Does anyone want to play quarterback for the Bengals?
Leigh Steinberg, who represents Tua Tagovailoa, joked on the radio on Thursday that he was rooting for Cincinnati to take Joe Burrow with the No. 1 pick in the 2020 NFL Draft.
“You want to make sure that your client ends up with a good organization,” Steinberg told 97.3 ESPN FM in New Jersey on Thursday. “I’m hoping Cincy falls in love with Joe Burrow.”
The Bengals have the first overall pick after finishing with a league-worst 2-14 record. The team is expected to move on from 32-year-old veteran Andy Dalton and select LSU’s Burrow.
After Steinberg’s controversial comments, he tweeted that he was only joking about the possibility of the Bengals drafting Tagovailoa.
“#BENGALS Someone @Bengals on radio row was teasing me bout Mike Brown and I made a joke,any client I have would be happy to go to Cincinnati,nice city,good folks,” he wrote on Thursday.
Tagovailoa’s agent is referencing a hot mic moment when he was caught on camera saying, “Oh my god, Mike Brown” after his client, David Klingler, was selected by the Bengals in the first round of the 1992 NFL Draft. Klingler was a superstar prospect out of the University of Houston, but ended up making just 24 starts for the team.
Steinberg also represented Oregon quarterback Akili Smith in the 1999 NFL Draft. Smith was selected by the Bengals with the No. 3 pick and played four disappointing seasons for the team before washing out of the NFL.
Tagovailoa had been in the conversation for the No. 1 overall pick before suffering a devastating hip injury against Mississippi State on Nov. 16. His draft stock took a hit as a result amid concerns about long-term health and durability.
“I feel really good,” Tagovailoa told NFL Network on Thursday. “We’re on track for a full recovery.”
The 21-year old from Hawaii plans to participate in quarterback workouts at the combine on Feb. 27, but he says his goal is to “win [his] medical and then go in and interview with the teams.”
Quarterback is just one void the Bengals must fill while rebuilding the team. Cincinnati ranked 30th in the league in points per game, 29th in yards allowed and 24th in sacks allowed.
Retired quarterback Carson Palmer cautioned Burrow about the lack of winning culture within the organization.
“That’s why I wanted out: I never felt like the [Bengals’] organization was really trying to win a Super Bowl, and really chasing the Super Bowl,” Palmer told Damon Amendolara on CBS Sports Radio on Wednesday. “Because that’s what today’s day and age is. The game today is you can’t just hope you draft well and not go after free agents and you just end up in the Super Bowl. You gotta go get it.”
In spite of it all, the presumptive No. 1 pick is “excited to even be in that conversation,” according to Joe Burrow’s father, Jimmy Burrow.
“You’re always, if you’re the top pick or one of the top picks, that’s the way the NFL Draft is set up, you’re not gonna get picked by a team that has a great record,” Jimmy Burrow told Montreal’s TSN 690 after the College Football National Championship. “He’ll be confident that eventually they can win a lot of games there at Cincinnati.”