02-28-2022, 07:19 PM
(02-28-2022, 04:42 PM)Shake n Blake Wrote: I feel ya on Jordan and Bird. They always invented motivation. Which kinda reminds me of how Chase was still bringing up the drop criticism before the Super Bowl.
With Kobe and Rice, I was specifically referring to going to work immediately after a championship game. Kobe famously was in the gym immediately after losing to the Celtics in the Finals. Jerry Rice would be on the field working immediately after *winning* the Super Bowl.
Young Kobe had a terrible finals performance, I think people only remember because of YouTube. Air-balling 3 pointer after 3 pointer in the Finals. After that loss, Shaq pulled him aside on the court and said one day people are going to fear you taking those shots.
No way we saw the best of Joe Burrow yet. Burrow knew the offense needed work in the playoffs, even after winning the AFC-C game to get to the superbowl he immediately was talking about how the offense could play better. He did this in college too when they won by 50 points and he was talking in the locker room about how they left points on the board and their redzone conversion was bad.
Where some QBs have the arm and athleticism to make up for everything else, Burrow seems to have "everything else" already.
I think we can see the invented motivation, he might not mention the pro-bowl snub meaning anything but it probably motivated him to try and win the super bowl. It's going to be different next time, it'll be interesting to see how he gets back there because the newness of the Bengals getting there will have worn off.
If the Bengals won that superbowl, he might have been the only QB who could have taken that team to the ring. Athletically, Mahomes, Josh Allen and Herbert might have been able to handle the abuse also but I don't think they have the rest of the intangibles - Mahomes gets frustrated when getting sacked a ton. I think Burrow (if he stays healthy!) will be in the league as long as he wants, 20 years.
I liken it to Tiger who was #1 and it wasn't even close and he decided to rework his swing. I think these people don't look behind them, they chase perfection. At some point in your old age you realize perfection isn't attainable, they don't know that yet.
