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Last week when he arrived for the trip to Jacksonville ahead of the Bengals’ Monday night game, Jake Browning got a shock. There was Joe Burrow, present and accounted for.
“I was surprised,” Browning says six days later. “It was nice having him on the sideline. And I don’t know what he would say about how I was on the sideline when he was playing. But I feel like he’s just a calm voice when I come to the sideline. In those times that I might be a little hard on myself, he’s very quick to say, ‘No, I saw what you saw.’
“It’s just kind of a reassuring feeling to have a quarterback that’s played as much as he has and has had the success that he has had, having him become a voice on the sideline now.”
The reality of the unusual gesture is this: To Burrow, it’s simply returning the favor. And the explanation for that can go a long way in illustrating how Browning got here.
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A little over two years ago, the quarterback—who, over the past two weeks, has thrown for 629 yards and led Cincinnati’s offense to 68 points—didn’t really know where his next paycheck was coming from. Browning had just been released by the Vikings after spending two training camps and one season on the practice squad in Minnesota. It just so happened that, at the time, the Bengals had a need for a quarterback, a spot on their practice squad and a season-opening game against, yup, the Vikings a few days away.
So the Bengals did what a lot of teams do in these sorts of situations. They signed a player to fill a roster spot and help in the here and now, with no expectations that it would go a whole lot further than that. It’d be up to Browning to make sure it did.
“I was just trying to be helpful in the quarterback room—I think that helped,” Browning says. “Like you said, the first game was against the Vikings, so I’m the new guy. I don’t know the offense at all. But I know everything about who we’re about to play. It was an opportunity to show, I know football and I’m pretty dialed in, just trying to do everything I could to help out.”
The Bengals beat the Vikings, 27–24, in overtime to open the 2021 season. Browning did enough to buy more time.
That time was used, sure, to get better as a player. But it was also to show the value he could bring even if he wasn’t getting on the field.
“Once I started to get a feel for Joe, it was just kind of helping Joe on the sideline and in meetings,” Browning says. “I had a fresh perspective a little bit because I hadn’t been in this offense really. So like, ‘I’ve done this, this way before,’ stuff like that. And then I think on game day just being a calm influence or calm voice on the sideline that Joe can talk to. I look at things and see if there is a kind of a tell or whatever. It was mostly off-the-field stuff.
“On the field, really, it was just going through individual situations and showing that I can throw the ball well. But they didn’t really see me play a ton.”
That meant whenever Browning could get his chance—one that probably wouldn’t come until the following offseason and wasn’t by any means guaranteed—he’d have to be ready. And because he came into the league during the COVID-19-ravaged season of 2020 (no spring work, no preseason game, limited practice for backups, etc.), he knew he had a long way to go.
But he didn’t shrink to the challenge that presented.
“There’s not much to be complacent about when they’re telling you like, Hey, you’re not good enough to be on the team,” Browning says. “I didn’t take it personally. I didn’t take it as a shot on my confidence or anything like that either. I just took it as things will get better and I did a lot of research on what’s the best way to get better on a lot of different things.”
And, along the way, he kept being a resource, as best he could, to Burrow.
His chance would come in the summer of 2023, when Burrow strained his calf. At a baseline, coach Zac Taylor, OC Brian Callahan and QBs coach Dan Pitcher knew that, in Browning, they had a player with a high football IQ, an exemplary teammate for the room and a good resource for Burrow.
The next step was Browning showing that physically he could handle the role. And as Burrow rehabbed his calf, and Browning’s reps ticked up, he started his run at a spot on the active roster—with Trevor Siemian, who had a big edge in experience, both as a starter and backup, the player Browning had to beat out. In preseason games and practices, he was showing he could.
Browning was doing the job running the Bengals’ offense. He was doing it running the scout team against the first defense, where he “was still feeling like [he] was pretty accurate and playing fast and in a pretty good rhythm.” That carried over to the preseason games.
And it resulted in Siemian’s release on Aug. 29, catapulting Browning into the one-snap-away world of being the primary backup.
At the half Sunday, the Colts had stolen momentum back from the Bengals—who controlled play through the first 30 minutes but found themselves tied at 14 after Browning threw a pick-six to Ronnie Harrison Jr. with 1:31 left in the second quarter.
Browning returned to the locker room level and champing at the bit to get back out there.
“As a thrower, I thought one thing was going to happen, and we weren’t necessarily on the same page, and that pick, that got tipped and they returned it,” he says. “But it’s also just, keep it in the context of we’re moving the ball really well and not losing sight of that because you have one bad play coming into halftime. That was the message. We did a good job staying positive.”
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Sure enough, Browning came out of the locker room and marched the Bengals 75 yards in six plays (with Tee Higgins picking up 26 of those on a corner route) to make it 21–14. Cincinnati then went another 71 yards on 11 plays in its second possession of the half to push the lead to 14 points.
In that third quarter, Browning was 9-of-9 with 139 yards. The Colts were done. And nearby was Burrow, trying to serve as the same kind of resource Browning had been to him in the past.
“A lot of the improvement to my game has been through watching him—watching how he operates and how he thinks about different plays and stuff like that,” Browning says. “It has been a huge advantage for me.”
And as for the Bengals as a whole, it’s not overstating it to say that dynamic has been a massive factor in keeping the team going after about as tough a loss (losing your franchise quarterback for the year) as a team can absorb in season.
So maybe Cincinnati won’t reach its preseason goals come January and February.
But it’s a good bet that the Bengals will max out what they can be, and that’s in part because Burrow is still having an impact on the team. Just like Browning did before.
