Joe Burrow: Exciting to see Bengals' initiative to get better

Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow was nowhere near a football field on Monday, but his mind was still on the team's prospects.

Burrow attended the Met Gala in New York City and did an interview with Vanity Fair — Burrow wore a suit from Bode, which means we won't get a "The Bengal Wears Prada" headline — while getting ready for the festivities. Burrow was asked about his reaction to the recent trade for defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence as well as earlier moves to add safety Bryan Cook, edge rusher Boye Mafe, defensive tackle Jonathan Allen and safety Kyle Dugger in free agency.

“I’m really excited about the moves we made this offseason,” Burrow said. “We need to get better, so it was exciting to see the initiative from everybody in the organization to realize that we’re in this exciting stage. We’re in our primes playing great football. Finding guys like Dexter and Bryan Cook and [Jacob] Bayer, to, you know, really solidify that defense so the young guys can also kind of rise up. We’re really going to try to achieve what we want to achieve.”

Bayer is a backup offensive lineman who signed to the practice squad last season, so it seems likely that Burrow was actually referring to another one of the defensive acquisitions and something got missed in translation.

Whatever the reference, it's a very different tone from Burrow than the deflated one he shared in some late-season press conferences last year. If that tone is still positive months from now, it will be a sign that the Bengals' offseason maneuvering worked out as hoped.