Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow saw his 2023 campaign come to an end back in November due to a wrist injury that required surgery.

Burrow is still recovering, but he says he is making great progress.

“I think middle of May is when I am expecting to kind of be cleared for full contact and everything,” Burrow told ESPN’s Ben Baby. “Over the next month [to] month and a half, we’ll kind of decide all those things.”

This past season was full of injury issues for Burrow. He began the year dealing with a calf issue over the first several weeks, and when he finally began to shake off that injury, he injured his wrist.

But there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

“I can lift basically normally now, which I’m excited about,” Burrow said. “So the next two months, I’ll basically be just doing what I’ve done for the last couple of years. Just the 12 weeks of extra work in the rearview.”

In the 10 games he played this past year, Burrow threw for 2,309 yards, 15 touchdowns and six interceptions while completing 66.8 percent of his passes and posting a passer rating of 91.

So, did Burrow think that the Bengals could have made a Super Bowl run if he had remained healthy?

He provided a pretty blunt answer.

“Like I said, the injuries were what they were last year, but we weren’t good enough in a lot of different places to make a Super Bowl run in my opinion,” Burrow said.

Cincinnati had previously made it to back-to-back AFC Championship Games, including heading all the way to the Super Bowl in February 2022.

However, it did seem fairly clear in 2023 that the Bengals had some issues that even a healthy Joe Burrow would not have been able to clean up.

We’ll see how Cincinnati improves its roster this offseason.

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