Every year leading up to the NFL draft, there are anonymous scouts, coaches and executives who are ready, willing, and eager to share their opinions on draft prospects. Ostensibly, this gives the reader special insight into how NFL teams are viewing the college players who will soon join the professional ranks. Sometimes it works out. Other times, whether it’s because the NFL source is trying to throw up a smokescreen, or simply hasn’t watched the player enough to give an informed opinion but does so anyway, you get some really weird takes.
This Saturday, LSU quarterback Joe Burrow will be one of four finalists for the Heisman Trophy, along with Ohio State pass-rusher Chase Young, Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields, and Oklahoma quarterback Jalen Hurts. Burrow earned his spot as a finalist with a 2019 season in which he completed 342 of 439 passes for 4,715 yards, 48 touchdowns, and six interceptions. The combination of Burrow’s 77.9% completion rate and his 10.7 yards per attempt average is particularly interesting to this writer — since I first noticed Robert Griffin III completing 72.4% of his passes and averaging 10.7 yards per attempt in his 2011 Heisman season for the Baylor Bears, that stat duo has stood out to me as one indicator of a quarterback’s ability to combine accuracy and big-play ability in a compelling package. Baker Mayfield went over a 70% completion rate and 10 yards per attempt in each of his last two seasons at Oklahoma. Deshaun Watson never did it. Andrew Luck never did it. It’s a hard thing to do.
Still, when it comes to Burrow’s NFL prospects, there are apparently those in the league who remain unimpressed. ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler recently spoke with a number of pro evaluators about the top prospects for 2020, and Burrow didn’t come out shining in the mind of one AFC scout.
“He’s not a particularly thick, stout guy, and he doesn’t have a huge arm,” the scout told Fowler. “He’s overcome all of that by the way he played, and the Alabama game helps him a lot. He’s a really smart football player… Joe Burrow quite frankly looked like a backup at best last year. Even in training camp, I don’t think anybody could have anticipated how well he’s played. The debate is going to be: OK, how much is it him? Is it [passing game coordinator/wide receivers coach] Joe Brady’s system?”
It is true that Burrow wasn’t the same guy in 2018, when he completed 57.8% of his passes for 2,894 yards, 7.6 yards per attempt, 16 touchdowns, and five interceptions. But this was also the first time Burrow was a starter at the NCAA level after three years as a redshirt and backup at Ohio State. To label Burrow as a product of the system when it’s just as possible that he was a product of his own development seems to betray a cursory understanding of Burrow’s skill set.
Saturday night was a complete performance to claim the SEC title! pic.twitter.com/rpbvS5DP0M
— LSU Football (@LSUfootball) December 8, 2019
As to the comment about Burrow’s arm strength — well, that curves to the wrong side of ridiculous. You don’t have to cherry-pick the big plays Burrow has created with his arm both in the pocket and when improvising, and the statistics back that up.
In 2019, he led all NCAA quarterbacks with 16 touchdown passes on throws of 20 or more air yards, and he was absolutely incendiary on the types of routes that define a deep passer for better or worse — the posts, seam routes, fades, deep crosses, out-and-ups, and so on. When throwing to his receivers on those types of routes, Burrow completed 46 of 67 passes for 1,186 yards, 19 touchdowns, and one interception, per Sports Info Solutions. Burrow also led the nation in total air yards with 2,536, and there are more than enough tight-window throws to tell you that his success is about far more than a bunch of designed openings created against overwhelmed defenses.
The Alabama Crimson Tide, who watched Burrow complete 31 of 39 passes for 393 yards and three touchdowns back in early November, would attest to that. So would the Georgia Bulldogs, who watched Burrow complete 28 of 38 passes for 349 yards, four touchdowns, and no interceptions in the SEC Championship game last Saturday.
The pre-draft process doesn’t really get going from a public awareness standpoint until after the Super Bowl. So, we’re in for a lot more weird opinions from anonymous NFL guys over the next few months. But the “Joe Burrow doesn’t have a huge arm” take is going to be tough to top.
Touchdown Wire editor Doug Farrar previously covered football for Yahoo! Sports, Sports Illustrated, Bleacher Report, the Washington Post, and Football Outsiders. His first book, “The Genius of Desperation,” a schematic history of professional football, was published by Triumph Books in 2018 and won the Professional Football Researchers Association’s Nelson Ross Award for “Outstanding recent achievement in pro football research and historiography.”