Burrow/Young

[Fan_in_Kettering]

(12-18-2019, 10:51 PM)redwood Wrote: Factor in the $ for the top pick, and some injury risk.Young is pretty sure to DECLARE

Fields, mentioned earlier is likely NOT in this draft. I DO like his outlook.  I'd note, the Bengals twice went to the Super Bowl, led by QB's  who were NOT rd 1.   Both times... the Bengals  lost to Joe Montana, who had been a Rd 3 pick.The Bengals DID draft QB's in the 1st Rd.  Akili Smith, David Kliingler, Jack Thompson. NONE a success.  Carson Palmer...well he was at least a decent starter.

IF -- and that's a big IF -- Chase Young declares his eligibility for the draft, I think that's the way to go.  Like you, I too am a bit gun-shy about going for a quarterback in Round One, even if it's Joe Burrow who I really like or Jalen Hurts who I think might be among the most underrated quarterbacks in the 2020 draft class.

Here's my fear:  I know Mike Brown loves a big arm quarterback and, as BengalFan74 has written so eloquently, Mikey Boy has been looking for his Otto Graham since 1991. I'm afraid Mike will insist on drafting Joe Burrow, succeed in doing so, think he's solved everything with one pick, then throws in the towel and drafts a bunch of "projects" in the other six rounds.  You mentioned Carson Palmer being drafted in 2003 but he ended up with an overall losing record in Cincinnati.  I might argue the best pick in the 2003 draft was NOT Carson Palmer but guard Eric Steinbach in the second round or Jeremi Johnson, the last true Cincinnati fullback, in the fourth round.

Mikey Boy is quarterback-centric because that's the position he played at Dartmouth.  Having a great signal caller is vital to a team's success* but right now the Bengals are not full of talent on offense -- and no, I'm not just talking about the offensive line.  People ask what happened to Andy Dalton after his stellar season in 2015 and I always answer the same: Dalton didn't get worse.  In 2015 he had Andrew Whitworth, Clint Boling, and Kevin Zeitler on the offensive line and by 2019 these guys were gone -- along with Mohamed Sanu, Marvin Jones, Jermaine Gresham, and Jerome Simpson -- as well as the injured AJ Green and the oft-injured Tyler Eifert. 

If the Bengals draft Joe Burrow or Jalen Hurts they better THINK hard and draft, trade for, and develop via free agency an entire offense around them.  Joe Burrow wasn't the great player he became until Coach Ed Orgeron at LSU built the offense around his strengths.  In the pro ranks, the same can be said of Lamar Jackson in Baltimore; recently he was put in the game for "gimmick" plays while Joe Flacco took a breather but Greg Roman, the Ravens' offensive coordinator, intelligently retooled their entire offense around Lamar Jackson's natural abilities.

I'm not sure Zac Taylor or Brian Callahan have that in them!  If the Bengals draft a quarterback, the team has to make the commitment to retool the offense around their existing skills, not try to "morph" them into something they're not. 




*Unless you're the 2000 Baltimore Ravens with a shutdown defense; then even Trent Dilfer will do.