, he was still rehabbing from major knee surgery late in the previous season but ended up leading Cincinnati to the Super Bowl and was honored as the AP Comeback Player of the Year.<\/p>\n

Just before the start of training camp in 2022, Burrow had an emergency appendectomy. He has acknowledged he wasn’t back to full strength for the first part of the season.<\/p>\n

The Bengals started 0-2 in 2022, and a loss in Cleveland on Halloween evened their record at 4-4. They won the next eight games to finish the regular season and capture the AFC North title for the second straight season. They beat Baltimore and Buffalo in the playoffs before falling to the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC championship game.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow (9) walks off the field after an NFL football game against the Baltimore Ravens on Sept. 17 in Cincinnati. The Ravens won 27-24. (The Associated Press)Jeff Dean CINCINNATI \u2013 Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow said he’s day to day and doesn’t know yet if a lingering calf injury will keep him […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31574,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1544,346],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-31573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-us-national-football-league-nfl-north-american","tag-sports"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31573"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81492,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31573\/revisions\/81492"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31573"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=31573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}