09-03-2024, 11:38 AM
Bengals Brotherhood: How Joe Burrow and Jake Browning's friendship powers Cincinnati's title hopes
"I DON'T LOOK like a quarterback," Jake Browning says.
Standing in the doorway of his offseason home one afternoon last spring, 6-foot-2 and toned but not towering and hulking, he more specifically doesn't look like a starting quarterback. But that's why I'm here. Last December, during a Monday night Bengals-Jaguars game, Joe Burrow was out with a torn ligament in his right wrist. That meant Browning -- undrafted out of Washington in 2019, in his fifth year after spending most of four seasons on the practice squad in Minnesota and Cincinnati -- was in, making his second career start.
For most of the night, he was steady but unremarkable. Then, midway through the fourth quarter, something changed, the way it does for a few backup quarterbacks each year, invisible benchwarmers who get a break, like Brock Purdy or Joshua Dobbs, guys who don't just take the field in relief of the injured starter but display a little magic. The Bengals scored 10 points and the game went into overtime. After Jacksonville punted, Browning took over, leading the Bengals on a 12-play, 42-yard drive to set up the game-winning field goal. In all, he hit 32 of 37 passes for 354 yards. That earned him a postgame interview on the field. Browning explained that he'd had years to study himself, indicating that he didn't like what he saw, a general disposition more than a specific technique, and he had found clarity in how he played best:
"That's just when I'm calm.
Bengals reward QB Browning with 2-year deal
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He said it so casually that it was easy to miss. But there was a metamorphosis in it, something that went beyond talent and luck and smarts. He'd been broken as a quarterback and found a way forward. Troy Aikman noticed it from the booth. Viewing from home, Steve Young later told me that he saw a transformation of sorts, which he recognized from experience. That's why I'm visiting Browning. He had wondered for years, sometimes out loud but mostly in his head, Do I have it? He not only found answers within himself. He found them by studying Burrow -- who as it turns out, is the opposite of everything about quarterbacks that Browning, and maybe all of us, believed was true.
WE ROUND THE corner left out of the entryway and into a living room, with random papers and books scattered, couch pillows vaguely displaced. It's not a mess, not exactly, but it's messy. Browning starts to tidy up. "I can focus on like two or three things really well," he says, more explanation than apology. "Then, outside of that, I struggle to give a s---."
His longtime girlfriend, Stephanie Niles, pokes in and politely introduces herself. She looks around and exits, content to not help Browning solve a problem he created.
"If we didn't live here together, this place would be destroyed," he says.
Neither of them would be in this place, on the south end of Beverly Hills, if he hadn't fought like hell for the past few years to keep his career alive. Niles has been wanting to try acting for years, but their life felt too chaotic to take career risks simultaneously. He was always on the roster bubble. She worked as an associate at the multinational firm PricewaterhouseCoopers and then as a project manager at a company called Decked. But now, with Browning set to sign a two-year contract extension averaging $972,500 a year, she's going to give Hollywood a try. It's not starter dough, not even Chase Daniel-level backup dough -- Browning is 28 years old but basically on a rookie contract -- but better than what nearly happened three years ago.
In 2021, the Vikings told Browning to wait at a hotel for a call, all but offering a role of some sort for him. He had been with the Vikings almost three years, all on the practice squad, zero regular-season appearances, and shaky preseason play. Still, Browning was accustomed to living in ambiguity. He sat at the hotel for hours, not knowing if he'd had a job or not. Finally, his agent called with news that the Vikings were moving on. They had drafted Kellen Mond in the third round in 2021 after a fine Texas A&M career, and they didn't need more quarterbacks -- especially one like Browning, one that appeared to have plateaued. Browning was livid, especially that nobody from the team could be bothered to break the news
He decided to wait 48 hours to see if another team called. Otherwise, he was set to become a volunteer coach at Oregon State, where his father Ed played quarterback in the early '90s. It would not just be a cross-country move. It would be an epic conceit, an admission that he couldn't do it, ensuring that he would be haunted for a life of wondering why he -- after setting a national record with 229 career touchdown passes at Folsom High outside of Sacramento; after earning Pac 12 Offensive Player of the Year at Washington, finishing sixth in Heisman voting, and leading the Huskies to the College Football Playoff -- couldn't cut it at the highest level. Why after all the football and psychology books, why after all the months in therapy and retooling his mechanics with private coaches, he still lacked that seemingly mysterious quality that allows NFL quarterbacks to not just manage chaos but to thrive in it.
"I was beat to s---," he says.
But the Vikings were the Bengals' opponent in the season opener, and head coach Zac Taylor saved Browning with a practice squad offer -- and a chance to share inside information. Taylor also promised Browning that the team invested in practice squad guys, but Browning was too jaded to believe him, and so he threw himself into the work, eager to display his ethic and knowledge, hoping that if Taylor cut him, he might hang on as a coach. Browning met with the entire staff, detailing roster and scheme. He sat with Cincinnati's defensive backs, explaining Minnesota's offensive tendencies. And most importantly, Browning figured out how to fit into the quarterbacks room, where Burrow was entering his second year. Talk too much, and Browning threatened to come off as annoying. Talk too little, he'd be invisible. Browning knew the opponent better than anyone and "did a nice job of finding the middle ground," says Bengals offensive coordinator Dan Pitcher, sticking to scouting reports and helping the starter in any way needed.
When the Vikings game arrived, Browning huddled with Burrow between drives. After the Bengals won in overtime -- after Browning's advice proved true -- the two men found themselves near one another in the locker room.
"Keep talking to me on the sideline," Burrow said. "Nobody really likes to talk to me during the game. They kind of want me to just do my own thing. But it's helpful."
Browning had already noticed that Burrow's thing ran counter to his notion and belief system of how a quarterback is supposed to carry himself. Burrow had good relationships in the locker room, and knew how to coax teammates when needed, each in their own way, but felt no social pressure to talk to anyone. "Unless you engage him, unless he has anything to tell you, he'll not talk to you," Browning says. When Browning was with the Vikings, he had watched Kirk Cousins try to set the tone, living up to the classic quarterback stereotype, seeking out coaches and teammates after a bad series, falling on his sword -- even if he wasn't at fault. Burrow would sit alone, with no urge to sort out what went wrong. Receiver screwed up a route? Let the player and coach fix it. Offensive lineman missed a block? Not his problem. If Pitcher had something to say, he had to come to Burrow. When Pitcher told Burrow, "You just missed that throw, got to put it a little higher," the quarterback often replied, "No, I put it where I wanted."
Burrow and Browning's friendship is built on mutual respect and a shared insight in to trying to solve NFL pressure points. Sam Greene/The Enquirer/USA TODAY NETWORK
As the son of a quarterback, and as a leader of a college program where he was told to be not just one of the nation's best passers but a culture change agent, Browning had been taught to internalize quarterbacking, to accept the burden of the position, schooled to believe that everything was the quarterback's problem. Burrow, however, limited inputs, allowing few voices into his head, a kind of shield. The result was that he acted "like no one's ever questioned him or his ability in his life," Browning says. "Huge blessing."
But Browning also knew that wasn't always the case. While Browning was setting records at Washington, Burrow was a benchwarmer at Ohio State. Urban Meyer famously told him that he "threw like a girl." What hurt Burrow most was that he was irrelevant. The team wasn't counting on him for anything. He took pride in being available and reliable and up to the challenge, and he was alone to wonder why the coaches didn't see what he saw in himself. He transferred to LSU to start a rebuild. "Your career is teetering on the edge," Burrow says. "It's not a very fun place to be."
His rise has since been so steep -- Heisman, national championship, consensus first overall pick, Super Bowl appearance in his second year, foil to the Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes, held back only by injuries -- that it's tempting to see his gifts as preternatural. But Browning doesn't think so. He knows better. Browning has studied quarterbacks enough to conclude that most of them are driven by deep scars. It's how Browning made sense of his own career. His parents divorced when he was young. Jake lived with his dad. He found an outlet at linebacker, taking out cosmic anger by punishing anyone in his path. But Browning also naturally threw a good spiral, and he grinded hard, and he had the position in his blood. From there, Troy Taylor, Folsom High's head coach and now Stanford's, helped Browning become one of the country's greatest ever high school quarterbacks. Maybe, Browning thought, there was something in Burrow that was attainable, transferable, applicable to him.
Burrow and Browning became friends. Same age, no kids, the same species at heart, each trying to help the other. They'd eat out, until Burrow's celebrity -- he has said so many dudes stare at him in public that he feels like a "hot chick" -- got so out of control that they'd grub at his home. Browning grew to be amused at Burrow's contrarian sense of humor. And when Browning would be down after practice, after receiving only six snaps and two of them not going well -- "You think you suck," he says -- Burrow reminded him what that was like for him in college. Left unspoken was that there was a path forward, if Browning could find it. Burrow valued Browning's football expertise and support, "little nuggets" during the game "that you can just put in the back pocket. Sometimes you use them, sometimes you don't, but Jake was always really good at that." Burrow insisted that Browning be on the bench for Super Bowl LVI, despite COVID-19 protocol limits. "Jake was a calm voice on the sideline," Burrow says. "You could tell nothing was too big or too crazy for him."
Browning had survived another year, still on the practice squad. But he wanted to do more than hang on. He wanted to learn how Burrow thought in a discipline that seduces fans and backups, like Browning, into overcomplicating and overanalyzing what the job is at its essence.
"Finding completions," Burrow told Browning. "At the end of the day, that's what it's all about."
At first, that sounded like football's version of throw strikes. Empty and unhelpful. And yet, Browning thought, maybe there was something to that kind of radical simplicity, of casual indifference, of focusing on less but doing more.
THAT 2022 OFFSEASON, Browning studied Burrow on video. What immediately stood out were Burrow's feet, how he was always balanced and in control, even in chaos. Ask Taylor what play from Burrow's career amazes him most, and he mentions not his ruthless aerial efficiency, nor his three wins over Mahomes, nor his dicing up of the 49ers stout defense last year in Santa Clara, but rather a seemingly mundane play against the Panthers from a few years ago. It was second-and-10. Burrow stood in the shotgun and hit receiver Trenton Irwin for 14 yards. But Taylor saw a kind of nonchalant football mastery: Burrow had started to call the cadence, then realized that the Panthers were shifting before the snap, overloading the left side, bringing a zero blitz. The play clock was winding down. Without yelling, waving, frantically signaling -- without the quarterback gymnastics that Peyton Manning forced us to appreciate -- Burrow checked into a slide protection right and waved in a receiver to block. His feet told the rest of the story: He glided left and threw with ease, completely unbothered. "When you are able to do it with the efficiency he did it, and everyone is on the same page, with the calmness he did it, that is when coaches are thinking man, that guy knows exactly what he's doing," Taylor says.
Browning compared that to his own film from the practice squad. The difference was glaring: When he missed a throw, he tended to miss high. That was all footwork. He needed to rebuild his mechanics.
Browning had already done that once. He never thought he had a particularly strong arm, figuring it was genetics. Entering the 2019 draft, scouts agreed. The book on him: heady game manager, stellar leader, undersized, lacking an NFL arm. Browning visited 3DQB, Tom House's throwing mechanics shop in southern California, made famous in the quarterback world by clients such as Tom Brady and Drew Brees. At the time, Browning didn't know that Burrow had visited House, too, in the morass of his Ohio State years. A former major league pitcher and coach, House helped both Burrow and Browning lead with their hips rather than their arm, quickening their release, upping velocity and reducing arm strain. It was the same tenets that House had given to Brady and Brees, but Browning felt as if he had unlocked a secret. With a career at stake, he was possessed. No quarterback logged more sessions at 3DQB during the 2019 offseason than him.
At the combine, Browning polished a pitch to teams, rooted in self-awareness: that he saw the same deficiencies as teams did and he was working his ass off to correct them. If GMs compared his all-arm release in college to its cleaner version after only a few months of work, they would see improvement -- and upside.
"Nobody cared," Browning says.
No teams flew him in for a visit. No teams interviewed him outside of the combine. Only one coach reached out: Klint Kubiak, then the Vikings' quarterbacks coach and now the Saints' offensive coordinator, who texted after Browning's combine throwing session. That was awesome. Great job. On draft day, Browning tried to distract himself, knowing he'd be picked on the last day if at all. During the third round, he was driving in Sacramento when his phone rang, with an NFL city area code.
No way! Browning thought.
"Hello ... "
It was a team, all right -- asking him to consider signing as an undrafted free agent. Soon after, Browning got another call. Same ask. And another. And another, until Browning finally told teams to call his agent, and turned off his phone.
After several years on NFL practice squads, last season Browning finally got a taste of real game action. The next step? Building on what he learned in case his number is called again. AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack
He ended up signing with Kubiak and Minnesota, where he immediately realized that teams had a point. He needed to gain weight and to learn how to play faster. "If I had to play my rookie year," Browning says, "I would not be in the NFL." Both Klint and Gary Kubiak -- Klint's father, John Elway's longtime backup, and Super Bowl-winning head coach in Denver -- saw a high football IQ and coached Browning hard. Browning played scout team quarterback against Minnesota's starting defense, then switched to safety against Kirk Cousins. Gary would stand near Browning in the secondary. "I challenged him," Gary says. "If he was running that play, how would he see it? I made him do it all year with me." The night before the Vikings' 2019 opener, Klint met with the quarterbacks and quizzed them on the game plan, questions that he called Stumpies. With no chance of action, Browning didn't study hard. Stumpies "exposed him," Klint says now, laughing. "From then on, he took it personal."
By 2022, when Browning was studying Burrow's feet, Browning had realized that NFL coaches specialize in scheme, not technique. It was more efficient to not ask a lot of questions, lest too many voices enter his head. Better to solve problems himself, keeping the circle small. Browning spent the offseason working on his balance, with California quarterback coach Jordan Palmer. For years Browning had been taught to put 60% of his weight on his back foot and 40 on his front. He was missing high because he was putting too much weight on his back foot. Palmer helped correct the technique so that his balance was split 50-50. During training camp, coaches noticed Browning's improvement. "He became a more consistent thrower," Pitcher says. "That stood out."
But the feet didn't fully explain Burrow, how he seemed to play unburdened and without, well, guilt.
TRAINING CAMP 2022, Bengals quarterbacks were throwing basic timing routes. Browning dropped back and set to throw. But the receiver stumbled out of the break. Browning held the ball an extra beat, waiting for his target to gain his feet, hit him, then moved on.
Later that day, Zac Taylor called him into a meeting and pulled up a clip of the throw.
"So this play right here," Taylor said. "This is a bad habit for you."
Taylor told Browning that he needed to pull the trigger on time, otherwise he'd condition himself to hold it too long. "I want to see you playing in rhythm," Taylor said. "That's how we're going to need to you play if you're ever the starter."
Taylor knew what Browning was thinking: If that pass had been intercepted, it could kill his career. That's what Taylor thought in 2005, when he was a struggling junior quarterback at Nebraska, conditioned to believe that if something bad happened, it was always on the quarterback. He had been practicing a similar timing route and held the ball to account for the receiver. Nebraska head coach Bill Callahan made Taylor throw the route again, and again, and again, both with a receiver and on air, until his message -- that the quarterback can't control how others play -- resonated. "The timing isn't dictated by the receiver," Callahan told Taylor. "It's dictated by you."
Taylor went on to win Big 12 Offensive Player of the Year as a senior. He later took the mentality to coaching, learning how to let go, training himself to not lose sight of the big picture by getting mired in minutiae. And he passed that lesson to Burrow. It melded perfectly with Burrow's wiring -- to worry most about his job rather than everyone else's -- and he elevated it to Pro Bowl levels, a tenet simple yet smart. It's why Burrow felt no pressure to assume responsibility of getting the locker room right. If he played well, if he focused on his two or three responsibilities on each play, 60 or so times over the course of a game, he knew that they'd likely win. It's why Browning wanted to reformat himself to worry about those two or three things, rather than how he had learned to quarterback, by being "roped into being a player-coach."
In the meeting, Taylor could tell that Browning intellectually understood the message. But Browning was scared, a dull panic that Taylor knew all too well. Taylor had gone undrafted in 2007 and was cut by the Bucs literally as he was zipping his bag for training camp, killing a dream before it had a chance. But Taylor was trying to implore Browning to trust him, impressing upon him to realize that he had something valuable, even if he couldn't see it: a coach who believed in him.
"So what if it goes bad in practice?" Taylor told Browning. "I don't care. I'm the head coach, I'm the playcaller, and I'm telling you I don't care."
"Greatest thing a coach had ever said to me," Browning says now.
BEING A BACKUP quarterback will take your mind to dangerous places, with all the mixed messages that attend being an invisible member of the roster coupled with the fact that quarterbacks -- even backups -- have never been more vital. Being a starting quarterback is a mind warp of its own. The franchise is essentially reverse engineered to help you succeed. Yet, at the end of the day, you're alone. Browning has noticed that Burrow's pregame routine seems designed to further separate himself. Burrow sits in the locker room and stares in silence, disconnecting from the known world, trying to flush emotion, all of the variances of the season, of what teammates say, of what coaches say, of what the media say, of what his family and friends say, entering a tunnel with only his thoughts of what kind of game he needs to play to win ... until he's insulated in a divine space of no thought at all. "There's a place that you have to be able to find within yourself to perform at the highest level," Burrow says. "It's something not a lot of people can find. It becomes a mentally taxing process."
By 2023, Browning had beaten out Trevor Siemian to be Burrow's backup, finally making the active roster in his fifth year. His next goal was trying to not lapse into a tailspin, lost in his own head, an identity crisis that occasionally hit him over the years. Who was he as a quarterback? He didn't know. In five seasons he had played well in practice but in zero regular-season games. "I had no film," he says. In college he had been thrown into the fire; his NFL career felt like an endless prelude. "The further you get from that person, you start to feel, am I even that guy anymore?" Pitcher says. Browning had one thing going for him: "Energy to stay engaged, even though I wasn't reaping any benefits," he says. "Not a lot of guys could do it. That was my strength."
Then, last July, Burrow strained his calf and Browning took first-team reps. "I could feel my confidence growing every week," he says. Burrow returned for the regular season, but Browning was suddenly a snap away. He had always spent the final moments before games worrying, a fear that he had to prepare twice as hard as others just to play average. He had met with a psychologist and practiced visualization. He had read Steve Young's autobiography, learning to cope with anxiety and to apply the best parts of outlook and execution from the man in front of him. Browning decided to treat preseason games as if they were the playoffs. He stayed at the team hotel, unlike most veterans. He noticed that established players would goof off before kickoff, so he went out of his way to avoid them. And he started a different pregame routine, something more diabolical, something more like Burrow. He would eat a banana, get a coffee, and listen to a pair of loud and chaotic songs, "Lord Pretty Flacko Jodye 2" by A$AP Rocky and "Unethical & Deceitful" by Mozzy, lyrics describing disrespect, pounding on repeat between his ears until he drifted into a sort of "dark place" where "you don't feel anything."
"I'm turning into a serial killer," Browning told Burrow one day.
"Oh yeah," Burrow said. "That's where you gotta be."
"No emotion."
"Yeah, that's how I play my best."
Browning started doing it before practice, even before weightlifting, taking it to an extreme. Something that felt like an epiphany within professional football was incompatible with life outside it. He and Niles would sit together and he'd zone out, oblivious to situation and circumstance, and she'd clap in his face. "Hey! I'm right here," she said. "Be here." Like Burrow, Browning could come off as disengaged if not vaguely sociopathic, a quarterback who couldn't be bothered -- only without Burrow's résumé. But he told people to not take it personally. He was learning a new version of himself, or learning how to tap into a preexisting but dormant version of himself. And then, when the season started, Browning stood on the sideline and watched Burrow use the mindset for its intended purpose, continuing his trajectory as one of the game's premier quarterbacks.
Midway through the second quarter of a November Thursday night game against Baltimore, Burrow was hit by Ravens defensive lineman Jadeveon Clowney and landed on his right wrist, bending it back. On the next play, Burrow threw a touchdown pass to Joe Mixon -- and immediately hunched over. His fingers were jagged; the top of his hand was swelling fast. At first, Browning thought little of it; he'd seen Burrow shake off pain before. Burrow tried to throw on the sideline. The ball slipped out of his hand. He squatted and stared at the ground.
"I literally can't throw," Burrow said.
Here we go, Browning thought.
AT FIRST, IT didn't go well. Cincinnati lost to Baltimore and to Pittsburgh a week later. The Jaguars on "Monday Night Football" were next. Browning knew that his margin for error -- he needed the locker room to believe that the season wasn't over -- was dangerously thin. "There's a pressure with playing quarterback," Browning says. "Some people like it. Everybody hates it at some point. How they deal with it when it's going like s--- is how you become who you're going to be."
Browning felt that they'd lost to Pittsburgh because they tried to run a game plan for a quarterback with Burrow's experience, rather than one making his first career start. Cincinnati answered Pittsburgh's blitzes by flooding the secondary with receivers, figuring Browning could read and react as quickly as Burrow. Browning went along with it, against a promise he had made to himself: that if he ever got a break, he'd advocate for himself. When Browning was in Minnesota, he watched how reticent Cousins was to push back on coaches. Head coach Mike Zimmer seemed to resent the three-year, fully guaranteed $84 million contract that the front office had given to Cousins, leaving less cap space for his prized defenders. Cousins was too much of a pleaser to raise disagreements over game plans, figuring that his job was to make it work. He vented to Browning instead. "Say it to the coach," Browning told Cousins. "They handed you $84 million, and they're paying you that either way. You're safer than them. The way that's it operated now, they think they're safer than you. Put that pressure on them. They need to be held accountable, too. At the end of the day, if this all blows up because of the things you're saying, they're going to blame you."
Browning asked for more max-man protections, and Pitcher welcomed the input. Against the Jaguars, Browning wasn't perfect, but he wasn't trying to be perfect. He was trying to do what Burrow would do: find completions. He checked to a screen pass on third down against a blitz that got a first down. He threw deep to Ja'Marr Chase early in the second half for a 76-yard touchdown. Soon, he was in overtime. When the Bengals faced a third-and-10, a simple hook route to Tee Higgins didn't look so simple. The play called for Browning to take three steps from the shotgun and then fire. Problem was, the Jaguars had it covered and Browning knew that Higgins needed extra time to get open. Taylor's ethos of playing in rhythm was about to be tested. Browning adjusted by taking five steps rather than three. He threw on time, and the ball hit Higgins at the sticks for a first down. It felt natural.
Calm, even.
When Browning was in Minnesota he noticed the way then Vikings QB Kirk Cousins handled the responsibility of quarterback, and notes that Burrow's response is very different. Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images
THE NEXT DAY in the quarterbacks room, Burrow told Browning:
"You made a career for yourself."
But Browning wanted more than a few guaranteed years as a backup. He had waited five years for this. He wanted to keep winning -- and to slay any lasting preconceptions. Two weeks later the Bengals faced the Vikings. Browning was edgy, facing different coaches but the same franchise that gave him a lifeline and took it away. Late in the third quarter, Cincinnati trailed 17-3. Browning got the ball, and something happened over the next 26 minutes, which he still struggles to articulate in anything other than strictly technical terms, of reads and progressions and footwork and "getting a feel for what they're doing." The Vikings had elaborate pressure packages that relied on forcing punts and limiting the opposing offense's chances to figure them out. As the game went on, the Bengals were finally able to a sustain drive. "I kinda knew what was coming," Browning says. It was a sense of knowing and command, of simplicity and flow, of seeing and reacting, of things he wasn't thinking as much as what he was. He threw a touchdown pass to Higgins on the first play of the fourth quarter, capping a drive in which Browning went 7-for-7 and cutting the lead to seven. Less than two minutes later, Cincinnati got the ball again. Browning hit 4 of 6 passes, and Mixon took it in from a yard out. The game was tied.
With 3:48 left, Browning came on down 24-17, with a chance to not only punk his old employer but prove that the game-winning drive against Jacksonville wasn't luck. A dart over the middle. A soft flare outside. A zippy touch pass at the hashmark, threaded over the linebackers and under the safeties. Another flare outside. Then, with 45 seconds left, he danced away from pressure up the middle and threw it high and long to Higgins, who plucked it in a thicket of arms and twisted to break the goal line. Tied in overtime and facing a third-and-9, Browning got the ball, and he managed to not only separate himself as a backup but as a starter.
The biggest gap in the NFL is between the quarterbacks who can execute a game plan and those who can stray outside of it to win games. This play was designed for Browning to fire down the middle, but the Vikings had set a trap, hoping to dupe him into throwing into traffic. The rush broke through. Browning had nowhere to go, so he ran right. Tyler Boyd was open by inches on a crossing route. Off balance and options limited to one, Browning threw upfield and fit the ball into a slimming window. It ended up being a 44-yard catch-and-run that set up the game-winning field goal. He threw for 240 yards and two touchdowns, leading the Bengals to 24 points in the fourth quarter and overtime.
On the sideline, Browning broke -- "exploded," in his words -- a release directed at the Vikings but also the entire league, five years in the making. He spiked his helmet with two hands, found a camera lens, and with eyes narrowing and scary, stared into the souls of everyone watching --
"SHOULDA NEVER F---ING CUT ME!"
He looked, by god, like a quarterback.
ON A RECENT July evening, Browning enters a bar and grill not far from Washington's campus. A few days ago Burrow was in Paris for a fashion show, as superstar quarterbacks sometimes do. He wore a black suit, with a hole in the back and no undershirt, going viral and gifting Browning and the rest of the locker room with fresh material. Browning has proved that he belongs, but he's not Tom Brady or Kurt Warner or Brock Purdy -- not someone who never leaves the field again. Not yet, at least. His path is more typical. One of the hardest transformations for a backup is returning to the headset after a taste of the stage. Browning sees himself as a starter. It might happen one day, but not this year, not unless something terrible happens to one of his dearest friends. His challenge is to hang onto possibility, rekindling the energy that sustained and separated him for five years, knowing it might not be necessary. Knowing that 2023 could be it.
"Sucks," he says.
Prior to his NFL career, Browning was a highly touted QB at the University of Washington who won the Pac-12 Offensive Player of the Year Award in 2016. Otto Greule Jr/Getty Images
There might be another Browning this season. Maybe Kyle Trask in Tampa. Or Hendon Hooker in Detroit. Who knows, maybe Stetson Bennett in L.A. or Tyson Bagent in Chicago. The more far-fetched, the more likely. Or maybe, those backup quarterbacks won't learn it. So many quarterbacks -- including Kellen Mond, whom the Vikings drafted and cut Browning for -- are no longer in the league. What Browning knows -- what dozens of afterthoughts over the years know, what Brady and Warner mastered -- is neither easily attainable nor absolute. But what a few quarterbacks come to realize is that if they can just hang on and survive and learn, they will know something precious that can't be displayed at a pro day or on draft day: what it's like to piece themselves whole again. Quarterbacks don't learn that until the game moves on without them.
BROWNING SPENDS A midsummer morning throwing to a collection of fringe guys. Those are his boys, both because they're former Huskies and because they know what it's like to hang onto a dream. They're training at a high school field in Bellevue, Washington, minutes before a youth lacrosse camp begins. During a speed drill, a player is clearly out of shape, knocking his feet into cones, before he bolts for the edge of the field and hurls. Nobody glances at him. The drill continues, bodies filling the void, as football goes, as it always will. "You had one job," Browning says later. He throws for a few hours, until kids in lacrosse gear trickle onto the field.
The former Huskies walk off. A kid stares at them.
"Do you play for the NFL?" he asks one of the guys.
"No," he says. He points to Browning, five or so yards away. "But he does."
"What team?"
"Bengals."
"Who is he?"
"You know who Jake Browning is?"
"No."
Browning doesn't slow. The sun is high now. There are drills to run again tomorrow. Training camp starts next week. He walks toward the parking lot, with an NFL ball in his hand
"I DON'T LOOK like a quarterback," Jake Browning says.
Standing in the doorway of his offseason home one afternoon last spring, 6-foot-2 and toned but not towering and hulking, he more specifically doesn't look like a starting quarterback. But that's why I'm here. Last December, during a Monday night Bengals-Jaguars game, Joe Burrow was out with a torn ligament in his right wrist. That meant Browning -- undrafted out of Washington in 2019, in his fifth year after spending most of four seasons on the practice squad in Minnesota and Cincinnati -- was in, making his second career start.
For most of the night, he was steady but unremarkable. Then, midway through the fourth quarter, something changed, the way it does for a few backup quarterbacks each year, invisible benchwarmers who get a break, like Brock Purdy or Joshua Dobbs, guys who don't just take the field in relief of the injured starter but display a little magic. The Bengals scored 10 points and the game went into overtime. After Jacksonville punted, Browning took over, leading the Bengals on a 12-play, 42-yard drive to set up the game-winning field goal. In all, he hit 32 of 37 passes for 354 yards. That earned him a postgame interview on the field. Browning explained that he'd had years to study himself, indicating that he didn't like what he saw, a general disposition more than a specific technique, and he had found clarity in how he played best:
"That's just when I'm calm.
Bengals reward QB Browning with 2-year deal
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He said it so casually that it was easy to miss. But there was a metamorphosis in it, something that went beyond talent and luck and smarts. He'd been broken as a quarterback and found a way forward. Troy Aikman noticed it from the booth. Viewing from home, Steve Young later told me that he saw a transformation of sorts, which he recognized from experience. That's why I'm visiting Browning. He had wondered for years, sometimes out loud but mostly in his head, Do I have it? He not only found answers within himself. He found them by studying Burrow -- who as it turns out, is the opposite of everything about quarterbacks that Browning, and maybe all of us, believed was true.
WE ROUND THE corner left out of the entryway and into a living room, with random papers and books scattered, couch pillows vaguely displaced. It's not a mess, not exactly, but it's messy. Browning starts to tidy up. "I can focus on like two or three things really well," he says, more explanation than apology. "Then, outside of that, I struggle to give a s---."
His longtime girlfriend, Stephanie Niles, pokes in and politely introduces herself. She looks around and exits, content to not help Browning solve a problem he created.
"If we didn't live here together, this place would be destroyed," he says.
Neither of them would be in this place, on the south end of Beverly Hills, if he hadn't fought like hell for the past few years to keep his career alive. Niles has been wanting to try acting for years, but their life felt too chaotic to take career risks simultaneously. He was always on the roster bubble. She worked as an associate at the multinational firm PricewaterhouseCoopers and then as a project manager at a company called Decked. But now, with Browning set to sign a two-year contract extension averaging $972,500 a year, she's going to give Hollywood a try. It's not starter dough, not even Chase Daniel-level backup dough -- Browning is 28 years old but basically on a rookie contract -- but better than what nearly happened three years ago.
In 2021, the Vikings told Browning to wait at a hotel for a call, all but offering a role of some sort for him. He had been with the Vikings almost three years, all on the practice squad, zero regular-season appearances, and shaky preseason play. Still, Browning was accustomed to living in ambiguity. He sat at the hotel for hours, not knowing if he'd had a job or not. Finally, his agent called with news that the Vikings were moving on. They had drafted Kellen Mond in the third round in 2021 after a fine Texas A&M career, and they didn't need more quarterbacks -- especially one like Browning, one that appeared to have plateaued. Browning was livid, especially that nobody from the team could be bothered to break the news
He decided to wait 48 hours to see if another team called. Otherwise, he was set to become a volunteer coach at Oregon State, where his father Ed played quarterback in the early '90s. It would not just be a cross-country move. It would be an epic conceit, an admission that he couldn't do it, ensuring that he would be haunted for a life of wondering why he -- after setting a national record with 229 career touchdown passes at Folsom High outside of Sacramento; after earning Pac 12 Offensive Player of the Year at Washington, finishing sixth in Heisman voting, and leading the Huskies to the College Football Playoff -- couldn't cut it at the highest level. Why after all the football and psychology books, why after all the months in therapy and retooling his mechanics with private coaches, he still lacked that seemingly mysterious quality that allows NFL quarterbacks to not just manage chaos but to thrive in it.
"I was beat to s---," he says.
But the Vikings were the Bengals' opponent in the season opener, and head coach Zac Taylor saved Browning with a practice squad offer -- and a chance to share inside information. Taylor also promised Browning that the team invested in practice squad guys, but Browning was too jaded to believe him, and so he threw himself into the work, eager to display his ethic and knowledge, hoping that if Taylor cut him, he might hang on as a coach. Browning met with the entire staff, detailing roster and scheme. He sat with Cincinnati's defensive backs, explaining Minnesota's offensive tendencies. And most importantly, Browning figured out how to fit into the quarterbacks room, where Burrow was entering his second year. Talk too much, and Browning threatened to come off as annoying. Talk too little, he'd be invisible. Browning knew the opponent better than anyone and "did a nice job of finding the middle ground," says Bengals offensive coordinator Dan Pitcher, sticking to scouting reports and helping the starter in any way needed.
When the Vikings game arrived, Browning huddled with Burrow between drives. After the Bengals won in overtime -- after Browning's advice proved true -- the two men found themselves near one another in the locker room.
"Keep talking to me on the sideline," Burrow said. "Nobody really likes to talk to me during the game. They kind of want me to just do my own thing. But it's helpful."
Browning had already noticed that Burrow's thing ran counter to his notion and belief system of how a quarterback is supposed to carry himself. Burrow had good relationships in the locker room, and knew how to coax teammates when needed, each in their own way, but felt no social pressure to talk to anyone. "Unless you engage him, unless he has anything to tell you, he'll not talk to you," Browning says. When Browning was with the Vikings, he had watched Kirk Cousins try to set the tone, living up to the classic quarterback stereotype, seeking out coaches and teammates after a bad series, falling on his sword -- even if he wasn't at fault. Burrow would sit alone, with no urge to sort out what went wrong. Receiver screwed up a route? Let the player and coach fix it. Offensive lineman missed a block? Not his problem. If Pitcher had something to say, he had to come to Burrow. When Pitcher told Burrow, "You just missed that throw, got to put it a little higher," the quarterback often replied, "No, I put it where I wanted."
Burrow and Browning's friendship is built on mutual respect and a shared insight in to trying to solve NFL pressure points. Sam Greene/The Enquirer/USA TODAY NETWORK
As the son of a quarterback, and as a leader of a college program where he was told to be not just one of the nation's best passers but a culture change agent, Browning had been taught to internalize quarterbacking, to accept the burden of the position, schooled to believe that everything was the quarterback's problem. Burrow, however, limited inputs, allowing few voices into his head, a kind of shield. The result was that he acted "like no one's ever questioned him or his ability in his life," Browning says. "Huge blessing."
But Browning also knew that wasn't always the case. While Browning was setting records at Washington, Burrow was a benchwarmer at Ohio State. Urban Meyer famously told him that he "threw like a girl." What hurt Burrow most was that he was irrelevant. The team wasn't counting on him for anything. He took pride in being available and reliable and up to the challenge, and he was alone to wonder why the coaches didn't see what he saw in himself. He transferred to LSU to start a rebuild. "Your career is teetering on the edge," Burrow says. "It's not a very fun place to be."
His rise has since been so steep -- Heisman, national championship, consensus first overall pick, Super Bowl appearance in his second year, foil to the Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes, held back only by injuries -- that it's tempting to see his gifts as preternatural. But Browning doesn't think so. He knows better. Browning has studied quarterbacks enough to conclude that most of them are driven by deep scars. It's how Browning made sense of his own career. His parents divorced when he was young. Jake lived with his dad. He found an outlet at linebacker, taking out cosmic anger by punishing anyone in his path. But Browning also naturally threw a good spiral, and he grinded hard, and he had the position in his blood. From there, Troy Taylor, Folsom High's head coach and now Stanford's, helped Browning become one of the country's greatest ever high school quarterbacks. Maybe, Browning thought, there was something in Burrow that was attainable, transferable, applicable to him.
Burrow and Browning became friends. Same age, no kids, the same species at heart, each trying to help the other. They'd eat out, until Burrow's celebrity -- he has said so many dudes stare at him in public that he feels like a "hot chick" -- got so out of control that they'd grub at his home. Browning grew to be amused at Burrow's contrarian sense of humor. And when Browning would be down after practice, after receiving only six snaps and two of them not going well -- "You think you suck," he says -- Burrow reminded him what that was like for him in college. Left unspoken was that there was a path forward, if Browning could find it. Burrow valued Browning's football expertise and support, "little nuggets" during the game "that you can just put in the back pocket. Sometimes you use them, sometimes you don't, but Jake was always really good at that." Burrow insisted that Browning be on the bench for Super Bowl LVI, despite COVID-19 protocol limits. "Jake was a calm voice on the sideline," Burrow says. "You could tell nothing was too big or too crazy for him."
Browning had survived another year, still on the practice squad. But he wanted to do more than hang on. He wanted to learn how Burrow thought in a discipline that seduces fans and backups, like Browning, into overcomplicating and overanalyzing what the job is at its essence.
"Finding completions," Burrow told Browning. "At the end of the day, that's what it's all about."
At first, that sounded like football's version of throw strikes. Empty and unhelpful. And yet, Browning thought, maybe there was something to that kind of radical simplicity, of casual indifference, of focusing on less but doing more.
THAT 2022 OFFSEASON, Browning studied Burrow on video. What immediately stood out were Burrow's feet, how he was always balanced and in control, even in chaos. Ask Taylor what play from Burrow's career amazes him most, and he mentions not his ruthless aerial efficiency, nor his three wins over Mahomes, nor his dicing up of the 49ers stout defense last year in Santa Clara, but rather a seemingly mundane play against the Panthers from a few years ago. It was second-and-10. Burrow stood in the shotgun and hit receiver Trenton Irwin for 14 yards. But Taylor saw a kind of nonchalant football mastery: Burrow had started to call the cadence, then realized that the Panthers were shifting before the snap, overloading the left side, bringing a zero blitz. The play clock was winding down. Without yelling, waving, frantically signaling -- without the quarterback gymnastics that Peyton Manning forced us to appreciate -- Burrow checked into a slide protection right and waved in a receiver to block. His feet told the rest of the story: He glided left and threw with ease, completely unbothered. "When you are able to do it with the efficiency he did it, and everyone is on the same page, with the calmness he did it, that is when coaches are thinking man, that guy knows exactly what he's doing," Taylor says.
Browning compared that to his own film from the practice squad. The difference was glaring: When he missed a throw, he tended to miss high. That was all footwork. He needed to rebuild his mechanics.
Browning had already done that once. He never thought he had a particularly strong arm, figuring it was genetics. Entering the 2019 draft, scouts agreed. The book on him: heady game manager, stellar leader, undersized, lacking an NFL arm. Browning visited 3DQB, Tom House's throwing mechanics shop in southern California, made famous in the quarterback world by clients such as Tom Brady and Drew Brees. At the time, Browning didn't know that Burrow had visited House, too, in the morass of his Ohio State years. A former major league pitcher and coach, House helped both Burrow and Browning lead with their hips rather than their arm, quickening their release, upping velocity and reducing arm strain. It was the same tenets that House had given to Brady and Brees, but Browning felt as if he had unlocked a secret. With a career at stake, he was possessed. No quarterback logged more sessions at 3DQB during the 2019 offseason than him.
At the combine, Browning polished a pitch to teams, rooted in self-awareness: that he saw the same deficiencies as teams did and he was working his ass off to correct them. If GMs compared his all-arm release in college to its cleaner version after only a few months of work, they would see improvement -- and upside.
"Nobody cared," Browning says.
No teams flew him in for a visit. No teams interviewed him outside of the combine. Only one coach reached out: Klint Kubiak, then the Vikings' quarterbacks coach and now the Saints' offensive coordinator, who texted after Browning's combine throwing session. That was awesome. Great job. On draft day, Browning tried to distract himself, knowing he'd be picked on the last day if at all. During the third round, he was driving in Sacramento when his phone rang, with an NFL city area code.
No way! Browning thought.
"Hello ... "
It was a team, all right -- asking him to consider signing as an undrafted free agent. Soon after, Browning got another call. Same ask. And another. And another, until Browning finally told teams to call his agent, and turned off his phone.
After several years on NFL practice squads, last season Browning finally got a taste of real game action. The next step? Building on what he learned in case his number is called again. AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack
He ended up signing with Kubiak and Minnesota, where he immediately realized that teams had a point. He needed to gain weight and to learn how to play faster. "If I had to play my rookie year," Browning says, "I would not be in the NFL." Both Klint and Gary Kubiak -- Klint's father, John Elway's longtime backup, and Super Bowl-winning head coach in Denver -- saw a high football IQ and coached Browning hard. Browning played scout team quarterback against Minnesota's starting defense, then switched to safety against Kirk Cousins. Gary would stand near Browning in the secondary. "I challenged him," Gary says. "If he was running that play, how would he see it? I made him do it all year with me." The night before the Vikings' 2019 opener, Klint met with the quarterbacks and quizzed them on the game plan, questions that he called Stumpies. With no chance of action, Browning didn't study hard. Stumpies "exposed him," Klint says now, laughing. "From then on, he took it personal."
By 2022, when Browning was studying Burrow's feet, Browning had realized that NFL coaches specialize in scheme, not technique. It was more efficient to not ask a lot of questions, lest too many voices enter his head. Better to solve problems himself, keeping the circle small. Browning spent the offseason working on his balance, with California quarterback coach Jordan Palmer. For years Browning had been taught to put 60% of his weight on his back foot and 40 on his front. He was missing high because he was putting too much weight on his back foot. Palmer helped correct the technique so that his balance was split 50-50. During training camp, coaches noticed Browning's improvement. "He became a more consistent thrower," Pitcher says. "That stood out."
But the feet didn't fully explain Burrow, how he seemed to play unburdened and without, well, guilt.
TRAINING CAMP 2022, Bengals quarterbacks were throwing basic timing routes. Browning dropped back and set to throw. But the receiver stumbled out of the break. Browning held the ball an extra beat, waiting for his target to gain his feet, hit him, then moved on.
Later that day, Zac Taylor called him into a meeting and pulled up a clip of the throw.
"So this play right here," Taylor said. "This is a bad habit for you."
Taylor told Browning that he needed to pull the trigger on time, otherwise he'd condition himself to hold it too long. "I want to see you playing in rhythm," Taylor said. "That's how we're going to need to you play if you're ever the starter."
Taylor knew what Browning was thinking: If that pass had been intercepted, it could kill his career. That's what Taylor thought in 2005, when he was a struggling junior quarterback at Nebraska, conditioned to believe that if something bad happened, it was always on the quarterback. He had been practicing a similar timing route and held the ball to account for the receiver. Nebraska head coach Bill Callahan made Taylor throw the route again, and again, and again, both with a receiver and on air, until his message -- that the quarterback can't control how others play -- resonated. "The timing isn't dictated by the receiver," Callahan told Taylor. "It's dictated by you."
Taylor went on to win Big 12 Offensive Player of the Year as a senior. He later took the mentality to coaching, learning how to let go, training himself to not lose sight of the big picture by getting mired in minutiae. And he passed that lesson to Burrow. It melded perfectly with Burrow's wiring -- to worry most about his job rather than everyone else's -- and he elevated it to Pro Bowl levels, a tenet simple yet smart. It's why Burrow felt no pressure to assume responsibility of getting the locker room right. If he played well, if he focused on his two or three responsibilities on each play, 60 or so times over the course of a game, he knew that they'd likely win. It's why Browning wanted to reformat himself to worry about those two or three things, rather than how he had learned to quarterback, by being "roped into being a player-coach."
In the meeting, Taylor could tell that Browning intellectually understood the message. But Browning was scared, a dull panic that Taylor knew all too well. Taylor had gone undrafted in 2007 and was cut by the Bucs literally as he was zipping his bag for training camp, killing a dream before it had a chance. But Taylor was trying to implore Browning to trust him, impressing upon him to realize that he had something valuable, even if he couldn't see it: a coach who believed in him.
"So what if it goes bad in practice?" Taylor told Browning. "I don't care. I'm the head coach, I'm the playcaller, and I'm telling you I don't care."
"Greatest thing a coach had ever said to me," Browning says now.
BEING A BACKUP quarterback will take your mind to dangerous places, with all the mixed messages that attend being an invisible member of the roster coupled with the fact that quarterbacks -- even backups -- have never been more vital. Being a starting quarterback is a mind warp of its own. The franchise is essentially reverse engineered to help you succeed. Yet, at the end of the day, you're alone. Browning has noticed that Burrow's pregame routine seems designed to further separate himself. Burrow sits in the locker room and stares in silence, disconnecting from the known world, trying to flush emotion, all of the variances of the season, of what teammates say, of what coaches say, of what the media say, of what his family and friends say, entering a tunnel with only his thoughts of what kind of game he needs to play to win ... until he's insulated in a divine space of no thought at all. "There's a place that you have to be able to find within yourself to perform at the highest level," Burrow says. "It's something not a lot of people can find. It becomes a mentally taxing process."
By 2023, Browning had beaten out Trevor Siemian to be Burrow's backup, finally making the active roster in his fifth year. His next goal was trying to not lapse into a tailspin, lost in his own head, an identity crisis that occasionally hit him over the years. Who was he as a quarterback? He didn't know. In five seasons he had played well in practice but in zero regular-season games. "I had no film," he says. In college he had been thrown into the fire; his NFL career felt like an endless prelude. "The further you get from that person, you start to feel, am I even that guy anymore?" Pitcher says. Browning had one thing going for him: "Energy to stay engaged, even though I wasn't reaping any benefits," he says. "Not a lot of guys could do it. That was my strength."
Then, last July, Burrow strained his calf and Browning took first-team reps. "I could feel my confidence growing every week," he says. Burrow returned for the regular season, but Browning was suddenly a snap away. He had always spent the final moments before games worrying, a fear that he had to prepare twice as hard as others just to play average. He had met with a psychologist and practiced visualization. He had read Steve Young's autobiography, learning to cope with anxiety and to apply the best parts of outlook and execution from the man in front of him. Browning decided to treat preseason games as if they were the playoffs. He stayed at the team hotel, unlike most veterans. He noticed that established players would goof off before kickoff, so he went out of his way to avoid them. And he started a different pregame routine, something more diabolical, something more like Burrow. He would eat a banana, get a coffee, and listen to a pair of loud and chaotic songs, "Lord Pretty Flacko Jodye 2" by A$AP Rocky and "Unethical & Deceitful" by Mozzy, lyrics describing disrespect, pounding on repeat between his ears until he drifted into a sort of "dark place" where "you don't feel anything."
"I'm turning into a serial killer," Browning told Burrow one day.
"Oh yeah," Burrow said. "That's where you gotta be."
"No emotion."
"Yeah, that's how I play my best."
Browning started doing it before practice, even before weightlifting, taking it to an extreme. Something that felt like an epiphany within professional football was incompatible with life outside it. He and Niles would sit together and he'd zone out, oblivious to situation and circumstance, and she'd clap in his face. "Hey! I'm right here," she said. "Be here." Like Burrow, Browning could come off as disengaged if not vaguely sociopathic, a quarterback who couldn't be bothered -- only without Burrow's résumé. But he told people to not take it personally. He was learning a new version of himself, or learning how to tap into a preexisting but dormant version of himself. And then, when the season started, Browning stood on the sideline and watched Burrow use the mindset for its intended purpose, continuing his trajectory as one of the game's premier quarterbacks.
Midway through the second quarter of a November Thursday night game against Baltimore, Burrow was hit by Ravens defensive lineman Jadeveon Clowney and landed on his right wrist, bending it back. On the next play, Burrow threw a touchdown pass to Joe Mixon -- and immediately hunched over. His fingers were jagged; the top of his hand was swelling fast. At first, Browning thought little of it; he'd seen Burrow shake off pain before. Burrow tried to throw on the sideline. The ball slipped out of his hand. He squatted and stared at the ground.
"I literally can't throw," Burrow said.
Here we go, Browning thought.
AT FIRST, IT didn't go well. Cincinnati lost to Baltimore and to Pittsburgh a week later. The Jaguars on "Monday Night Football" were next. Browning knew that his margin for error -- he needed the locker room to believe that the season wasn't over -- was dangerously thin. "There's a pressure with playing quarterback," Browning says. "Some people like it. Everybody hates it at some point. How they deal with it when it's going like s--- is how you become who you're going to be."
Browning felt that they'd lost to Pittsburgh because they tried to run a game plan for a quarterback with Burrow's experience, rather than one making his first career start. Cincinnati answered Pittsburgh's blitzes by flooding the secondary with receivers, figuring Browning could read and react as quickly as Burrow. Browning went along with it, against a promise he had made to himself: that if he ever got a break, he'd advocate for himself. When Browning was in Minnesota, he watched how reticent Cousins was to push back on coaches. Head coach Mike Zimmer seemed to resent the three-year, fully guaranteed $84 million contract that the front office had given to Cousins, leaving less cap space for his prized defenders. Cousins was too much of a pleaser to raise disagreements over game plans, figuring that his job was to make it work. He vented to Browning instead. "Say it to the coach," Browning told Cousins. "They handed you $84 million, and they're paying you that either way. You're safer than them. The way that's it operated now, they think they're safer than you. Put that pressure on them. They need to be held accountable, too. At the end of the day, if this all blows up because of the things you're saying, they're going to blame you."
Browning asked for more max-man protections, and Pitcher welcomed the input. Against the Jaguars, Browning wasn't perfect, but he wasn't trying to be perfect. He was trying to do what Burrow would do: find completions. He checked to a screen pass on third down against a blitz that got a first down. He threw deep to Ja'Marr Chase early in the second half for a 76-yard touchdown. Soon, he was in overtime. When the Bengals faced a third-and-10, a simple hook route to Tee Higgins didn't look so simple. The play called for Browning to take three steps from the shotgun and then fire. Problem was, the Jaguars had it covered and Browning knew that Higgins needed extra time to get open. Taylor's ethos of playing in rhythm was about to be tested. Browning adjusted by taking five steps rather than three. He threw on time, and the ball hit Higgins at the sticks for a first down. It felt natural.
Calm, even.
When Browning was in Minnesota he noticed the way then Vikings QB Kirk Cousins handled the responsibility of quarterback, and notes that Burrow's response is very different. Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images
THE NEXT DAY in the quarterbacks room, Burrow told Browning:
"You made a career for yourself."
But Browning wanted more than a few guaranteed years as a backup. He had waited five years for this. He wanted to keep winning -- and to slay any lasting preconceptions. Two weeks later the Bengals faced the Vikings. Browning was edgy, facing different coaches but the same franchise that gave him a lifeline and took it away. Late in the third quarter, Cincinnati trailed 17-3. Browning got the ball, and something happened over the next 26 minutes, which he still struggles to articulate in anything other than strictly technical terms, of reads and progressions and footwork and "getting a feel for what they're doing." The Vikings had elaborate pressure packages that relied on forcing punts and limiting the opposing offense's chances to figure them out. As the game went on, the Bengals were finally able to a sustain drive. "I kinda knew what was coming," Browning says. It was a sense of knowing and command, of simplicity and flow, of seeing and reacting, of things he wasn't thinking as much as what he was. He threw a touchdown pass to Higgins on the first play of the fourth quarter, capping a drive in which Browning went 7-for-7 and cutting the lead to seven. Less than two minutes later, Cincinnati got the ball again. Browning hit 4 of 6 passes, and Mixon took it in from a yard out. The game was tied.
With 3:48 left, Browning came on down 24-17, with a chance to not only punk his old employer but prove that the game-winning drive against Jacksonville wasn't luck. A dart over the middle. A soft flare outside. A zippy touch pass at the hashmark, threaded over the linebackers and under the safeties. Another flare outside. Then, with 45 seconds left, he danced away from pressure up the middle and threw it high and long to Higgins, who plucked it in a thicket of arms and twisted to break the goal line. Tied in overtime and facing a third-and-9, Browning got the ball, and he managed to not only separate himself as a backup but as a starter.
The biggest gap in the NFL is between the quarterbacks who can execute a game plan and those who can stray outside of it to win games. This play was designed for Browning to fire down the middle, but the Vikings had set a trap, hoping to dupe him into throwing into traffic. The rush broke through. Browning had nowhere to go, so he ran right. Tyler Boyd was open by inches on a crossing route. Off balance and options limited to one, Browning threw upfield and fit the ball into a slimming window. It ended up being a 44-yard catch-and-run that set up the game-winning field goal. He threw for 240 yards and two touchdowns, leading the Bengals to 24 points in the fourth quarter and overtime.
On the sideline, Browning broke -- "exploded," in his words -- a release directed at the Vikings but also the entire league, five years in the making. He spiked his helmet with two hands, found a camera lens, and with eyes narrowing and scary, stared into the souls of everyone watching --
"SHOULDA NEVER F---ING CUT ME!"
He looked, by god, like a quarterback.
ON A RECENT July evening, Browning enters a bar and grill not far from Washington's campus. A few days ago Burrow was in Paris for a fashion show, as superstar quarterbacks sometimes do. He wore a black suit, with a hole in the back and no undershirt, going viral and gifting Browning and the rest of the locker room with fresh material. Browning has proved that he belongs, but he's not Tom Brady or Kurt Warner or Brock Purdy -- not someone who never leaves the field again. Not yet, at least. His path is more typical. One of the hardest transformations for a backup is returning to the headset after a taste of the stage. Browning sees himself as a starter. It might happen one day, but not this year, not unless something terrible happens to one of his dearest friends. His challenge is to hang onto possibility, rekindling the energy that sustained and separated him for five years, knowing it might not be necessary. Knowing that 2023 could be it.
"Sucks," he says.
Prior to his NFL career, Browning was a highly touted QB at the University of Washington who won the Pac-12 Offensive Player of the Year Award in 2016. Otto Greule Jr/Getty Images
There might be another Browning this season. Maybe Kyle Trask in Tampa. Or Hendon Hooker in Detroit. Who knows, maybe Stetson Bennett in L.A. or Tyson Bagent in Chicago. The more far-fetched, the more likely. Or maybe, those backup quarterbacks won't learn it. So many quarterbacks -- including Kellen Mond, whom the Vikings drafted and cut Browning for -- are no longer in the league. What Browning knows -- what dozens of afterthoughts over the years know, what Brady and Warner mastered -- is neither easily attainable nor absolute. But what a few quarterbacks come to realize is that if they can just hang on and survive and learn, they will know something precious that can't be displayed at a pro day or on draft day: what it's like to piece themselves whole again. Quarterbacks don't learn that until the game moves on without them.
BROWNING SPENDS A midsummer morning throwing to a collection of fringe guys. Those are his boys, both because they're former Huskies and because they know what it's like to hang onto a dream. They're training at a high school field in Bellevue, Washington, minutes before a youth lacrosse camp begins. During a speed drill, a player is clearly out of shape, knocking his feet into cones, before he bolts for the edge of the field and hurls. Nobody glances at him. The drill continues, bodies filling the void, as football goes, as it always will. "You had one job," Browning says later. He throws for a few hours, until kids in lacrosse gear trickle onto the field.
The former Huskies walk off. A kid stares at them.
"Do you play for the NFL?" he asks one of the guys.
"No," he says. He points to Browning, five or so yards away. "But he does."
"What team?"
"Bengals."
"Who is he?"
"You know who Jake Browning is?"
"No."
Browning doesn't slow. The sun is high now. There are drills to run again tomorrow. Training camp starts next week. He walks toward the parking lot, with an NFL ball in his hand
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