Cincinnati Bengals star Joe Burrow has been hit by a home invasion . . . but football fans aren't exactly feeling sorry for him. Instead, details about the incident have sparked new rumors about his love life.
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00:00Cincinnati Bengals star Joe Burrow has been hit by a home invasion, but football fans
00:05aren't exactly feeling sorry for him. Instead, details about the incident have sparked new
00:09rumors about his love life. This is because fans aren't really concerned about the what
00:14or the why of the break-in. They're way more interested in the who, as in who called the
00:19authorities to the scene.
00:21Police in Cincinnati say thieves robbed the home of Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow while
00:26he was on the field for Monday Night Football.
00:28Well, actually, there were two women, a mother and daughter pair. The first woman, who wasn't
00:33on the property at the time, expressed concern for her unnamed daughter during a 911 call.
00:37Someone is trying to break into the house right now. My daughter is there. This is Joe
00:41Burrow's house. She is staying there. He's at the football game."
00:45Meanwhile, the second woman, who People magazine later identified as model Olivia Ponton, referred
00:50to Burrow's house as her own when speaking with 911. She said,
00:53Someone broke into my house. It's, like, completely messed up."
00:56Before the break-in, Burrow's relationship with Olivia Ponton had been completely private
01:01knowledge. But now that fans know how close they've become, they've decided to rattle
01:05off a few jokes about the new possible couple.
01:08Taking to X, formerly known as Twitter the NFL Memes account, joked about Burrow's lack
01:12of security. It posted,
01:13"'Who needs ring security cameras when you can have a S.I. model protect your home?'
01:18Another user went a step further, implying that Burrow might have secretly staged the
01:22burglary so that he could soft-launch his connection to Ponton.
01:26Tagging Saturday Night Live's account, they tweeted,
01:28"'Do a skit where Joe Burrow hires someone to break into his own home so the world can
01:32know about him and Olivia Ponton when she calls the cops for him.'"
01:35Meanwhile, several more fans were stuck on the fact that reports kept citing Ponton as
01:39one of Burrow's employees. Many asked how a Sports Illustrated model could possibly
01:44be employed by Joe Burrow, a line of questioning that led to some unfortunate and indelicate
01:49theories about Ponton's line of work. And this was just one side of the discourse.
01:53Burrow and Ponton are also trending because Burrow was recently in a very public relationship
01:57with another Olivia — Olivia Holtzmacher, his longtime girlfriend who he'd been with
02:02since 2017. In August 2023, reports of their possible engagement circulated, leading fans
02:09to think they were on their way to settling down together. With that said, their relationship
02:13status at present is unknown. Some fans have said that Burrow should have let the world
02:17know that he parted ways with Holtzmacher before connecting with Ponton, if for no other
02:21reason than to keep people from jumping to unfounded conclusions about the nature of
02:24their relationship.
02:26One ex-user wrote,
02:27"'Joe Burrow' got himself into a mess. Now everybody thinks he's cheating, since a new
02:3122-year-old influencer, Olivia, got caught in his house."
02:35Some people even sank to the point of comparing how the two women looked, while others criticized
02:39Burrow for dating Ponton instead of Holtzmacher. One fan simply wrote,
02:43I loved Olivia H. so much. They were so cute."
02:46So it's probably fair to say that we've seen a mixed reaction to this strange new story.
02:51For now, though, a whole lot of questions still need answering, and it seems that only
02:54time will tell who, if anyone, will be the Cincinnati Bengals' star's partner in the
02:59weeks and months to come.