09-07-2025
Mic'd up Joe Burrow loves fossils as much as Bengals love neglecting defense
Deep down, Joe Burrow is like all of us. He enjoys a fine cigar (after completing an undefeated season and winning a national championship). He considers buying the Batmobile. And, most importantly of all, the dude loves natural history.
Burrow delved into his love of paleontology this offseason as Cincinnati Bengals team activities. Fortunately for us, Netflix cameras were there filming for the second season of the streamer's Quarterback reality show. There, he recounted a VIP trip to what appears to be the Museum of Natural History & Science at Cincinnati Museum Center with a handful of teammates. The group got to peek behind the curtains at a number of fossils detailing life on earth that stretches back eras.
Burrow came away wildly impressed by the experience.
"Somehow there's this one fossil that proved [Charles] Darwin's Theory of Evolution," Burrow told a team staffer this spring. "It's called the Archaeopteryx. There's like 12 of them in the world, we got to see one of those.
"It's like a library of fossils they don't show everyone else. It was like you go to the shoe store and they're like 'maybe we have it in the back.' And it was like, all the fossils back there. It was pretty sick."
Why were fossils on Burrow's mind for a random shorts-and-helmets spring practice? He summed it up perfectly.
"When aren't fossils on my mind?"
