Joe Burrow offered his condolences to players who won’t play football in 2020.
Before the 2019 college football season, Joe Burrow was an Ohio State transfer figured to be another talented, yet mostly unproductive, LSU starting quarterback. After that season, Burrow became the No. 1 pick in the draft, a Heisman winner and national champion after producing the greatest single-season performance a college football quarterback has ever authored.
Players in the Big Ten, among other places, may not be able to replicate that rise to prominence, as one of college football’s five major conferences has voted to cancel the 2020 season amid the coronavirus pandemic. Burrow knows how difficult it might be for less-heralded players to make it to the pros without an extra year of tape, as he claims he might be looking for a non-football job without that additional year of film.
I feel for all college athletes right now. I hope their voices are heard by the decision makers. If this happened a year ago I may be looking for a job right now.
— Joey Burrow (@JoeyB) August 10, 2020
Joe Burrow knows that many top Big Ten players could slip in the draft.
Blue-chip prospects like Justin Fields, Shaun Wade, and Micah Parsons will likely be picked in the first round no matter what due to their physical talents. However, lesser-known players that were set to assume starting roles for the first, and possibly only, time in their college careers in 2020 now are left with almost no options to get some film on tape this year.
Burrow might have landed with the Cincinnati Bengals in the first round, but his fairytale story shouldn’t be expected to become the norm. Both for their immediate and long-term futures, this is a bitter pill for those in the Big Ten and elsewhere to swallow. If Burrow didn’t have his chance to shine last year, he doesn’t go down as one of the game’s greats and his NFL outlook is much different. This will most definitely impact countless other prospects who are looking for a big 2020 season to catapult themselves up draft boards and change their future for the better.
NFL teams will feel the wrath of a canceled season during the 2020 NFL draft, as teams will have one less full season of film to both evaluate projected first-round picks and identify sleepers and breakouts. There might not be a prospect that mirrors Burrow’s meteoric rise in 2020, and that is a bad look for both college football programs and professional teams.
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