After having perhaps the greatest quarterback season in college football history, Joe Burrow will almost certainly be the No. 1 pick in the NFL Draft. There’s just one problem.
The Cincinnati Bengals have the No. 1 pick.
You know, the Bengals. The franchise that hasn’t won a playoff game in three decades.
“I wonder how this thing will unfold,” Damon Amendolara said on The DA Show. “If you’re the Bengals, you absolutely have to take Joe Burrow. I think it’s a no-brainer to take him. I think he’s going to be very good in the NFL. But I will say that the Bengals have proven to be a problematic franchise for top draft picks to go to.”
Like Carson Palmer. The No 1 overall pick in 2003, Palmer, a Heisman Trophy winner at USC, led the NFL with 32 touchdown passes in 2005. But he never won a playoff game in Cincinnati.
“Carson Palmer went there, and, the same thing: he was the savior, he was going to come in and change things,” Amendolara said. “Part of it was the knee injury he suffered in the playoffs, but Palmer was never able to elevate the Bengals into a championship team, and a lot of that has to do with the ownership there, the unwillingness to spend and kind of this acceptance of mediocrity. Can Burrow go there and change that culture, change that dynamic, and [have] the franchise get behind him? [Can] ownership, who has been stingy throughout the years, actually [go] out and be aggressive to build a winning program?”
The Bengals, who have finished with a losing record in four straight seasons, went 2-14 this year.
“They hired Zac Taylor, and he seemed totally in over his head for so much of the season this year,” Amendolara said. “We’ll see if Burrow does indeed say, ‘Yeah, I’m going to try to change things here.’ Because it feels like such a natural fit being an Ohio kid a couple of hours away being drafted by the Cincinnati Bengals.”