Bengals offensive coordinator dishes on Joe Burrow’s arm strength

The Cincinnati Bengals selected LSU football’s Joe Burrow with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2020 NFL Draft.

LSU football’s Joe Burrow was the consensus top prospect in the 2020 NFL Draft, which is why the Cincinnati Bengals, a team that desperately needed a quarterback, took him with the first selection.

Burrow is as close to a perfect quarterback prospect as you’ll see. The only concern about him that was raised during the pre-draft process was whether or not he had a strong enough arm to succeed in the NFL.

Bengals offensive coordinator Bill Callahan addressed those concerns in a conference call with reporters after Cincinnati drafted Burrow.

Callahan said there’s a certain arm strength “threshold” that quarterbacks have to reach to be able to play in the NFL. And he thinks Burrow’s arm meets that threshold.

“There’s a baseline you have to meet to play (as an) NFL quarterback, and that’s one that Joe certainly has exceeded”, said Callahan.

“If you can anticipate and you can throw on time, a lot of the arm strength debate can go out the window. I’ve never had a reservation about his arm strength at all.”

Full disclosure: I’m not a draft analyst. But I watch a lot of football. And I’ve never once thought to myself while watching Burrow play that there are any issues with his arm.

I mean, his arm strength looked pretty good on this 78 yard touchdown pass to Ja’Marr Chase last year.

The ball was in air for 55 yards. I don’t see a problem with his arm strength at all.

Maybe this was a narrative created by teams hoping to trade up and draft Burrow (probably the same people that created the “Burrow doesn’t want to play for the Bengals” narrative).

Or maybe there are just a lot of ill-informed analysts.

Burrow checks all the boxes — including the arm strength box.