Joe Burrow Has A New 5-Year, $275 Million Deal Making Him The NFL’s Highest Paid Player

The 2023 NFL season began on Thursday night in Kansas City, where Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs began their title defense against the Detroit Lions. Among the top challengers to the Chiefs’ crown are the Cincinnati Bengals, who have made the last two AFC title games where they’ve gone 1-1 against Kansas City for the conference title.

Their star quarterback, Joe Burrow, was eligible for a new deal this offseason and was expected to be handsomely compensated for his rise into superstardom, bringing the Bengals along with him as one of the NFL’s best teams. As the Chiefs first drive of the 2023 season got underway, word broke that Burrow was indeed going to get paid huge money, with a new 5-year, $275 million contract (with $219 million guaranteed) to make him the highest paid player in NFL history.

The timing was rather incredible (and surely not by accident), but Burrow is more than deserving of his new very large contract. He likely won’t be the highest paid player in NFL history for too much longer, as ever young star QB deal seems to take that crown, but what he has done in his first three years in the league has been nothing short of spectacular. While his rookie year ended with an injury in his 10th game, Burrow has spent the last two seasons performing as well as any QB in the league, throwing for 9,086 yards, 69 touchdowns, and 26 interceptions, leading the Bengals to a Super Bowl appearance in 2021 and the AFC title game a year ago. Now he’ll be under center for the Bengals for the foreseeable future and that figures to make Cincinnati a perennial contender, something that hasn’t often been the case in the Bengals’ franchise history.