The Bengals are considering adding another quarterback to their roster, a task head coach Zac Taylor has made clear at this year’s NFL combine. But for the Who Dey Nation, the combine has a way of pulling them back six years ago, when Joe Burrow decided to turn comic.

“Considering retirement after I was informed the football will be slipping out of my tiny hands. Please keep me in your thoughts,” Burrow posted in 2020.

That tweet resurfaced this week when the Bengals’ official Instagram account shared it as part of their Throwback Thursday ritual, but with a twist. They posted it as their “Combine Edition,” timed perfectly to this year’s combine, letting the joke breathe all over again.

The story behind that tweet was simple: the combine had just measured Burrow’s hands at 9 inches, and scouts across the league were already talking.

“The length from pinkie to thumb was tied for the smallest among first-round quarterbacks measured at the combine since 2008,” ESPN reported at that time.

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To put that in perspective, the average hand size among first-round quarterbacks between 2008 and 2020 was 9.7 inches. Reports swirled around the league about how a quarterback with small hands could not properly throw or grip the large football. And for scouts at the combine, it’s apparently a big deal.

Burrow was far from the first quarterback to sit in that uncomfortable chair. The most notable case before him was Jared Goff. The former Rams quarterback had the same hand size, but LA still went ahead and drafted him first overall in 2016. 

Goff turned out to be a game-changer for that franchise, leading them all the way to Super Bowl LIII in the 2018 season, nearly two decades after their last Super Bowl appearance.

Apart from Goff, Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes had his own small-hands moment just a year later. At the 2017 combine, Mahomes’ hand size registered at 9¼ inches. So when Burrow decided to crack a joke at his measurements, Mahomes chimed in with his take on it.

“My small hands are doing alright so far….i believe in ya 😂😂😂,” Mahomes tweeted in response in 2020.

That exchange aside, Burrow’s value never dropped with that assessment. The Bengals still went ahead and drafted him first overall. Since then, the quarterback and the franchise have built something Cincy had been longing for since 1988.

In his six years with Cincinnati, Burrow has started 77 games, posting a 68.5% career completion rate (an all-time record) with 157 touchdowns and 51 interceptions. That alone shows his hand size was never a problem.

His QBR of 72.1 (career high in 2024) shatters that myth further. ESPN reported that no quarterback with Burrow’s hand measurement had crossed a QBR of 55 in the decade before his draft.

Still, the last season introduced a hard reality. A turf toe injury cut Burrow’s season short, and the Bengals finished 6-11, missing the playoffs. That result flipped a switch inside the organization. Zac Taylor recognized that relying on a thin quarterback room had cost the team dearly, and he arrived at the combine this year with a clear message.

Bengals aren’t moving on from Joe Burrow, but they need his backup

The Bengals’ quarterback depth chart last season had Burrow, backup Jake Browning, and veteran Joe Flacco, who joined later in the year. Yet nothing stopped the franchise from missing the playoffs for three straight years. At the combine, Taylor addressed it directly.​

“Zac Taylor says it’s ‘fair to say’ the team will be looking to add a QB in some capacity with draft or free agency,” FOX 19 Sports anchor Jeremy Rauch reported on February 25.

The franchise is now weighing both a veteran free agent signing and a rookie through the draft. Two of last season’s quarterbacks are set to hit unrestricted free agency. Flacco is reportedly seeking a legitimate shot at a starting role rather than a backup spot. But the Bengals would still be willing to sign him if he is on board.

As for Browning, he did carve out a win against the Jaguars in Week 2 when Burrow went down, but then plummeted to a 0-3 record after that.

That said, the Bengals currently have more than $53 million in cap space, while their effective cap space sits above $45.88 million. With that kind of room, Cincinnati has more than enough to sign a quarterback and continue building around Burrow.