Joe Burrow reportedly won't need surgery for Super Bowl knee sprain

There's a spot of good news for Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow as he and his teammates continue to recover from their Super Bowl loss to the Los Angeles Rams. According to NFL Network's Ian Rapoport, Burrow will be able to avoid surgery for the knee sprain he sustained during the game.

Burrow injured his knee — which head coach Zac Taylor said on Wednesday was a sprained MCL — in the fourth quarter of the game. With just under 12 minutes left, Burrow was sacked on 3rd-and-1 by Rams outside linebacker Von Miller. When he went down, he screamed in pain. Once the pile of guys cleared, Burrow was clutching his right knee and limped off the field. He finished the game, but it wasn't clear if it affected him as he played out the final minutes.

There was a stroke of luck in all this, though. The knee Burrow sprained during the Super Bowl wasn't the same knee he severely injured in 2020. He tore the ACL and MCL in his left knee in Week 11 against Washington in 2020, which required surgery and extensive rehab. He missed the rest of the season and spent of offseason working hard to be ready for Week 1 in 2021.

Even though Burrow will need to rehab his right knee to get it healthy again, Rapoport reported that it won't be nearly as major as the rehab he went through in the 2020 offseason.