Joe Burrow expresses desire to be QB for Team USA in 2028 Olympics

Joe Burrow was among the NFL quarterbacks playing flag football at the Fanatics Flag Football Classic. After the experience, the Cincinnati Bengals QB expressed a desire to play the position for Team USA in the 2028 Summer Olympics.

Flag football will make its debut that summer in Los Angeles, but it’s unclear if NFL players will be allowed to play in the Olympics. If they’re allowed, count Burrow among those who want to play.

Funny enough, QB Jalen Hurts, who also played in the Fanatics event, was the poster player for the first commercial for flag football coming to the Olympics. Still, everything is up in the air.

“I’ve always wanted to play in the Olympics,” Burrow said, via the Cincinnati Enquirer. “I’ve never necessarily played an Olympic sport before, so when this got announced, I was pretty excited about it … “The opportunity to win a gold medal [is] something that I’ve thought about – a moment like that – for a long time, since I was a kid. I think it would be something very special.”

The Bengals quarterback, of course, is enjoying his offseason down time before his seventh NFL season gets underway later this summer. Burrow missed most of the first half the 2025 season with a serious turf toe injury that included significant ligament damage, but rebounded nicely once he returned.

In the final six weeks of the 2025 season, Burrow led the NFL in completions (152), tied for second in TD passes (15), ranked third in passing yards (1620), fifth in completion percentage (68.2), and fifth in passer rating (102.2). Burrow ended up finishing the 2025 season with 1,809 passing yards and 17 touchdowns to five interceptions in eight total games, but Cincinnati (6-11) went just 1-8 without him in the lineup and missed the playoffs.

Burrow did manage to work his way into the Pro Bowl as an alternate, alongside fellow Bengals QB Joe Flacco and Shedeur Sanders of the Cleveland Browns as the three quarterbacks representing the AFC. All three were alternates, as Josh Allen of the Buffalo Bills, Justin Herbert of the Los Angeles Chargers, and Drake Maye of the New England Patriots bowed out of the game.

In December, Burrow spoke to reporters about playing in the Bengals’ final three games when the team was eliminated from postseason contention.

“I like playing football. For the same reasons that I wanted to push to come back from injury, the same reasons I wanted to play this week,” he said at the time, per Nick Shook of NFL.com. “It feels like everything, everybody’s trying to do everything in their power to make me not play football, and I feel like I’m fighting it, like fighting everybody else. I just want to play ball. That’s all I want to do.”

Burrow then discussed his future in the NFL and potentially walking away from the game due to the injuries he has suffered in his career.

“You think about it, but you think about a lot of different things in your life, just like everybody does,” Burrow said. “You think about all the different possibilities that could happen. I’m going to playing for a long time. I expect to play for a long time. I expect to play well and consistently great for a long time.”

Brian Jones contributed to this report