Joe Burrow hints his recent change may be sticking around for longer than just this season
Joe Burrow’s new shoes are here to stay.
Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow may be playing, but his turf toe injury hasn’t fully healed yet. That’s why he’s wearing a special new cleat.
Burrow told reporters Wednesday he still can’t bend his big toe backwards yet, so his left cleat has a carbon fiber plate and a custom orthotic inside of it to prevent the shoe from bending.
And that’s not going away any time soon.
Joe Burrow discusses wearing his new cleat
Burrow expedited his recovery in order to play ahead of schedule, and he would be risking re-injuring his toe without the protection he now has with his specialized cleat. It’s why he will continue wearing the cleat for the remainder of the season, and potentially longer.
“For sure the rest of this year,” Burrow said of his plans wearing the cleat. “And probably going forward, but we’ll see.”
How and when the toe fully heals is a variable Burrow can’t quite predict at this point. The goal of the cleat is to protect and stabilize the toe. If he needs more time beyond this season for it to fully heal and regain its full mobility, then wearing the cleat will be necessary while playing.
It’s not comfortable, according to Burrow, and he takes it off to relive some of the pain. That he’s able to play at all is nothing short of a resounding success from him recovering, to the team figuring out how to make his cleat work for him.
“It was certainly a process to figure out what worked best for me and what was most comfortable and at the same time safe,” Burrow said. “But we worked through that, and a lot of different people were involved, and we got the right stuff on there.”
Burrow needed a half of football against the Baltimore Ravens to look like his old self even with his new kicks. Getting the rust off while also becoming used to his new footwear was imperative for the Bengals to now embark on an unlikely, but possible, path to the postseason.
The next field Burrow and his cleat will step on is at Highmark Stadium where the Bengals will face the Buffalo Bills.
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