Bengals won’t find out result of NFL’s investigation for a long time

That investigation into the Cincinnati Bengals by the NFL pertaining to Joe Burrow’s injury will take some time.

In a small update, The Athletic’s Dianna Russini reported that the NFL is “not taking this lightly” and noted that the thorough process won’t return a result soon.

The investigation stems from questions around whether Burrow should have been listed on the team’s injury report before last Thursday’s game, where he suffered a season-ending wrist injury.

The night before kickoff, Cincinnati’s social media team shared typical flight-unboarding content, then deleted it when onlookers noticed Burrow had something on his right hand.

Burrow has since said that the device was a compression sleeve meant to keep swelling down at high altitudes. In-game footage of the injury shows a Ravens player collapsing onto his wrist while both went to the ground. Burrow then left the field after throwing a touchdown pass on a subsequent play.

Burrow was a full participant in practice all week and seemed to be throwing normally throughout, which would seemingly mean the team didn’t have any reason to list him on the report for swelling or soreness that clearly didn’t impact his ability to play on a short week. But as always, these sorts of investigations by the league aren’t uncommon, this one is just a little more high profile than most given what happened.