What You Didn't Know About Joe Burrow

If one name has been on everybody's lips ahead of the 2022 Super Bowl, it's Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow. In only his second year as an NFL player, "Joe Cool" has become beloved for his relaxed attitude and unbelievable run of winning games. In one game against the Baltimore Ravens, for example, he set a new Bengals record by throwing a personal best 525 yards.

But before all the fame and glory, Burrow wasn't even the most impressive athlete in his own family. Burrow's dad was a professional football player with the Nebraska Cornhuskers before his long career as a coach, as SI reported. His brothers also played college football, and his grandma broke records on her high school basketball team by scoring 82 points in one match. So the quarterback's sporting excellence came as no surprise to his family, even if football wasn't always the obvious choice. "We thought he was going to be a basketball player," his parents told WKRC-TV, revealing that they're now his biggest supporters and bring a giant stuffed tiger to matches for good luck. They also spoke about their son's popularity, explaining that his "even keel personality" was just "Joe being Joe."

Keep reading to find out more about the breakout star of Super Bowl LVI, Joe Burrow.

Joe Burrow first caught the eye of professional college football coaches when his dad, Jimmy Burrow, began working at North Dakota State. "He was involved in sports as soon as he could," Jimmy told Inforum. "He was always pretty athletic. He loved to compete and that's the thing that keeps coming out over the years." Even as a child, Joe impressed Bison assistant coach Dan Enos by practicing his football throws in the office corridor. "I'm like, 'Really Danny?'" assistant Pat Perles recalled. "The kid is 7 years old and you're telling me he already has a good throwing motion and you can evaluate it at this age? He says, 'Yeah.'"

Joe originally hoped to be a running back or wide receiver as a child, according to Bengals reporter Marisa Contipelli, but his youth football coach had other plans and had him play quarterback in his very first practice. "I'm glad it worked out the way that it did," the star player quipped in February 2022.

Although Joe Burrow made his name as a Heisman Trophy-winning player at Louisiana State University, he originally went to college at Ohio State. Burrow knew he wouldn't be named starting quarterback after his time with Ohio coach Urban Meyer, who reportedly told him that he "threw like a girl" and gave him harsh criticism throughout their practice sessions. "He would be back there yelling at me saying, 'You're a D-II quarterback, you can't throw,'" the sports star explained to 247 Sports, although he defended Meyer's challenging technique.

"Yeah, coach Meyer, when he gets a new quarterback there as a freshman, he kind of pokes and prods them to see what they can take," Burrow recalled, adding that the coach's aggressive criticism "mimics environments you're going to see on the road" and prepares them for competing. "It completely changed the way I threw the ball," he continued. The player spent three years at Ohio State backing up J.T. Barrett, as Fox Sports reported, before transferring to Louisiana, where he was quickly chosen as starting quarterback.

Joe Burrow met Olivia Holzmacher during his time at Ohio State, where she was a data analytics major and a member of the Alpha Phi sorority. And she isn't shy about celebrating her boyfriend's success, if her Instagram feed is anything to go by.

The adorable couple first appeared in a picture together in August 2017, where Burrow wore his Ohio uniform on the field. "10/10 ... 1 being the best," Holzmacher teased in her caption. They celebrated their anniversary the following year with an Instagram post to mark "three hundred sixty five days" spent together. And when Burrow was drafted by the Cincinnati Bengals, Holzmacher wrote that she was "thankful to be by [his] side" and "so excited" for this "new chapter.'

As well as being one of Burrow's biggest supporters, Holzmacher is a career woman in her own right: According to her LinkedIn account, she has been working at Kroger as a "Senior Process Specialist and Analyst" since 2019.

After only playing 11 games at Ohio State, per The Advocate, Joe Burrow became the most impressive college football player of his age group during one incredible year at Louisiana State University. The 2019-2020 season pushed him into the national spotlight as he helped LSU win the National Championship and defeat the Clemson Tigers 42-25, according to CBS Sports. Burrow managed to throw 463 yards passing and achieve six touchdowns during the game, capping off an unbelievable season where he broke records by achieving 60 touchdown passes. He also became the first player from LSU to be selected as the Associated Press' college football player of the year with an overwhelming number of votes.

Burrow even won the prestigious Heisman Trophy by a "record-setting margin" of 1,846 votes, according to USA Today, and gave a sincere shout out to Louisiana State and their coach, Ed Orgeron, in his acceptance speech. "The entire state has welcomed me and my family with open arms and invited us in to be native Louisianans," Burrow insisted, joking that he had "learned to love crawfish and gumbo" during his time there. "During crawfish season, Coach O made sure we have pounds and pounds and pounds of crawfish during our year."

LSU players faced the threat of arrest for smoking inside their locker room after the team's big aforementioned win in January 2020 — including one Joe Burrow. Cigars have become the quarterback's signature celebration, but after his historic victory over the Clemson Tigers, they almost got him in trouble with the law.

As Business Insider reported, the whole Louisiana State team went back to their locker room after winning the national championship game and opened up a box of cigars with alum Odell Beckham Jr. One police officer was determined to stop them from smoking inside, however, and was ready to book anyone who continued to spark up. According to reporter Michael Casagrande, the cop was "dead serious," but the team apparently ignored him.

A viral clip of Burrow smoking after the victory quickly made the rounds on social media, securing his reputation as one of the coolest college football players. But according to him, that smoky celebration kicked off a post-win tradition. "I smoked one after the national championship game, and that was my first cigar I ever smoked," Burrow revealed on ESPN (via Larry Brown Sports). "And then after that, I decided every time I win some kind of title, I'm going to smoke a cigar."

In his Heisman Trophy acceptance speech in 2019, Joe Burrow brought attention to food insecurity in his hometown of Athens, Ohio and helped raise almost half a million dollars in donations to Athens County Food Pantry. "Coming from southeast Ohio, it's a very impoverished area and the poverty rate is almost two times the national average," Burrow told the audience, after thanking his family and team for helping him toward the achievement. "There's so many people there that don't have a lot. And I'm up here for all those kids in Athens and Athens County that go home to not a lot of food on the table, hungry after school. You guys can be up here, too."

The quarterback was praised for using his platform to highlight the problem of poverty in his hometown, and his speech inspired a tidal wave of donations, which Burrow called an "awesome" but unexpected outcome. "I think their annual budget was something like 70 or 80,000, and it's up close to 500,000 now. I didn't expect that," Burrow told reporters, per a transcript from ASAP Sports. "I just said it from my heart. That's what I was feeling at the time and someone took it and ran with it." He also reflected that it would be helpful for a lot of families around the holidays. 

As Reuters reported in 2022, people were still sending money in Burrow's name three years later.

After his stunning performance at Louisiana State University, nobody was surprised when Joe Burrow was the first player selected in the 2020 draft. 

"I mean for me, it doesn't matter where you get picked," Burrow insisted after the Cincinnati Bengals chose him, per ESPN. "I could have been 189th pick, I could be No. 1. I'm going to work the exact same and try to be the best quarterback I can be for this city." The quarterback also assured reporters that even though he was picked out first, he didn't assume that he would be handed a starting position straight away without any competition. "That's exactly how I expect to do it," Burrow said, explaining that he was willing to work for it. "I'm going to come in and compete and try to be the best player I can be."

Although his four-year rookie contract was worth $36.1 million, Burrow announced that he wouldn't be wasting any of that windfall on expensive cars or jewelry. "I don't plan on spending any contract money," the star player said, per NBC Sports. "I'm just gonna live off the marketing money and let that accrue in my bank account."

In November 2020, Joe Burrow had to bow out of his rookie season after only 10 games when he suffered a serious left knee injury. He had to be carried off the field with a torn ACL and MCL, according to the NFL, and required surgery. The following year, however, Burrow came back stronger than ever.

"I think it got more comfortable closer to the bye and we started to say, 'OK, he looks like he's back 100 percent,'" Bengals coach Zac Taylor told the New York Post after Burrow's comeback. "It's hard to ever guess how far along he is, but we could see his confidence growing and his movement skills and certainly this back half of the season he looks like the guy that played for us last year pre-injury."

The quarterback also agreed that his performance in their 2022 AFC Championship victory against the Kansas City Chiefs was "night and day from the first half of the season," as he was able to "[run] five times for 25 yards," as well as four first downs, per the outlet. "I wasn't really able to do any of that the first half. I've really started to come into my own in that sense, making plays, extending plays." Insisting that he was "starting to finally feel like myself" after the injury, Burrow added, "That's something I've always been able to do."

With Joe Burrow as their quarterback, the Cincinnati Bengals managed their first NFL playoff win since 1991 by beating the Las Vegas Raiders in January 2022, as the Independent reported. The final score was 26-19, and Burrow himself "threw for 244 yards," ensuring that they would break their drought of over three decades. He also managed to earn his place in team history by helping the Bengals reach the Super Bowl for the first time since 1988.

When asked what advice he would give to aspiring athletes who wanted to achieve the same success in February 2022, Burrow told them to "focus on getting better" and ignore social media. "Don't have a workout and go and post it on Instagram the next day and then go and sit on your butt for four days," he advised in an interview, criticizing players who appear to work harder than they actually do. "Work in silence, don't show everybody what you're doing, and let your game on Friday nights and Saturday nights and Sunday nights show all the hard work that you put in."

One unexpected development that emerged before the 2022 Super Bowl was the friendship between Joe Burrow and Kid Cudi. As the quarterback told reporters in February 2022, Burrow is a massive Kid Cudi fan and listens to his music before every game, so he was happy to send his game jersey to the musician after one particularly exciting victory.

"Ok. So after the Bengals win against the Chiefs, I hit Joe and congratulated him and asked if I could have his jersey. He said yes and sent it right away," Kid Cudi tweeted, along with a picture of the Cincinnati Bengals jersey. He also claimed that he would be "rockin this b**ch to the game and then framing it," adding that he was "so geeked right now." Cudi also returned the favor by sending Burrow "a couple unreleased jams to vibe to for sure," as he told one fan on Twitter. "I sent him 'Wow' before the Chiefs game and another after to get him hype for the Super Bowl. Seems my songs are good luck so lets get it!!" the rapper added.