JUST IN: Tennessee vols general manager Josh Heupel has publicly stated his “intentions” regarding the 2024 NFL draft….

Bengals Select Joe Burrow With No. 1 Pick in NFL Draft

Bengals Select Joe Burrow With No. 1 Pick in NFL Draft
How the Bengals, Dolphins and Chargers Vetted Their New Quarterbacks
With the most unusual draft in memory finally behind us, Cincinnati, Miami and Los Angeles reveal why they picked their new franchise QBs. Plus, Packers GM Brian Gutekunst explains the Jordan Love pick and we say goodbye to Joe Staley while wrapping up draft week.

That’s the amount of time Zac Taylor has spent in person with the guy he just staked his professional livelihood to. And that it’s just 18 minutes is pretty remarkable, given all the connections these guys have.

Taylor is a former Nebraska football player, as are Joe Burrow’s dad, Jimmy, and brothers, Jamie and Dan—Taylor having landed in the program the semester (spring 2005) after Dan finished up (fall 2004). Taylor also remembers crossing paths with Jimmy when the two were recruiting at Colerain High in Cincinnati, Taylor for the University of Cincinnati and Burrow for Ohio University in 2016. And Taylor hadn’t been gone from UC long when he first heard about the third brother landing on the Bearcats’ radar in the spring of 2018.

“I still followed the program, I like [coach] Luke Fickell and I remember seeing—I must’ve been in L.A.—they were about to get this transfer quarterback from Ohio State, Joe Burrow,” Taylor said Sunday, from his house in the Cincinnati suburbs, with a laugh. “And then, ultimately, he decided to go to LSU. I think that was the first time that I ever saw his name.”

A lot has changed since then, but the amount of time Taylor and Burrow have been together hasn’t, outside of those 18 minutes at the combine in February.

This was a different draft for everyone, one that blew everyone’s best laid plans to smithereens amid a global pandemic. As the NFL charged forward toward the last week’s festivities, every team, every coach and every GM had to adjust and change what, for some teams, was a decades-old formula of vetting prospects.

And no one faced more pressure in doing that than the Bengals, Dolphins and Chargers, three teams with clear quarterback needs, picking in the top six, considering investments that will likely lead either to eventual title contention or eventual firings. Playing that zero-sum game is always high-stakes, of course, and no one’s going to give those brain trusts mulligans in three or four years if Burrow, Tua Tagovailoa or Justin Herbert don’t work out.

Yet, the guys making those decisions for the Bengals were able to find some peace the day after the draft, and it was mostly in the knowledge that—despite their time together with the guy they just married their football futures to being so limited—they didn’t feel like, in the final analysis, they missed much of what they’d have gotten in a regular year.

“I think at the end of the day, we didn’t lose much,” said Bengals director of player personnel Duke Tobin. “We were able to communicate with him remotely, dive into the football stuff. And that was not a one-day or a two-day event. It was over the course of a lot of days. At the end of the process, through every bit of process, we had all the information we needed. So ultimately, not a lot was lost.”

“The only thing we missed was watching him throw live and ultimately that’s, for a lot of guys, 45–65 throws,” Taylor added. “That’s really not going to make the difference with the No. 1 pick. We’ve watched all the tape. If you’re going to say a good or bad pro day is going to influence your decision on the No. 1 pick, I mean, that would be a big decision to make. So we felt very comfortable.”

And so, away the Bengals and Burrow go.

The draft’s in the books, and we’ve got a loaded, quarterback-centric column for you today. Here’s what’s in the mix…

• How the Dolphins fooled the league in landing Tua.

• How the Chargers came to a comfort level with Herbert’s personality.

• How the Packers’ previous quarterback transition informed this one.

• The crazy trade that brought Joe Staley to the NFL, and the one that ushered him out.

Plus we’ve got a bunch of leftovers from draft weekend, and we’ll be sprinkling more in my columns through the coming days, too. But we’re starting right off the top with the first overall pick.

***

The funny thing about those 18 minutes: Neither Burrow, nor Taylor, nor Tobin knew then that would be all that they’d get with each other, so the meeting hardly seemed like the most important thing in the world at the time. Taylor had his first talk with Burrow the week before, just to introduce himself and ask about Burrow’s pre-draft plans, and then they sat down in Indy for the first of what they figured would be a series of summits.

Burrow made an impression. But, again, that was just going to be the start.

“There can be a lot of pressure in that situation—’O.K., we’ve been reading about this for weeks, now here’s the moment,’” Taylor said. “But he was just very confident in himself, not cocky in any way, shape or form. You’re sitting in there with the head coach, the general manager, the owner and it didn’t faze him. He was very confident and comfortable, and it was an easy conversation. That was really your first physical impression of the guy.”

The plan, by then, was pretty detailed and included bringing a massive contingent to Baton Rouge for Burrow’s April 3 pro day. The team was arranging for a dinner reservation for 13—a dozen Bengals officials and Burrow—for April 2, and those there specifically to vet the quarterback (some would be working on other positions) were to arrive in town on April 2.

In that group was Taylor, OC Brian Callahan, QBs coach Dan Pitcher, quality control coach/ex-LSU quarterback Brad Kragthorpe (who’d been an LSU assistant in Burrow’s first year there), Tobin and college scouting director Mike Potts. They’d slotted time to spend the entire afternoon of the 2nd with him, ahead of that dinner, and then would go to watch his pro day on the 3rd. And this was after all the work of the fall and early winter.

Tobin and Potts had each done school calls at LSU during the season, complete with visits to the Tigers’ practices during those trips, and saw three of his games live (Tobin did one and Potts two), which gave them the shot to see how he interacted with coaches and teammates on the sideline, and commanded the team on the field.

“The thing that stuck out was the way everyone in the building talked about him,” Tobin said. “Sometimes, you can tell how people feel, not by words, by how they’re saying it. And when everyone in the building talks a certain way about a kid, it perks you up. Being on campus, talking to everyone—trainers, strength coaches, position coaches, academic folks—you’d keep hearing the same message, in the same inflection, and that really registers with me.”

Combine that with the greatest season in college football history, and Tobin didn’t need a ton of convincing. By the time Cincinnati locked up the No. 1 pick, with a loss in Miami three days before Christmas, he had his leader for the selection and it was the quarterback who elicited that unanimous response.

And the coaches wouldn’t be far behind. As soon as the season ended, the Bengals accepted an invitation to coach at the Senior Bowl, and Taylor gave his staff a project—they’d get very aggressive with their film work in an effort to learn the guys they’d coach in Mobile. He was particularly intensive with Callahan, Pitcher and then QBs coach Alex Van Pelt. Taylor asked each to watch all of the tape from Burrow, Herbert, Tagovailoa and Jordan Love from 2019.

When that was over, even as Van Pelt wound up leaving for Cleveland, Taylor, Callahan and Pitcher didn’t find much disagreement in what they’d watched.

“There were a lot of things we were comfortable with—He’s a great player, if this is the way it works out, he would be a good pick,” Taylor said. “I don’t think we forced ourselves to make a decision at that point, there was so much work to be done. We didn’t really think of it that way. It was more of O.K., this guy’s really exciting, you can certainly see him being the No. 1 pick.”

At that point, Burrow, Herbert, Tagovailoa and Ohio State pass-rusher Chase Young were in the running for the pick. They re-watched tape on the guys after Mobile, by the drive up for the week in Indy, and came back. Then, everything changed.

***

By the time the national shutdown started—and Ohio was hit early on—because of Taylor’s January strategy, the Bengals were playing from ahead, and Taylor himself had watched enough Burrow tape to make his eyes bleed purple and gold.

Because LSU had a historic class, with a record-tying 14 players drafted over the weekend, Taylor wound up watching the No. 1 pick-to-be from just about every angle, and would notice something new every time, be it while he was studying Tigers prospects Justin Jefferson, Clyde Edwards-Helaire, Saahdiq Charles or Lloyd Cushenberry, or even rival defenders like Xavier McKinney or Isaiah Simmons.

“It was funny in that way to watch so much tape of the same plays,” Taylor said. “You’re just looking at so many different things that happened because there are so many great players on the field oftentimes.”

Which is to say that by the time league shut down the pro day circuit and circulated the new rules—limiting meetings between teams and players to video conference, one hour per session, three times per week—the Bengals were already very far along in the process. The one thing they lacked at that point was face time with the prospect they were considering at the top of the draft.

So they had to make up for that, and with Burrow, even if wasn’t 100% necessary at that point, they absolutely did, by hatching the plan to max out their time with the quarterback. What they lost in in-person contact, and being able to read Burrow’s body language and see him work out physically, they made up in time virtually. “We’ve got it,” Taylor said, “so why not use it?”

It started with LSU tape, and a litany of questions associated with what was being projected on to the Zoom screen. What’s the protection here? Talk us through your work on football. Explain this concept. What was your thought process on this one? And it slowly started to push from one set of stripes to another, with Bengals tape gradually replacing Tigers tape.

Meanwhile, as they worked through the pre-draft process with Burrow’s LSU teammates, they continued to gather information on their next quarterback. There, they heard stories of how competitive practices would get last fall because Burrow set that tone, and how he’d keep the team together and harness that energy when things got heated. Mostly, though, Taylor noticed this: They loved him.

“You could just tell he had a way of just fitting in with everybody,” Taylor said. “Sometimes you have quarterbacks who are just friends with the tight end, who maybe had the same background as them. And that’s their buddy and they don’t really spend as much time with somebody on the other side of the ball. And this guy was clearly somebody who fits in with every position group on the team, and that’s important.”

Along the way, the Bengals’ decision went from pretty obvious—remember, Tobin had an inkling it was going this way on Dec. 22—to overwhelmingly obvious.

And that’s why, two weeks into the Zoom meeting process, just before April 1, Taylor and Tobin went into a meeting with owner Mike Brown, his daughter and EVP Katie Blackburn, and son-in-law and VP Troy Blackburn, with the intention of nailing down what had been written in the stars for a couple months.

“Everybody got to speak,” said Tobin. “Everybody was on the same page. It was universal agreement in that meeting. No doubters. No detractors. It was basically, This is the guy that this whole group sees as No. 1. We think it’s clear. Here are the reasons.”

“It was basically, We’re all comfortable with this, this is where we’re going, let’s move forward,” Taylor added.

The Bengals didn’t tell Burrow. They wanted to give him the experience of getting that news during draft week. But as Taylor, Callahan and Pitcher started to shift the tape study more toward what Cincinnati was doing, they figured the quarterback would add it up. Taylor hesitates to call what they were doing “installing” the offense with Burrow, but that phrasing may not be too far off.

“We never out right told him, Hey you’re the No, 1 pick,” Taylor said. “It was possible the way I phrased a lot of things, where he’s a smart guy, he can put two and two together. There was never a moment where we said Hey, Joe we’re picking you at No. 1, congratulations. That never happened until the actual phone call on draft night. But again, he’s a smart guy and I think he was probably able to piece together some things I said.”

They knew Burrow was taking notes, and they knew his recall was great, from their work through the process. So piece by piece, they gave him information that would allow him to hit the ground running as soon as they made it official on April 23.

And there was one Burrow confidant they kept talking to—because he was on their roster. That would be third-year DE Sam Hubbard, a roommate of Burrow’s at Ohio State, who told the coaches and scouts that Burrow would outwork everyone in the building, would be all-in and, most of all, would fit the culture Taylor and Co. are trying to build.

“He’s arguably the hardest worker on the team,” Taylor said of Hubbard. “He’s just a guy that’s just such a face for what we’re trying to accomplish here, the way he goes about his business. When you ask his opinion of somebody, you take it to the bank. And you can just tell that Joe was somebody he had a ton of respect for.”

By then, the Bengals’ brass shared the assessment, which was why it was so easy to put the final steps of the process into motion. Last week, Brown sent Burrow a letter congratulating him. And, finally, on Thursday night, Taylor made the phone call to cap a unique process, one that was unique for more than one reason.

“The cool thing is it never changed,” Tobin said. “It never flopped. It never wavered.”

And as for the next time they actually get to sit down and meet with their new franchise quarterback in person, well, that’ll be the second time.

***

HOW MIAMI FOOLED US
Here comes my mea culpa—I was fooled. I didn’t think the Dolphins were taking Tagovailoa at No. 5. It sounded to me, from talking to people that know that team and the people that run it well, that Miami was going to play it safe, and that Tua didn’t fit the prototype the coaching staff wanted. The more people I talked to, the more cemented that idea became in my head.

You know the rest. Yup, they took him.

And I made sure to tell Miami GM Chris Grier when we talked on Sunday that he got me, and a lot of NFL people too, who thought he was either taking Herbert or an offensive tackle—which, of course, was all part of the game. As it turned out, per Grier, going into Thursday, only a handful of people knew what the plan was, and that plan had been in place, believe it or not, for less than a week.

Just days before the draft, the team had its final medical meeting, and that was actually when the doctors gave the football people the final go-ahead to take Tagovailoa. Part of it? Part was something that ex-NFL quarterback Brady Quinn brought up on my podcast last week—that Tagovailoa’s hip injury was a freak thing, and the two ankle surgeries he had, to fix high ankle sprains were basically elective procedures aimed at coming back quicker.

“Yeah, we’re very comfortable,” Grier told me. “Really, it’s nothing different. We all know in this game, people get hurt. He’s had some injuries that people talk about, but the part that people miss is a couple of the surgeries he had, he was doing it to rush back sooner, to be with his teammates and play. Some people may have elected not to do it, and kind of ride it out. He handled adversity well and showed his mental toughness, and his work ethic to come back from those things.

“Our doctors and trainers did an outstanding job, like they do on every player. With him specifically, they did nothing above and beyond of the same thing they do. They checked all the boxes and made sure we were all comfortable and feeling good about it. Brian [Flores], myself, ownership, we were very comfortable with it.”

So ended what’s been an arduous process for the Dolphins, a 16-month buildup that’s gone from stripping the roster down, to building assets up, to hitting the road to vet all the top prospects, to, finally, coming up with a strategy for drafting one, which included the subterfuge described above. Grier saw Alabama, LSU and Oregon live in the fall, and watched as his team improved and his draft position fell.

Throughout, the connection between the Dolphins and Tagovailoa persisted, which may have served as one reason why keeping intentions under wraps was so important.

But there was enough done publicly for everyone to see a little something. Owner Steve Ross accompanied Grier to the LSU-Alabama game in November, and team president Tom Garfinkel joined those two at Bama’s bowl game in Tampa, a game Tagovailoa attended but didn’t play in, thanks to a hip injury. (The Tide was playing Ross’s alma mater, Michigan, which gave him another reason to attend.)

Over time, Grier saw what he needed to see, and one coach who knows Flores well noticed how over the year he was becoming more “of an RPO guy”—something that was proven out with the move from the Patriots-rooted Chad O’Shea to new offensive coordinator Chan Gailey, who brings a ton of college background. The thinking, at the time of Gailey’s hiring, was that a simpler offense would be better for a young quarterback.

Now, it’s impossible to ignore that he’s there for a quarterback who ran the RPO game better than anyone in college football the last two years.

Nor is it hard to put together what Grier gathered on his recon mission, with the sort of powerful leaders that Flores wants for his locker room.

“It’s how he carried himself,” Grier said. “And how everyone talked about him. Our guys did a lot of work on him, going back to high school. We felt like he had a lot of intangibles that we like, that you look for in leaders of programs. We would spend time talking to some of the other Alabama players, and they just raved about him as a person.

“And again, at the end of the day, it’s a challenge that’s going to determine if he’s good enough to be your franchise quarterback. But a lot of other intangibles are there, and that’s what got us excited.”

All of that led to Thursday around 9 p.m. ET, when Grier told a scouting coordinator of his to call the pick into the league. Less than a minute later, the email popped up on his screen to confirm the pick: Tua Tagovailoa, QB Alabama. By then, there was no more need to even swallow hard.

He’d explored trading up. He’d done his homework on the teams drafting ahead of him. He had a plan if there was action at No. 2, 3 or 4. But really, it was simple at that point: “If Tua was there, we were going to take him,” he explained. And thanks in part to people like me, who were thrown off, that’s just the way it happened, with Grier fairly calm about it throughout.

“You’ve done so much work on everything, so you feel good about everything,” Grier said. “It’s weird. It was a sense of calmness. We’ve done all our work, we felt good about our process, so we identified Tua as a guy that we wanted to take. When he was there, we felt very good about it. There was no apprehension or nervousness, we’re very excited to ge