CINCINNATI (AP) — Joe Burrow's desire for privacy might be on the same level as his drive to be one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL.
That is why it was a surprise when Netflix announced in late March that the Cincinnati Bengals' star was going to be featured on the second season of the hit “Quarterback” series.
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Cincinnati Bengals quarterbacks Joe Burrow, left, and Payton Thorne, arrive for NFL football practice, Tuesday, May 20, 2025, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow throws a pass during NFL football practice on Tuesday, May 13, 2025, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow catches a ball during NFL football practice on Tuesday, May 13, 2025, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow (9) throws a pass during NFL football practice, Tuesday, May 20, 2025, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow speaks at a news conference after NFL football practice, Tuesday, May 20, 2025, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
After joking that they “caught me on the right day I guess," Burrow pointed out that Peyton Manning's involvement in the series made the opportunity too good to pass up.
“I have a lot of respect for him. When that guy reaches out to you and asks you to do something, then most of the time I’m going to say yeah,” Burrow said of Manning. “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.”
Even though Burrow lamented the loss of privacy after his home was broken into last December, he did make a high-profile appearance at The Met Gala in New York two weeks ago. That came on the heels of last year’s appearance for Vogue at Paris Fashion Week with friend and former LSU teammate Justin Jefferson.
“It’s a new experience. It was fun,” Burrow said about The Met Gala. “It’s about five minutes of taking pictures, and then it’s just a little dinner party. So it was good people, good vibes. I was happy that I was able to go. Maybe we’ll go again. I don’t know. We’ll see how we play it by ear.”
Burrow led the league with 4,918 passing yards and 43 touchdowns, but had his house broken into in December while the Bengals were in Dallas facing the Cowboys in a Monday night game.
“That was definitely a curveball I didn’t quite expect throughout the whole process, but the people involved in it, working on it day to day, were great and weren’t too intrusive,” Burrow said about the break-in and how that was handled on both series.
The Netflix series is a joint production between NFL Films, Manning’s Omaha Productions and Patrick Mahomes’ 2PM Productions. Burrow and the Bengals were also part of last year’s “Hard Knocks” in-season series that focused on the AFC North.
Burrow added he has screened a couple of episodes of the upcoming season of “Quarterback” to provide input to Manning and producers, but likely would not watch the entire series when it is released in July.
Coach Zac Taylor said that despite having two series following the team and his star quarterback around late last season, the film crews did a good job blending in. Atlanta’s Kirk Cousins and Detroit’s Jared Goff will also be featured on the series.
“Part of the quarterback show is just behind the scenes playing quarterback. It’s not necessarily the home life and the off field. I’m sure there’s a little bit of that, but for the most part, it’s just a respect for the game,” he said. “I hope people get an appreciation of what they go through every single day of game week and over the course of the season, and how their role can evolve.”
It has been a good offseason so far for Burrow. Tee Higgins and Ja'Marr Chase — his two main playmakers — signed extensions. Burrow said he found out about it via text while attending the bachelor party of former Cincinnati defensive lineman Sam Hubbard, who recently retired.
Burrow, who will be going into his sixth season, also noted this is the healthiest he has felt during an offseason program.
“I’m not sure I’m changing too much. Just like every year you want to get bigger, stronger, faster. Refine things you can refine. That’s kind of the process every year," he said. "I’ve had injuries that kind of change the offseason mindset a little bit. This year I don’t have any of those, and that’s great, because I can focus on getting better all around and become a more well-rounded player.”
Burrow and the Bengals biggest focus will be getting off to a better start to the season. Cincinnati ended the season on a five-game winning streak, and just missed the playoffs with a 9-8 record after dropping its first three games and being 4-7 at its bye week.
The Bengals open at Cleveland on Sept. 7 and host Jacksonville in Week 2 before a stretch of five straight games against playoff teams from last season, with three on the road.
“This time of year is about the same. I would say we’re working a little harder in the weight room and running. But at the end of the day, we just have to go out and play better early in the year," Burrow said.
"You can come up with all these different things to try to make that happen. I think playing in preseason games will help. We haven’t had those discussions yet, but based on the little that we have, I imagine we’ll be playing more, and I think that’ll help.
"But we’ll see. I think at the end of the day, we just have to take some ownership and come out of the gates and execute and play better.”
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Cincinnati Bengals quarterbacks Joe Burrow, left, and Payton Thorne, arrive for NFL football practice, Tuesday, May 20, 2025, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow throws a pass during NFL football practice on Tuesday, May 13, 2025, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow catches a ball during NFL football practice on Tuesday, May 13, 2025, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow (9) throws a pass during NFL football practice, Tuesday, May 20, 2025, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow speaks at a news conference after NFL football practice, Tuesday, May 20, 2025, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.
West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.
The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.
Decisions are expected by early summer.
President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.
Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.
“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”
She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.
Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.
She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.
Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.
“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.
Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.
The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.
About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.
Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.
"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”
But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.
“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”
Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”
“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.
One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.
Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”
The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.
The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.
The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.
The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.
If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.
“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)
