Joe Burrow, the most accurate passer in the history of pro football, is explaining why.

This is like listening to Ted Williams sitting on a train to Philadelphia talk about hitting .400. This is Burrow telling you how he wants to do what no one has ever done and finish his career completing 70% of his passes.

"I'd like to finish up above 70 when it's all said and done," says Burrow, who senses he can. "I think so. So we'll find out, I guess."

Burrow is sitting in a recliner in the office of Bengals equipment manager Adam Knollman, idly flicking the right wrist that has melted decimal points.

A mellow moment in the preseason. A tap-of-the-helmet before Sunday’s opener (1 p.m.-Cincinnati's FOX 19) in Cleveland.

This is talking to Tiger in the Masters dining room about the greens. Or picking Jordan's brains on Game Seven pressure in the bowels of the United Center. Or leaning on the Garden's hockey boards to ask Bobby Orr about transforming defense into offense.

We are in the Zooming 2020s and damn right. Joe Lee Burrow says he looks at The Stat.

Pro Football Reference says Burrow has completed 68.6% of his passes. No. 1 on the all-time list. His 2020 draft classmate, Tua Tagovailoa, is second at 68.1. His idol, Drew Brees, headed to the Pro Football Hall of Fame next August, is third at 67.7.

"It's crazy that he's not the all-time completion percentage leader," Burrow says. "I guess it was a little later in his career. But it feels like he was 73, 74% every year."

Brees posted the two best marks of all-time with 74.4 in 2018 and 74.3 in 2019. When he hit 70.5 a year later, he retired after five straight seasons of hitting at least 70. Burrow has done it twice, 70.6 last season and 70.4 in the Super Bowl run of 2021. Last season was good enough to tie Ken Anderson's club record.

(More Hall of Fame fodder for Kenneth Allan Anderson: From the end of World War II until Brees tied Anderson in 2009 with a 70.6, Anderson was the only man to hit 70%.)

That makes Burrow and Brees the only men with multiple 70% seasons, and Burrow is watching The Stat.

"I mean, at the end of the day, production is valued in this league," Burrow says, "and we want to be productive."

Burrow says the key to production is changing, adjusting, tinkering. Last year's Rembrandts against Baltimore and Denver were products of paint-by-the-numbers-trial-and-error. The Burrow of this past training camp is slightly different than the Burrow who painted 76% on the Commanders last year.

"This year I would say I'm back to throwing a little more like I used to," Burrow says. "I'd say last year, I definitely had to change parts of it. So my windup was a little longer. Last year, my ball carriage was a little lower. I was just trying to find ways to generate spin and power, because I couldn't.

"Lots of times, if your lower body and your shoulders and your core aren't exactly the way you want it, you can kind of save it with your wrist. Last year, I couldn't, so I had to find ways to still generate power and buy time, and still put the ball where I wanted it."

There was more moving. More running. There were those breathtaking moments he was doing what nobody else seems to do. Running up into the pocket to let it go, rather than rolling away or sitting back there.

"If I got pressure, I couldn't really fall away and throw it the way I wanted to," Burrow says. "So instead of falling away, I kind of just moved in the pocket and threw it on the run."

No question, he says. "It's fun to play that way." He thought Patrick Mahomes played a bit of that style early in his career. And Burrow certainly isn't arguing with the results after manufacturing one of the greatest seasons a quarterback ever had leading the league in touchdown passes and yards while stringing together a record eight straight games of 250 yards and three touchdowns.

He can't remember who taught him to grip a football. But he's got the same grip he had in elementary school.

"It had to be my dad," Burrow says.

The mechanics and motion have changed over time. Nothing as drastic as what happened between his rookie year and second season, when he put so much time into coordinating his lower body with his throwing motion.

There have been nips and tucks since. Now this summer, Burrow has been saying this is about the best he's ever thrown it.

Now there are nearly two years between the surgery on the right wrist, and there is a different game to be played.

"I think in 2022 and 2023, I was spinning it really well. I don't think I had a ton of variance in my motion. I think the wrist injury made me think about it in a different way," Burrow says. "Now I have a lot more clubs in my bag that I can pull out whenever they're needed."

Right, he says. Maybe he would have figured that out a year from now. Maybe in Pittsburgh with T.J. Watt on an in-your-face fourth down. But the wrist injury came up sooner. This is Jack Nicklaus telling you what he learned about course management when he chased down Arnie at Oakmont to win the Open.

"I can drop it down and loop it and generate some more power if I need it. I can get it out quick. I can throw a sidearm," Burrow says. "I can go over the top. I can shoot like a free throw. I can do it a lot of different ways, depending on whatever that specific play calls for on the day."

How is he going to play it in '25?

"You don't really ever know how it's going to play out until it happens. It might be. We'll see," Burrow says. "I know that I have it in my tool bag, so I can pull it out when I need it. That's what all the work you do is for. Whenever something is needed, to pull it out to make the play that day calls for."

The free throw? It was more of a jump shot from the Pittsburgh 4 in the clutches of Cam Heyward and Keeanu Benton for a touchdown to Ja’Marr Chase. Three weeks later against the Browns, with one knee on the ground, he muscled a two-yard touchdown pass to Tee Higgins.

But that wasn't his favorite pass of '24. That came with 38 seconds left in Baltimore on third down from the 5 when he hit Chase in the right corner of the end zone. Quite a conventional throw, really, in a year of gymnastics. Except for the fact that Chase was double-covered and Burrow put it in the only place he could.

"That one kind of got overshadowed because we didn't end up winning," Burrow says. "But that one was pretty dang good. That one came out quick. That was one where just kind of put it in a spot they can't touch it, and let No. 1 go make a play. That was just regular motion. Feet were set. Everything was exactly how you want it to be."

That kind of throw is a reason quarterbacks-turned analysts, guys like Alex Smith and Chris Simms, tell their kids to watch Burrow play the position so they can learn. It's why his own play-caller and head coach, Zac Taylor, a former quarterback himself, hits rewind over and over to watch him outthink the defense with a simple screen pass.

"The game is just about finding a completion. Maybe your read isn't perfect, or maybe they're not playing the play exactly how it plays out," Burrow says. "But not everybody can feel what you feel back there, and sometimes you feel a little pressure on one side, you just have to give it out and find a completion. A lot of times that's to the back, it's to the tight end underneath.

"I just think the more opportunities that you can put the ball in your playmakers' hands and let them go make plays, the better your team is going to be. And I think I'm pretty creative in the way that I feel like I can always put the ball in a spot to give our guys a chance to catch it no matter where the defender is."

This is like talking to Tom Brady on the eve of his 50-touchdown season. Or maybe not.

"When I drop back and throw in a clean pocket, I would say I'm pretty close (to Brady)," Burrow says. "Tom always did it very efficiently. In 2022, I really tried to replicate what he did with my motion."

But Brady was not always Textbook Tom Straight Over The Top.

"It depends, it depends," Burrow says. "It depends if your linemen are getting pushed back, and then you have to get it over top. But if he just had nobody around him, no, he wouldn't be over the top. If it was slow motion, it would look sidearm, but it's not sidearm. It depends on what the throw calls for. Sometimes you have to get it up and over a defender. Sometimes you want to get it out around the defender."

Then came the crazy coverages on Chase and Higgins, the whacky blitzes and all the rest that gave rise to different kinds of throws. And, he's always looking for more throws.

"I watch everybody. See how they do what they do. You can pull stuff from everybody's motion. Everybody has their own way of doing that," Burrow says. "Most guys can spin it. There are guys that can spin it better than others. Not every rep is the same, either.

"You see a rep that somebody spins it really well, and then they don't necessarily spin it quite as well, You can take things from everybody. From a high school quarterback to everybody in the league."

His favorite to watch?

There is a 10-second pause.

"Declined to answer," Burrow says with a laugh.

What is no laughing matter is that he watches himself every day.

"I'm just developing more and more ways to do what I need to do, and thinking about it critically every day and watching it every day," Burrow says. "Going home and watching my feet or my arm, or remembering how the ball came out, that specific ball came out that day, and matching that up with how my feet looked, how my arm looked, how my head looked."

This is how it must have sounded when Ted was rattling toward that last doubleheader hitting .3995 and he got six hits to finish the season at .406.

"That's what playing quarterback is," says Burrow, who at 68.6 is chasing his own decimal points. "You can talk about all the protection stuff and all the big plays and whatnot. If you complete every single ball, then, for the most part, you're going to score points on that drive. It's just how I think about it."