Burrow participates in OTAs, hopes to be fully cleared by training camp

Burrow remains on track to start Week 1 as he continues to work back from surgery to repair a torn ACL and MCL in early December.

“I think I got a little excited from him just doing high knees,” safety Jessie Bates said afterward on a Zoom news conference. “We’ve seen him being able to move. I think we all see the reports of the idea he’s gonna play Week 1. But it’s kind of exciting to see it with your own eyes, and kind of have an inside scoop on it, rather than everybody else guessing.”

Burrow estimates his knee is about 80-85 percent back to “normal.” He began throwing in April and said he’s doing everything he would be able to do right now in a fully healthy offseason, when there is no contact involved anyway. Meanwhile, three other players coming back from injuries were limited to side work – center Trey Hopkins (ACL/knee) and defensive tackles D.J. Reader (quad) and Renell Wren (quad) – and running back Trayveon Williams watched practice with what Taylor called a “day-to-day” injury.

The next step for Burrow is getting cleared for football activities and contact, which is expected around the nine-month mark in his rehab. He’s at six months and one week right now.

“Hopefully I should be going full-go in (training) camp,” Burrow said. “That’s my goal. Maybe a little limited but I hope not. And then after that, the next one is to be cleared to play.”

Burrow said he hopes to maybe even take snaps in a few series of a preseason game, “just to shake off the dust,” but doesn’t expect to be full-go until Week 1. For now, the Bengals and Burrow are taking things slowly.

Many of the drills he did Tuesday were things he had been working on with trainer Nick Cosgray the last several weeks, but the difference now is getting a chance to throw to his receivers, including rookie Ja’Marr Chase, his former LSU teammate who stayed after practice with him for some extra passing.

“I’d say number one, we’re not going to push the envelope here,” Taylor said. “…And as you saw, there was no one even near him. We’re going to be overly cautious. We’re not ‘OK, he did that today, let’s push the envelope tomorrow.’ No, it’s not that way at all. It’s just involving him with the team. Letting him get back out there. Be apart of a lot of the communications stuff. Even if he’s in the huddle and breaking the huddle, just the communication of calling the play and looking guys in the eye. There are new guys up front and making protection calls and things like that even if he’s not actually taking a snap. That stuff is just as important as a lot of things this offseason, so those are the things that we wanted him to be a part of, and again, if he’s already dropping back and throwing routes, we’ll have him go out there and do that with our guys as well.”

Burrow said Tuesday wasn’t necessarily a big step – just another box to check off in his recovery -- but he was excited just to get back on the field with teammates for the first time since November. He especially appreciated the opportunity to throw to NFL receivers after mostly having equipment managers catching his passes the last month.

While he felt he was a little rusty throwing Tuesday, he also noted that in some ways, his mechanics and velocity have improved through the rehab process.

“It all starts with my hips,” Burrow said. “My hips got a lot stronger just doing the rehab. It’s a lot of glute, hip flexor, hip work to help strengthen the knee and keeping the knee out of compromised positions and that. By doing that it really helped out a lot.”

Burrow said he’s still looking to put on some more muscle and add about 5-10 pounds to his weight, but he already feels stronger than last year. He still experiences some soreness, which is normal, and is testing out different braces to see which one feels best.

The toughest part has been staying patient, as someone who likes to compete and push himself.

“Just knowing in my head that I can’t push it too hard,” Burrow said. “I’m a guy that likes to push the limits, work hard and go above and beyond. I couldn’t do that with the knee. Just doing what the doctors tell me to do, not doing anything too fast. Being cautious. We are out of the hardest part. Now the fun part begins.”