Netflix’s “Quarterback” returns for its second season with three familiar faces — one more familiar than the others. Jared Goff, Joe Burrow and Kirk Cousins headline this installment, though only Cousins is a holdover from Season One. This time, though, he’s not the plucky overachiever leading a middling Vikings team, but a wounded veteran in a new uniform, attempting to hold off decline in Atlanta.

The show doesn’t exactly pick up where it left off, but doesn’t stray far either. It remains a series that promises rare access to a closed world — life inside the helmet, behind the huddle — and delivers that access in tightly controlled increments. The result is a portrait of modern quarterbacking that’s at once intimate and evasive, created with the cooperation — and increasingly, the creative input — of the people it’s supposedly documenting.

A subtle but significant change from the first season: Patrick Mahomes, last year’s featured subject, is now listed as an executive producer. That may seem like a footnote, but it isn’t. It’s a marker of editorial alignment. Mahomes isn’t just lending star power; he’s shaping the frame. The athletes here are co-authoring the story. That change clarifies the ethos of the show: What’s being offered is not so much a documentary as a kind of soft negotiation.

The series is handsomely composed — NFL Films knows how to capture sunlight slanting through shoulder pads and the lonely geometry of empty stadiums. Everything looks good. The problem is how little risk there is in the telling. “Quarterback” continues to operate as a kind of prestige branding exercise: access without intrusion, candor without discomfort. The subjects come off well because that’s the contract.

Burrow, the Bengals’ quarterback and hometown prodigy turned franchise cornerstone, provides the most camera-ready energy. He’s quick-witted, casually stylish, and impossibly composed — until he isn’t. When a false start derails a crucial third down, Burrow rips off his helmet and unloads on the sideline: “What in the f*** are we doing? Wake the f*** up.” It’s not a tantrum, but it’s as close as the show comes to portraying actual tension. Later, in a more subdued but no less revealing moment, he walks off the field after a hit and calmly tells a coach, “I think my jaw just crunched.”

There’s added poignancy to Burrow’s presence in this series, especially for those who know the arc. He grew up in Athens, Ohio, and........

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