The Cincinnati Bengals rallied around Joe Burrow after the quarterback suffered a suspected season-ending injury.

Burrow – the NFL's number one draft pick – was carted off with a serious left leg injury in Sunday's 20-9 loss to the Washington Football Team.

With the Bengals leading 9-7 at the time, Burrow went down when the 23-year-old was hit low while throwing in the third quarter at FedExField, where he was subsequently taken off the field on a cart.

The Bengals star later tweeted: "Thanks for all the love. Can't get rid of me that easy. See ya next year".

Bengals head coach Zac Taylor was unable to provide an immediate update on Burrow post-game as Cincinnati fell to 2-7-1 for the season.

Burrow was 22-of-34 passing for 203 yards, a touchdown and no interceptions before he left the game.

"He was making improvements every week and we were getting the offense headed in a direction that we thought was exciting," Taylor said.

"I just told them that we needed to come out with some emotion," Taylor continued. "That's an injury to a team leader that can take the wind out of your sails and we wanted to try to recapture some energy that we had going into half-time. Unfortunately, they went down and scored a touchdown and we had a three and out, so we didn't get that done."

Cincinnati's second-year QB Ryan Finley replaced Burrow and he said: "My thoughts right now are with Joe. I hope he's going to be OK and have a speedy recovery. That was tough to see. We've grown close. That was hard to see.

"I mean, I think guys were a little shook, to be honest. But, you know we have to roll. We've got the [New York] Giants next week and we got a lot of games left in the season.

"Many that we feel like we can win. So it's time to move on and it's time to prepare harder than we have, and even more than we have, and try to keep getting some wins."