Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - Packer Plus

Young QBs ready to carry torch

- Rob Maaddi

Tom Brady spent time chatting with Joe Burrow in his last interview before announcing his retirement. Consider it passing the torch. Saying there will never be another Brady is no exaggerati­on. He won seven Super Bowls, owns nearly every passing record, and set an unparallel­ed level of excellence for more than two decades before walking away still at the top of his game at age 44.

But despite losing the quarterbac­k widely considered the greatest of all time, the NFL has plenty of young stars ready to fill the void.

Burrow gets the first crack at winning the first post-Brady Super Bowl when he leads the Cincinnati Bengals against the Los Angeles Rams next week.

The ultra-cool, super confident, 25year-old Burrow joined Brady on his SiriusXM podcast last week.

“I don’t know if I can be in the conversati­on with this guy yet, but I’m going to work really hard to try, and I think we’re off to a great start and I’m really excited about the opportunit­y we have,” Burrow said.

Brady, who led the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a Super Bowl title last season, fell two wins short of getting a shot to repeat. He was effusive in his praise of Burrow.

“I think Joe has some tools that I didn’t quite have when I was his age, so super impressed by how he’s kinda come into the league, went to Cincinnati — which has been a tough place to play over the years — and two years into his career, after a really tough injury last year, showed a lot of mental and physical toughness coming back and having an incredible season,” Brady said.

“I always love watching quarterbac­ks, certainly young quarterbac­ks, because I feel like there’s certain ways to play the game and to play the game at a high level requires a huge commitment. And I think Joe, even when I saw him at LSU, he makes that commitment. It’s a great thing for me to see as someone who has played this game for a long time. Really happy for Joe and his team.”

Burrow, the No. 1 overall pick in 2020,

made a remarkable comeback from ACL surgery during his rookie season to lead the Bengals to an AFC North title and first Super Bowl appearance in 33 years.

When he finished explaining how he gained enough confidence in his knee to start improvisin­g midway through this season, Brady reminded him: “I had a whole career of playing in the pocket, so I was never gonna make too many plays outside the pocket. It’s a great luxury to have, and I will say it’s much safer to be in the pocket than out of the pocket.”

Burrow was sacked 51 times in the regular season and went down nine more times in a win at Tennessee in the divisional round. His ability to withstand the pressure has impressed Brady.

“I love it because there’s very few ways to display toughness from a quarterbac­k because we don’t play at the line of scrimmage, we don’t block, we don’t tackle, we don’t hit anybody. But the way we can show our toughness is to stand in the pocket, make throws and sometimes you get ... knocked out .... and you gotta get up and go on to the next play,” Brady said.

“You don’t want to ever show anyone,

‘Man, he really got me good on that.’ What I love about Joe’s game is Joe does just that. He gets knocked down, he gets up and he’s ready for the next play, and the team gains a lot of confidence in that. The team needs to know the quarterbac­k is going to be there week in and week out. You have tough injuries like ACL injuries and you just can’t. That’s the reality of that injury but there’s a lot of things you can overcome.”

Brady, Ben Roethlisbe­rger, Drew Brees, Eli Manning and Philip Rivers now have retired, paving the way for a new generation of superstar QBs to dominate the sport for the next decade.

Patrick Mahomes already has won a Super Bowl, an NFL MVP award, and he’s played in four straight AFC title games. Lamar Jackson was NFL MVP in his second season. There’s Josh Allen, Justin Herbert, Kyler Murray. Dak Prescott hasn’t turned 30 yet.

With a mix of youth and veterans like Matthew Stafford, Aaron Rodgers and Russell Wilson still around, the NFL is in good hands at QB even without its biggest icon.

 ?? AP ?? Quarterbac­k Joe Burrow has caught the attention of recently retired Tom Brady for his play during his first two seasons with the Bengals.
AP Quarterbac­k Joe Burrow has caught the attention of recently retired Tom Brady for his play during his first two seasons with the Bengals.

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