Trading Joe Burrow
The Bengals would benefit from trading out of the Number 1 pick in the 2020 NFL Draft.
I recently wrote a post for FanSided where I argued that in Chase Young, the Bengals could find a player worthy of a top-of-the-first pick. The real move, though, is to trade the Joe Burrow pick to highest bidder. It goes against every narrative running right now, and it is GM suicide. But, for reasons that I’ll detail below, it is the right move.
Joe Burrow just had the greatest season in college football history. He killed it in just about every statistic, basic and advanced, and he capped it with a National Championship. For example, take a look at this efficiency chart from the 2019 season, courtesy of CollegeFootballData.com:
Efficiency so far past the pack, he blows up the chart. That’s exactly what you want to see from your star quarterback.
You know what’s better than that, though? Doing it more than once. Or at least showing a progression toward greatness. Burrow went full Evel Knievel and jumped the Snake River Canyon between his Junior and Senior season. He went from just another LSU quarterback to Joseph Freaking Burrow.
People don’t make these jumps, unless you count guys like Mitch Trubisky who went from pine rider to second overall pick in one season. Is there any reason to think his progress will translate to the NFL? Is there any reason to think that these stats are predictive?
Quarterback is the most important position in the NFL. If you have The Man starting at quarterback, your team is primed to be in a good spot for the duration of his prime, barring some Ryan Grigson-level mismanagement.
Let’s look at the first round quarterbacks off the board (in order) since 2000, with their ESPN pre-draft grade (when available) in parentheses:
2019: Kyler Murray (90), Daniel Jones (80), Dwayne Haskins (90)
2018: Baker Mayfield (91), Sam Darnold (94), Josh Allen (92), Josh Rosen (92), Lamar Jackson (87)
2017: Mitchell Trubisky (89), Patrick Mahomes (85), Deshaun Watson (88)
2016: Jared Goff (91), Carson Wentz (91), Paxton Lynch (85)
2015: Jameis Winston (97), Marcus Mariota (93)
2014: Blake Bortles (91), Johnny Manziel (90), Teddy Bridgewater (89)
2013: E.J. Manuel (76)
2012: Andrew Luck (99), Robert Griffin (97), Ryan Tannehill (94), Brandon Weeden (86)
2011: Cam Newton (93), Jake Locker (90), Blaine Gabbert (96), Christian Ponder (85)
2010: Sam Bradford (97), Tim Tebow (78)
2009: Matthew Stafford (96), Mark Sanchez (95), Josh Freeman (85)
2008: Matt Ryan, Joe Flacco
2007: JaMarcus Russell, Brady Quinn
2006: Vince Young, Matt Leinart, Jay Cutler
2005: Alex Smith, Aaron Rodgers, Jason Campbell
2004: Eli Manning, Philip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger, J.P. Losman
2003: Carson Palmer, Byron Leftwich, Kyle Boller, Rex Grossman
2002: David Carr, Joey Harrington, Patrick Ramsey
2001: Michael Vick
2000: Chad Pennington
Now, ESPN’s grading is a bit of a black-box to me. However, higher grades might be a little more likely to succeed? But that’s far from a given, and for what it’s worth, Burrow is graded 94 — between Cam Newton and Blaine Gabbert.
There are some major hits in that list. There are some colossal misses. Some drafts have proven to be particularly devoid of quarterback talent, but we didn’t know that at the time. Except 2013. We knew 2013 could see itself out in 2013. Even E.J. Manuel knew the 2013 class wasn’t going anywhere.
The point here is that there are no certainties. But how many were billed as the second coming of Joe Montana? Well, Chad Pennington was “the best quarterback [Randy Moss] has ever played with.” Alex Smith got “not the next John Elway or Troy Aikman, lacking that type of arm strength, the overall package of skills he brings to the table definitely makes him deserving of a lofty NFL grade.” Compare that to Aaron Rodgers “tough, confident, incredibly poised and, most importantly, very few of his passes hit the ground.”
And how about Bob the Third? “His intangibles are making so many general managers swoon. Griffin, because of his athletic ability and Joe Montana-like ability to extend plays and remain focused on moving the ball downfield, not to mention his hurdling ability, stands to potentially be the better prospect when matching up physical traits with Luck.”
Speaking of Luck: “He is a prototypical pro-style quarterback who can make all the line calls, formation shifts, pass drops, and throws necessary to be successful at the next level.”
Luck might deserve an asterisk, but nothing is certain. Sure things aren’t sure. Nothing gold can stay. So on and so forth.
We. Are. Wrong.
Like, always wrong.
Even if the Bears hadn’t gone Bears and drafted Mitch Trubisky (fwiw “His 62.1 completion percentage on intermediate throws easily outpaces the top quarterbacks in this draft. Possesses get-away quickness to avoid sudden pressure from a-gap blitzers with the speed to damage the defensive cause once he leaves the pocket”), they still probably would have drafted Watson, who is decidedly not Patrick Mahomes, the current best quarterback in the NFL. (Watson is leading the pack to win the Andrew Luck Award for quarterback whose career is murdered by his GM.)
So. How many first quarterbacks taken were winners? If you ignore 2018 and 2019, you have to go to 2011 and Cam Newton to find a successful first quarterback taken, all apologies to Andrew Luck.
Why is Joe Burrow any different? Coming into 2019, he was going the path of Danny Etling, another former 4-star recruit who transferred out of the Big Ten to become a mediocre starter for LSU. Burrow’s grade would have probably been better than Etling’s 30, but who knows?
What we do know is that he stayed an extra year and blew up. As I pointed out on FanSided, Joe Burrow is older than Dwayne Haskins (the quarterback that Ohio State decided was better than Burrow) and Lamar Jackson. He’s also only one year younger than Patrick Mahomes. Burrow has been in college long enough that he should be dunking on most teams.
So what happens when you put all of this together? You get the greatest season by a quarterback in college football history. It came out of nowhere from a cast-aside quarterback in his final year of eligibility. A quarterback who is older than most of the other quarterbacks in the draft. He’s not Chris Weinke or Brandon Weedon, but he’s not Lamar Jackson either. (By the way, Jalen Hurts still hasn’t turned 22!)
As skeptical as this exercise has been, I’m not trying to dump on Joe Burrow. My greater point is that every draft pick is risky, and when it comes to the most important position on the field, we have no idea what looks good. Furthermore, we have the idea that certain guys can’t miss. Nothing about Burrow leads me to believe that he is less risky than anyone else in the draft. What he does have, though, is hype. RGIII level hype.
With that much hype, you can get a lot in return for trading that pick. Washington swapped 2012 first-round picks, tossed in a 2012 second-round pick and gave the Rams two additional first-round picks to draft RGIII. The Rams spent six picks to draft Jared Goff, who wasn’t nearly as hyped as RGIII or Burrow. What would a quarterback-starved franchise be willing to cough up this year?
The Bengals could flip this draft pick to gain more draft capital, which they absolutely need, since they’re somehow awful and near the cap. They would get more bites at the talent apple to fill out their roster, while kicking the can down the road a year, for a draft that features Trevor Lawrence, Justin Fields, and a quarterback who will inevitably skyrocket up the mock draft charts because he has a skill that Fields or Lawrence doesn’t.
The implications of Burrow’s leap being sustainable are, without question, exciting. It would bode well for what is developmentally possible. It hints at the importance of scheme and fit to a player’s success. It means that “too late” in a career arc is a little bit further along that we thought. But let someone else pay a premium to find out the answer to that question.
The Bengals should trade the Burrow pick for a haul of picks (unless there are none, in which case, fine, draft him). We were sure Tua was the man for this draft at this time last year. Now it’s Burrow. Next year we will be sure it’s Lawrence or Fields until we aren’t, despite the uncertainty being the same. Why the hell would we trust our judgement?