Joe Burrow Should Say No To the NFL, the Bengals, and Redskins

It's been said that former LSU quarterback Joe Burrow has misgivings about tying his football career to the Cincinnati Bengals. With good reason. He should stand his ground.  Here's the letter one dreams Burrow would write to the NFL to explain his refusal to associate with failed organizations all because the NFL chooses to reward mediocrity on the field and in the owner's suite. 

To Roger Goodell and NFL Management:

Just like millions of other young Americans nearing graduation this spring, I will begin my post-collegiate career. The major difference is I’ll start my new life in the National Football League. This next step is a dream come true for me after years of hard work.

At the same time, there are bittersweet qualities to what’s ahead. In particular, there are wildly perverse rules and incentives in place that very much limit which teams can hire me to play football. These limits threaten my long-term viability in my chosen line of work.

Though my starting compensation will dwarf that of just about every other college graduate (or dropout), I won’t get to choose my employer like so many other graduates will. In consideration of how the NFL operates, and particularly considering how historically inept some NFL organizations are, my lack of say in who drafts me greatly imperils my future performance on the field, and ultimately, future earnings. Think about it.

Was Tim Couch just a bad pick for the Cleveland Browns in 1999, or have the Browns been poorly run for decades? Looking back to the 1970s, was Archie Manning not a winner or were the New Orleans Saints of that era a hopeless organization? Joe Montana lasted until the 3^rd round in 1979, but does anyone seriously think he’d have four Super Bowl rings had he been drafted by the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1st?

Looking ahead to the NFL Draft in April, word is that I’ll go #1 to the Cincinnati Bengals. Since the Bengals compiled the NFL’s worst record last year, they have the “right” to take me. I have no choice in the matter, and there lies the problem.

My situation is the equivalent of a more traditional college graduate having won the interest of Amazon, Apple and Sears, only for the graduate to have no choice but to take the position at Sears. Where’s the justice in such a scenario?

To the above, some may respond that my lament is the stuff of an overprivileged college athlete. How dare I complain in consideration of the millions worth of earnings in my future?

It’s a fair question, but I’ve put in enormous amounts of work to get to where I am. Football means a great deal to me, and I’d like for it to be my life’s work. That’s why the where in terms of where I work means so much. I want my NFL playing career to last much longer than 4 or 5 years.

Consider again a more traditional college grad once again entertaining offers from Amazon, Apple and Sears. Even if the financials behind the Sears offer dwarfed those of Amazon and Apple, all-too-many would still spurn Sears with the long-term in mind. I’m no different.

In that case I want to make it clear that if drafted by the Cincinnati Bengals, I will not play for them. There will be no negotiations and certainly no contract. I’ve worked too hard for too long to tie my football future to an organization that doesn’t know how to fully develop its players, and doesn’t know how to win.

I’ll add that the Washington Redskins should similarly think long and hard before drafting me, assuming the Bengals properly take my declaration seriously. I’ll never work for the Redskins either. Can you blame me?

During Daniel Snyder's tenure as owner of the Redskins, this once model NFL franchise has become a laughingstock. A total and complete joke. Washington, D.C.-based sports talk host Steve Czaban once (or perhaps many times) referred to the Redskins organization as “a failed state.” So my “reward” for success on the collegiate level is that I must work for this failed state? No thanks. 

Interesting is that Snyder bought the Redskins in 1999, and Tom Brady entered the 2000 NFL Draft. Crucial here is that Snyder’s ownership didn’t begin until May of 1999, which means his first draft as owner was the one that Brady was part of in 2000. Brady, as is well known lasted until the 199^th pick in the 6^th round. Translated, Snyder’s Redskins had at least five different chances to pick arguably the greatest quarterback to ever play the game.

That the Redskins had the chance to draft Brady should cause the readers of this letter to stop and think. Does anyone seriously think that if Snyder’s Redskins had picked the former Michigan Wolverine that he would presently be in the discussion of the greatest to ever play the game after having helped add six Super Bowl trophies to the case at Redskin Park? Does anyone seriously think Brady would still be in the NFL? Would we have even heard of him? The questions answer themselves.

Players matter, coaches matter a great deal, and so do owners matter. The first two assertions are accepted wisdom, but the third isn’t. It should be. I think the NFL’s unwillingness to acknowledge the 3^rd assertion speaks to willful blindness and ignorance on the part of the League. Can the NFL, or its successful owners, continue to ignore the glaring truth that teams like Browns, Bengals, Lions and Cardinals have no Super Bowl wins on their resume, and that the Redskins, once an NFL power, now almost regularly have more opposing fans cheering on their teams in an increasingly empty FedEx Field?

Might Snyder’s remarkable ineptitude have something to do with the team’s stupendous decline? Consider former Redskin assistants Sean McVay, Kyle Shanahan and Matt LaFleur. Now thriving as NFL head coaches, they were part of two-time Super Bowl winning head coach (with the Denver Broncos, long owned by the late Hall of Fame owner Pat Bowlen) Mike Shanahan’s Redskin staff, and for being there, were largely part of failure. Their success has come since they left Ashburn, VA, which raises an obvious question: how many great coaches saw their genius suffocated by their time with the Redskins, and arguably worse, how many players never achieved anywhere close to their full potential on account of having the misfortune of being drafted by the Redskins? If readers are stumped, consider yet again Tom Brady’s career trajectory if drafted by the Redskins in 2000. More modernly, does anyone seriously think Lamar Jackson would have led this past season’s Redskins to the NFL's best regular season record had they drafted him two years ago?

For too long past actions taken by John Elway and Eli Manning with an eye of avoiding NFL futility have been billed as the stuff of coddled Prima Donna athletes. So, I suppose, will my decision to refuse to work for certain organizations. That’s ok, I’ll gladly suffer the arrows from know-nothing critics with the long-term in mind; many of those critics having themselves likely turned down or left media organizations they felt limited their own ability to thrive.

Better yet, hopefully my decision will cause the NFL to rethink two glaring problems in how it operates. For one, why is it that futility is routinely rewarded? In the real world, winning corporations aren’t pushed to the back of the line when it comes to talent acquisition. This truth doesn’t ensure endless dominance (lest readers forget, GE was the world’s most valuable company when the 21^st century began), but it does mean that talented new entrants don’t have their skills potentially drowned by the Sears, Blockbusters and Circuit Citys of the business world. In short, the NFL should rethink how it orders drafts with the health of NFL teams and players top of mind. The goal of teams should be to win and win often with future access to the best talent similarly top of mind. This is how it works in corporate America, and as the valuations of U.S. corporations indicate, it works pretty well.

To which some will say that the NFL and its teams carry extraordinarily high valuations too. They surely do. That’s the seen.

But consider the unseen; as in imagine the valuations of NFL teams if the best owners and teams weren’t weighed down by the failures. In short, the unseen when it comes to the NFL speaks to the other glaring problem with the League: it rewards the losers. Basically the winners are forced to prop up the losers. Think about it. Precisely because the League is wildly popular and ever more attractive to sponsors and networks, the revenues reaching each team continue to grow. That’s all well and good, but imagine how much more popular the NFL would be, and imagine how much more prosperous the League would be if there weren’t so many failed teams sapping fan interest?

The Redskins are instructive with regard to the above once again, as are the Bengals, Lions, Browns, and all-too-many others. In a normal business scenario, the routine failure of laggard businesses would force not just changes in terms of players and coaches, but also those at the top of an organization. Not so the NFL. Since revenues are shared, someone like Snyder, or families like the Browns can respectively oversee persistent failure for the Redskins and Bengals since there’s really no penalty for the failure.

Better it would be for players and coaches alike if the NFL, a private organization, instituted by-laws enabling forced sales by owners who clearly aren’t up to it. Such a change would boost the value of every NFL team by virtue of it ridding the League of awful owners, and it’s crucial to point out that this change would similarly accrue to coaches and players whose failure hasn’t always been a function of talent. Consider the Redskins yet again: players and coaches alike do best when they leave Redskin Park; that is, assuming their time there doesn't wreck their reputations so thoroughly that no one wants them.

So there you have it: I don’t just love football. I love the NFL too, and I’ve studied the business of the NFL almost as much as I’ve studied the game. Unfortunately, the business of the NFL all-too-often means those who’ve done all the right things on the collegiate level find themselves in the worst business situations on the professional level; those situations shortening careers, earnings, and joy. That will not be me.

I will once again not play for the Bengals, Redskins, and any other team that has a history of smothering the diligent work of football players, coaches and administrators alike. My hope is that others eager to make a career of football will follow my lead. In my case, doing what I love for a long time, and doing it for competent people, means much more to me than the very near-term joy of hearing my name called first on April 23^rd.