The NFL preseason is here — but your favorite star likely won’t be

No quarterback passed for more yards or touchdowns during the 2024 NFL season than Cincinnati Bengals superstar quarterback Joe Burrow. It made what Burrow did to begin the 2025 season all the more remarkable Thursday night: He actually played in a preseason exhibition.

“I think we got 15 reps tonight, so we’re 15 reps better,” Burrow said after Cincinnati’s preseason-opening loss to Philadelphia.

That equaled how many preseason snaps Burrow had played in his previous five NFL seasons combined, according to Pro Football Focus.

The Bengals elected to play multiple starters Thursday partly because they were healthy, and partly out of hope. After starting 0-2 in five of its last six seasons, the team seemed to agree with criticism that trying to preserve its roster’s preseason health had stunted its readiness for the regular season.

“They don’t find their rhythm until like Week 5 of 6,” former Bengals quarterback Boomer Esiason said last month. “It’s ridiculous.”

Yet the Bengals’ shift in preseason philosophy isn’t the norm in a league where the preseason is getting started, but many of the biggest names will likely not. Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen, the reigning MVP, will not play in Saturday’s preseason opener against the New York Giants. Washington’s Jayden Daniels, last season’s NFL Rookie of the Year, was among multiple starters who didn’t take the field in Thursday’s preseason opener in New England. Baltimore quarterback Lamar Jackson hasn’t played a preseason snap in four years.

If key, highly valued players do appear in the preseason, it’s often during the last possible game, and then even not for long as teams largely believe the chance to build rhythm isn’t great enough to outweigh the risk of injury.

Inside the league, blame or praise for the trend of sharply reducing or outright eliminating starters’ preseason workloads is often attributed to Los Angeles Rams coach Sean McVay, who began holding out his best players entirely during the preseason in his second season in Los Angeles in 2018, even though the Rams were starting a young quarterback.

Los Angeles went on to advance to the Super Bowl, and whether the preseason rest for key players was connected at all to its play during the regular season, it was enough in a copycat league — where new ideas do not stay proprietary for long — for others to adopt the same approach.

During the 2024 preseason, 14 teams didn’t play their presumed starter for a single snap during the first two weeks of the preseason — up from just one team in 2014, according to a comparison done last year.

“We feel confident and comfortable with the approach we’re taking and we understand that it might not be for everybody,” McVay said in 2019.

“Everybody” included those who contend that building rhythm during the preseason is worth the risk of injury.

“For me, to have a sharp knife, I have to really sharpen it,” former Rams quarterback Vince Ferragamo told the Los Angeles Times in 2018. “Sometimes what you do in practice and then play in a game is a whole different aspect.”

McVay and the Rams might not have put their top players on ice during preseason games if not for the rise of another trend happening at the same time, as franchises increasingly began hosting “joint practices.” Their appeal stemmed from the opportunity for quality repetitions but in a more controlled scrimmage than a game. Although a starting defense could face off against its opponent’s starting offense in a joint practice, tackling was often limited and hitting quarterbacks was effectively outlawed.

Before making his preseason debut last season, No. 1 overall pick Caleb Williams said he believed preseason “reps are always paramount for anybody like myself: a young rookie, second-year guy, [or] third-year guy.” Yet this year, as a second-year guy playing under a new head coach in Chicago, the quarterback will not play in the Bears’ preseason opener. The team instead wanted to prioritize his playing time during joint practices with Miami.

Teams are increasingly willing to sit starters because of the injury risk that became a topic of serious concern Thursday in Indianapolis. During a preseason game at Baltimore, Colts quarterback Anthony Richardson dislocated a pinkie finger amid his competition to hold on to the starting job. Yet holding an important player out of a game is no guarantee they will enter the regular season healthy. Just ask the Chargers, who lost key offensive lineman Rashawn Slater to a season-ending knee injury during a practice this week.

This month, 30 of the 32 teams will play three preseason games — only the Los Angeles Chargers and Detroit Lions, who also played in the July 31 Hall of Fame exhibition, will play more — and many have signaled that they will again play starters and stars sparingly, if at all.

Jacksonville is one of the few exceptions. The Jaguars are expected to play most starters in Saturday’s preseason opener against Pittsburgh, including No. 2 overall pick Travis Hunter and starting quarterback Trevor Lawrence as a way to increase their repetitions following a dramatic offseason overhaul.

“Look,” Jacksonville coach Liam Coen said. “If we had three [joint practices] and two days of work [within] each of those joints, we probably wouldn’t be playing” starters.

Their opponent, meanwhile, will sit new quarterback Aaron Rodgers, the former MVP in his first season with Pittsburgh. He reportedly offered to play, but was among a group of 15 starters who will sit out at least the first preseason game because “they need less runway to take off, to be quite honest with you,” Pittsburgh coach Mike Tomlin said.

A player as good as Burrow would seemingly need little proverbial runway, either, but he has called the Bengals’ change of philosophy “the right decision.” But not everyone is altering their approach to the preseason. Matthew Stafford, the Los Angeles Rams’ starting quarterback, won’t play in the team’s preseason opener this week while dealing with a back injury.

But it didn’t take the injury to know he wouldn’t take a single game snap in August.

“There is zero chance you will ever see Matthew Stafford take a snap in the preseason for the Rams as long as I’m the coach,” McVay said in 2021. “That will never happen.”