Former LSU quarterback Joe Burrow has impressed the masses with his effortlessly smooth transition from top college football quarterback to a rookie signal-caller one of the NFL’s most lowly teams can rally around.
Ex-NFL quarterback and current sportscaster/quarterback trainer Sean Salisbury is just one of many Burrow has caught the eye of.
“I love him,” Salisbury said. “I watched every pass he threw at LSU for the two years he was there.”
Salisbury says he watched Burrow closely, especially considering he was offered a job that he ultimately couldn’t take from Ed Orgeron to be an analyst for the team because of the NCAA’s Individual Associated with a Prospect Rule.
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“I had studied Burrow and I’m big on the LSU program,” Salisbury said.
I wanted to know who this kid from Ohio State was, and I knew him coming out of high school, watched his game. I watched him transform between the two years, and it’s the best season I’ve ever seen a quarterback and team offensively have. Couple that with the way Joe Brady coaches… Joe Brady is going to be a head coach one day, sooner rather than later.”
There’s a lot to like about Burrow, whose mental makeup is practically unparalleled by any other quarterback, and is certainly much more put together than we’d expect to see a rookie entering a difficult situation in Cincinnati.
“He’s tough. He’s got great feet, I love his swagger because I think he’s the biggest leader on Cincinnati’s team already,” he said.
Perhaps more important than anything that can be determined by numbers and analytics, is Burrow’s leadership he so strongly displayed at LSU. It’s a task to enter a program as a grad transfer quarterback and win everyone over, but it was easy to see Burrow more than had his teammates’ respect by the time the national championship season came to a conclusion.
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His presence alone can help bring a team to the next level.
“I think they guys on this team believe in him,” he said. “I don’t think Joe Burrow is going to be a star, I think Joe Burrow is going to be a superstar because he is elevating a team that, quite frankly, has no business keeping up with some of the injuries and lack of weapons they have.”
One of the only things Burrow has been knocked for in recent times is his lack of arm strength, which should be described as “adequate” rather than “lacking,” really.
“He survives without having that Mahomes-type arm, but he throws on-time,” he said. “He has the best pocket presence of any quarterback coming out of college I’ve seen in two decades. When I was up there talking to Ed Orgeron and Steve Ensminger about him, they just raved about him, and this was before they had ever seen him take a snap on their campus.”
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Salisbury sees bright things on the horizon for Burrow the team he’s leading, and that has a lot to do with the player he is and how he carries himself.
“He takes a beating and gets up, and he knows how to lose and win,” he said. “He went to Cincinnati, a team that was going to struggle, and I don’t think he tolerates it. I think that permeates through the team and Joe Burrow for me, he’ll be in Pro Bowls and he’ll have the Cincinnati Bengals in the playoffs at some point.”
As for the rest of the AFC North, they’ve got an ever-growing force to be reckoned with on their hands.
“I think the division is going to have a lot to pay for with Joe Burrow over the next few years. If I’m building a team for the next decade, he’s in my top five or six players I’m building it around.”
Sean Salisbury is talking on behalf of Pickswise (LINKED) https://www.pickswise.com/sports/nfl/.
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