While wearing the Bengals' old school No. 14 jersey symbolizing passing efficiency and offensive wizardry, first-ballot Hall of Fame quarterback Peyton Manning couldn't say enough about the current Bengals quarterback who is giving No. 9 an iconic turn.
"He's an incredible quarterback. He's just fun to watch play. He's exciting when the ball is in his hands," Manning is saying of [Joe Burrow](https://www.bengals.com/team/players-roster/joe-burrow/). "The game is never over.
"He's calm, he's collected, he doesn't sweat. Out there on the field, off the field … he's very authentic."
If anyone knows how real, it's Manning, standing in the visitors' locker room last week at Paycor Stadium. He just got through supervising the Netflix documentary _Quarterback_ that dissects the position through the lens of Burrow, Jared Goff and Kirk Cousins during last season.
It drops in July. If it wasn't for Manning, Burrow wouldn't have had Netflix anywhere near his down-field progressions for the completion of the project.
"He's going to protect me, protect our team, protect our organization," Burrow said last month. "I have trust in him for saying that and trust that he's going to do that. I probably wouldn't have done it if he wasn't involved, but I have a lot of trust and faith in him to not do anything that would hurt me or the team."
The feeling is now mutual.
"We appreciate him letting us do it, letting us kind of go behind the ropes and sort of capture how he goes about his business," Manning says. "He's going to come across as the cool guy that he is.
"There's a trust factor. I know the season didn't go the way they all wanted it to go. And Joe probably has an MVP-type season if they get in the playoffs and make a few more stops. He was a great teammate all season, and the competitor that he is, so I'm glad that he did it. It's a great keepsake for him to have the rest of his life."
Manning knows something about keepsakes, too, as the voice, face, and conscience of _Peyton's Places,_ the documentary series he hosts on ESPN+ that examines the fabric of football past and present.
That's why he's here wearing a vintage Bengals' No. 14 on the Paycor turf with a battalion of cameras and producers following his every move.
Manning says get used to the Cincinnati skyline because in this season's "Places," which debuts in November, he's got three of his 10 episodes with ties to the Bengals looking at the evolution of the quarterback as a play-caller, the rise of tall receivers, and a look at how Bengals founder Paul Brown's Taxi Squad morphed into today's practice squad.
One of Burrow's greatest moments inspired Manning to document how play-calling has changed. He sifted through tape of Burrow leading the Bengals to a 2021 AFC Divisional win in Tennessee despite being unable to hear the calls through his helmet during a patch of the game.
"It's a great modern way to go back and look at the whole history of coaches calling the plays vs. quarterbacks calling the plays," says producer Neil Zender. "That takes you to Paul Brown."