Joe Burrow’s command of an offense starts long before the ball is snapped, and he laid out the details in a recent appearance on Ja’Marr Chase’s podcast, Chasing No 1.
Burrow said the first job is getting the personnel relayed to the rest of the offense. “First thing that you're getting after the play is the personnel, I'm relaying the personnel to these guys,” Burrow said. “We have signals but I'm also yelling, and sometimes you guys aren't paying attention, and then I get mad because that costs us three of four seconds when you only have 40 or 25 seconds.”
From there, Burrow explained how he and Zac Taylor handle the play call itself. Taylor gives it to him twice, and Burrow is already passing it along in the huddle while the second call is still coming in.
“Zac will call it twice, and then usually I'll get in the huddle and call it at the same time as he's calling it the second time,” Burrow said of his play calling process. “Break the huddle, make sure everybody gets lined up, send whatever motions, check what the front is, check what the safeties are, check everybody's leverage.”
He also broke down how quickly a play can change depending on the defense. Burrow pointed to a pair of short play calls and said the choice comes down to the look he gets up front.
“Sometimes you have two play calls, so a short one would be 'Trey Wright 18 Zap Can 19 Wash',” Burrow explained. “That one you're just reading a specific D-lineman depending on what his technique is then you're gonna run the other play or if there's a blitz to one side then you're gonna wanna run to the other side.”
Burrow and Chase’s connection showed up in another part of the conversation, too. Burrow described how he checks the cornerback across from Chase before the snap and can adjust the route based on what coverage is showing.
“Right before the ball is snapped, I'll start checking is the corner off or is he pressed, and sometimes Ja'Marr and I will have a little signal and turn an isolation route into something else depending on what coverage we're getting on that side,” Burrow said of his changes to Chase's route.
That’s part of the challenge defenses face with Chase, Burrow said. He noted that teams can’t just leave him alone in coverage because the answers keep changing.
“As many different coverages as he gets because you can't just leave him one-on-one, the safety will be over top with the corner inside, or the safety will be low with the corner outside,” Burrow said on how defenses defend Chase. “You have to have all the counters to all those different things based on what you're getting, because you can't just let them take a guy like that away.”
Burrow has built a reputation as one of the league’s sharpest processors, and this conversation gave a clear look at why. It also set up the kind of thing Bengals fans will be watching all season: how he keeps picking apart defenses at the line of scrimmage.
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