CINCINNATI — Jermaine Burton just wants a chance to shine. With Tee Higgins likely to miss his fourth game of the season this Sunday against Las Vegas, Burton couldn’t ask for a better opportunity.
“I’m just finally starting to get in and able to play now, just getting used to the league,” Burton said this week.
It’s up to him to keep earning it. That’s the rub in the NFL. You can have all the talent but you have to prove to everyone as a rookie that you’re constantly working to improve your craft. Coming out of Alabama, Burton became a top receiving prospect through his talent and his playmaking.
But there are reasons he fell to the Bengals in the third round and No. 80 overall.
Now what will he do with the chance and how big of a chance will the coaching staff give the third-round receiver out of Alabama.
So far this season, Burton has two catches on five targets for 88 yards, including a 47-yarder in Week 2 against Kansas City. He’s been inactive just once (against the Giants) and last week he recorded a season-high 24 snaps against the Eagles.
He ran a good route downfield for a 41-yard catch and nearly had an acrobatic catch in the end zone for a touchdown before Darius Slay broke up the pass.
Burton’s biggest hurdle hasn’t been his talent. It’s been earning the trust of his quarterback, his teammates and the coaching staff.
Joe Burrow has been seen several times since training camp taking Burton aside and giving him 1-on-1 tutoring on the offense and what he needs to do in his rookie season to make a positive impact on everyone in the building.
“He’s been great,” Burrow told me. “The conversation that we’ve had about his limited opportunities have been very positive. I know he’s been itching for more opportunities which with the guys we have has been tough. An opportunity has presented itself for him and he has taken advantage of it.
“Now, it’s my job, coaches’ job and his job as well to continue to find roles for him. Find opportunities where we can get him the ball and continue to see what he can do because I think he’s got explosiveness and ability we need to be able to harness and find a role for.”
When you’re a rookie, especially one loaded with talent like Burton, your most important mission is gaining the trust of teammates and coaches. Can you apply your talent on a consistent basis and learn the culture you’ve been placed into and make it work?
Show up on time to meetings, work out in the weight room, ask the right questions in film study, take the initiative to meet with veterans who have been around the block.
“He feels like I do a really good job naturally getting open,” Burton said of Burrow giving him some freedom in route-running. “So whenever there’s tweaks in our playbook that he’s just genuinely, like, ‘You do you. You do a good job of getting open so you don’t have to necessarily go about this (a specific way). Like you don’t have to be too (much) like how the paper route is.”
But Burrow does expect all of his receivers to be at a certain place at a certain time in a route. In other words, Burrow doesn’t care how Burton gets to the spot but he needs to be in that spot at the right time. That’s why showing up to meetings on time matters in the long term. It’s dependability in everything you do.
That’s what Burton knows he still has to prove to everyone in the building that took a chance on him last April.
“He’s gained a lot of confidence in me,” Burton said of Burrow. “He’s been a great leader towards me, you know, being more hands-on with me before or after practice, talking about this, talking about that. And it’s really been clarifying because it’s kind of me being able more to understand him too.”
Burton has the confidence that he can produce at the NFL level. But to produce, again it comes down to showing everyone you can be trusted. So much of a quarterback’s comfort level is trusting that his receiver will make the right move at the right time on instinct.
Burton believes he can run his routes more on instincts than running a route on mechanics and details at this point.
“To me it’s more naturally than it than it is a lot of like learning and like, more more stuff like that,” Burton said. “I feel like I just have a natural instinct of getting open. So if you tell me, I have a route here, I don’t know what I’m going to do base throughout that route until I’m running that route full speed in the game. So in practice you don’t get none of that. So I think that’s pretty much how it is with everybody.”
The biggest influence in Burton’s life right now is receivers coach Troy Walters. He’s been showing him tough love.
“He’s been helping to develop a lot because he’s just been hard on me,” Burton told me. “Don’t get me wrong. He’s an amazing coach, like hilarious, funny, like he’s a great coach, but he one thing he doesn’t do is let me feel like I (can) take time off or anything like that. He stays on me every day, every day. He lets me know what it’s really like playing receiver here and even when I do something good, he doesn’t praise me like ‘Oh yeah, yeah it’s all (that).’ He is just like ‘Okay, like do it again.’ So I feel like he’s done a really great job at that and I look forward to building my relationship with him.”
Then there was the advice Aaron Rodgers gave Burton when the two were working out in the summer.
“Be yourself because so many guys that have been around this league or been here for so long, like eight nine, ten years that they’ve seen at all,” Burton said. “So, you know anybody that comes in here and like acting like something else or being something different, it’s like people that’s been here for eight, nine years or even longer or for five or six years, however long, they can smell that out and it’s like it’s not not authentic and it’s not a good way to come off to guys you look up to.”
Burton said he’s taking “baby steps” now like just getting up out of bed in the morning and getting into work. Those steps – he insists – will lead to bigger steps like making bigger player more often in the Bengals offense.
“I look forward to doing a lot of things but my main focus right now is just trying to just be the best player I can be in day by day,” Burton said. “Just taking a little baby step because when I start noticing those baby steps are actually coming together, it will help my confidence boost up a little bit higher so I’m enjoying the baby steps right now.”
