No one has ever doubted Jermaine Burton’s potential, which he demonstrated while playing wide receiver for Alabama and Georgia over the last four seasons.
The Cincinnati Bengals selected Burton in the third round (80th overall) of the 2024 NFL selection on Friday night. He was Alabama’s sixth player off the board this year, and the second offensive player.
The 6-foot, 200-pound Burton had 79 receptions for 1,475 yards and 15 touchdowns with the Crimson Tide over the last two seasons after transferring from Georgia, where he won a national title in 2021. However, off-field troubles hampered Burton’s college career and may have caused his draft status to fall slightly.
Former Alabama coach Nick Saban addressed those issues after Burton was drafted on Friday.
“He is a tremendous competitor,” Saban said on ABC’s NFL draft coverage. “He’s got great quickness. He’s got really good speed. He can come in and out of a break. He can beat man-to-man.
“I really, really like this guy, (but) the No. 1 thing that he needs to do — and I think emotional maturity is the best way to say it — is do the right things all the time. He does the right things on the field. He knows the importance of what he has to do in the field. He wants to be a player. That’s all he thinks about.
“But you’ve got to do the right things in your life all the time so that you can do the best things that you can do on the field and be the best you can do. … When you get emotional, you make bad decisions and lose your brain.”
Burton was the third Alabama player picked on Friday, following the second-round selections of cornerback Kool-Aid McKinstry (Saints) and linebacker Chris Braswell (Buccaneers). On Thursday, the Titans selected offensive tackle JC Latham, Vikings linebacker Dallas Turner, and Lions cornerback Terrion Arnold in the first round.
