INDIANAPOLIS -- There are two athletes I’ll forever associate with Joe Burrow -- one he thinks like, and one he stands like. One is endearing to Cleveland, one is potentially bad news for Cleveland.
At the NFL combine this week, I grabbed the former Ohio State quarterback for a minute after his Tuesday interview session to talk about both. The first was Matthew Dellavedova, the Cavaliers guard Burrow views as a cult hero. It turns out that Burrow said he and Delly have struck up a little friendship in the last few months, which for Burrow probably ranks up there with winning the Heisman Trophy and National Championship at LSU last season. The other is Tom Brady, and while Burrow always points to Drew Brees as the NFL quarterback he admires the most, he said he’s heard before that he kind of carries himself like the guy in New England.
That might not be great news for the Browns.
The AFC North is a division where aging mediocre quarterbacks are being swapped out for franchise-changing young stars. Mediocre may be an unfair characterization to some degree of former Baltimore QB Joe Flacco, who was 17-3 against the Browns, and outgoing Cincinnati QB Andy Dalton, who is 12-5. They beat bad Cleveland teams over their careers, combining for 55 touchdowns, 27 interceptions and 29 wins in 37 starts, and throwing for 221 yards per game.
But now, the Browns are looking at a decade of playing a quarter of their games every season against Lamar Jackson and Burrow, because the Bengals are almost certainly going to take Burrow with the No. 1 pick in April, and Burrow has a decent chance to transform Cincinnati the way Jackson (while winning the MVP in his second year in the league) transformed Baltimore.
Baker Mayfield may very well do the same for the Browns. But assuming the 24-year-old Mayfield reaches the level we continue to expect, two 23-year-olds in Jackson and Burrow should be running right beside him. Because the Bengals are taking the one-time Ohio State backup QB, and Burrow knows what that will entail. He was asked about a direct comparison to Mayfield, which isn’t one I would necessarily make outside of their status at the top of a draft. But he accepted it as another quarterback assured of his skills.
“The thing about the confidence, I think it starts in preparation and I’m really confident in my preparation. I feel I prepare better than anybody else,” Burrow said. "That’s why I’m so confident, because I feel I know what’s going to be happening on Saturdays before it happens. Hopefully, I can carry it over to Sundays with the help of the coaches and the veterans. That’s where it starts.
"I really admire Baker’s mentality. Coming in, if you’re the No. 1 pick, the team that’s picking No. 1 is there for a reason, so there are going to be ups and downs and you have to stay steady through the process.”
Combine talk should have put to rest suggestions of Cincinnati trading out of the pick and/or scattered speculation that Burrow would have a problem playing for the Bengals. Cincinnati director of player personnel Duke Tobin and coach Zac Taylor weren’t shy this week about discussing Burrow in-depth, and Burrow brushed off some analysis of previous comments that maybe he’d try to get himself to a city other than Cincinnati.
“I’m a ballplayer. Whoever takes me, I’m going to go show up. ... The only thing I’ve said is that I just didn’t want to be presumptuous about the pick. That’s why I’ve been non-committal because I don’t know what’s going to happen. They might not pick me. They might fall in love with someone else. You guys kind of took that narrative and ran with it. There has never been anything like that from my end," Burrow said, noting that Cincinnati is just over two hours from his family’s home near Athens, Ohio.
“I could go home for dinner if I wanted to,” Burrow said.
Adjust the timetable, and dinner could have been a three-hour drive from a new home in Cleveland. Some team-building is about ingenuity, and the Ravens picking Jackson at No. 32 two years ago, after Cincinnati passed on him at No. 21, qualifies. Some of it is circumstance. If the Bengals were the worst team in the league two years earlier, and the Browns the worst team two years later, Cincinnati and Mayfield would be watching Cleveland prepare to pick Burrow right now. Burrow even admitted he was a Browns fan for a few years, though his heart always belonged to Brees in New Orleans.
Mayfield was the man in 2018 for the Browns, who picked a quarterback that high for the first time in 19 years, since Tim Couch in 1999. Now the Bengals pick first for the first time in 16 years, when they took quarterback Carson Palmer in 2003.
“We’re going to put everything we have into it to make it the right pick for us,” Tobin said. “When you get in this spot, you want to make the most of it. It’s hard getting to this spot. It’s painful. But now that we’re here, we’re going to make the most of it and pick the right guy for us."
The decision has to be Burrow. The Browns had more options before deciding upon Mayfield, but with Alabama QB Tua Tagovailoa coming off an injury, Burrow becomes even more of an obvious pick.
“He’s gonna be an outstanding NFL quarterback," said Clyde Edwards-Helaire, the LSU running back and good friend of Burrow’s. “He’s a guy that already prepared like a 10-year vet in the league. ... He’s a perfectionist.”
That’s why the Bengals weren’t afraid to lean into the Burrow questions at the combine. He is theirs if they want him. And they want him.
“He can play within the system and he can play outside of the system if he has to,” Tobin said. “And in today’s game, that’s pretty important. The mark of any good quarterback is how he does on third down, and he’s very good there. There’s a lot to like about Joe on the tape we’ve seen.”
Tobin said the Bengals want to ask Burrow why his 2019 season was so much better than his initial 2018 season at LSU, though Tigers receivers at the combine said much of that was a function of Burrow transferring from Ohio State after the spring of 2018 and having a single preseason camp to get to know the offense and the offensive players. By 2019, he knew everything. When Burrow knows it, he gets comfortable fast.
Raiders GM Mike Mayock said this week that, from all the quarterbacks he’s talked to over the years, pocket presence is an innate trait. That may be what Burrow does best. That can make a team very comfortable about a No. 1 pick.
“I think my pocket presence is the thing that will translate most,” Burrow said. “But obviously going into the league, you can improve in every area. The speed of the game, the concepts, the reads, the defenses are all more complex now. I’m trying to better myself as well.”
Taylor, a quarterbacks coach before he was hired as the Bengals’ head coach before last season, has spent lots of time working with quarterbacks on pocket presence. He knows it when he sees it.
“But that’s one of the great things about him," Taylor said. “He’s able to extend plays and has a great feel for the rush. They threw a lot of touchdown passes that way (at LSU). That’s one thing you look for in a quarterback, making plays when you wouldn’t think one is there to be made. And that’s something he’s really shown on tape.”
The Bengals have been spending months finding out all of that. The Washington Redskins, picking No. 2, said they’ll meet with Burrow and Tagovailoa as well. But Washington almost certainly won’t have that shot at Burrow.
“Of course I want to be the first pick,” he said. “That’s every kid’s dream. I’ve worked really, really hard for the opportunity and I’m blessed to be in this position.”
That position should put him across the field from the Browns twice a year for a long time.
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