Joe Burrow, from Draft Afterthought to the Highest-Paid Player in NFL History

Long before he was breaking the bank for the Bengals, Burrow was an Ohio State transfer without much NFL buzz.

In 2019, Joe Burrow treated LSU fans to the greatest season by a quarterback in college football history, throwing for 5,671 yards and 60 touchdowns, leading the Bayou Bengals to an undefeated record and a national title.

A few months later, the Cincinnati Bengals made him the No. 1 overall pick in the 2020 NFL Draft. 

His rookie season ended with multiple torn knee ligaments in Week 11, but he returned in 2021 to lead the Bengals to the Super Bowl, winning NFL Comeback Player of the Year honors on the way. Last year, he led Cincy back to the AFC title game.

Thursday night, as the 2023 regular season kicked off in Kansas City, the Bengals and Burrow agreed to a new five-year contract extension that makes him the highest-paid player in NFL history.

highest-paid player in the NFL?pic.twitter.com/aE5uY72lmG

— NFL (@NFL) September 8, 2023

But what about before all that?

Before Burrow's historic run in 2019, he was barely a blip on the NFL radar.

His college football career began at Ohio State, where he redshirted his first season in 2015. He spent the next two years as the backup to J.T. Barrett, and after losing the battle for the starting job in spring practice to Dwayne Haskins in 2018, Burrow transferred to LSU.

Despite starting all 13 games for a Tigers team that went 10-3 in 2018, Burrow's numbers weren't exactly newsworthy. He threw for less than 3,000 yards and just 16 touchdown passes, adding nearly 400 yards and seven more scored on the ground.

Heading into the 2019 season, Burrow was widely regarded as nothing more than a potential Day 3 prospect in the 2020 NFL Draft class. ESPN draft guru Mel Kiper Jr. had a sixth-round grade on Burrow at the time.

Speaking to ESPN's Suzy Kolber just after he was selected No. 1 overall by the Bengals in 2020, Burrow admitted that his ascension was nothing short of unbelievable.

"I would have told you you were crazy," Burrow responded when Kolber asked what he would have said a year before about eventually being the top pick. "I knew I was gonna have a really good season, because I knew we had really good players coming back, I had great coaches. I knew we were gonna work really, really hard to do it. To jump up to No. 1 overall is crazy to me, but it's a dream come true."

Kolber asked how Burrow made such a massive leap in just one season, and he gave a short and sweet explanation.

"Well, I wasn't very good my junior year," Burrow admitted. "You know, it's pretty simple. I worked really hard to get better. All my guys worked really, really hard to get better. And we just gelled as a team this year to do exactly what we did. I just wasn't as good as I was my senior year, but I worked really, really hard to improve."

Burrow has worked his way far beyond "very good" since then, establishing himself as one of the best quarterbacks in the game, leading the Bengals to the precipice of a championship multiple times in his young career.

Now, he's being paid accordingly, and there's no reason to think he'll stop getting better now.