New Details Prove Luther Burden Was Right To Be Pissed At Rest Of NFL

Plenty of players fall in the NFL draft. It happens every year. Great players tumble down the board for superficial reasons. One team finally takes them and looks brilliant for doing so later on. Aaron Rodgers is one such example. Randy Moss was another. One thing that became clear with both players is they held a grudge against other teams for not taking them sooner. Luther Burden is the same. The Missouri wide receiver felt he was more than good enough to go in the 1st round last month. His dip in production last season had nothing to do with his talent. Surely other teams would see that.

Everybody knows what happened next. Burden fell out of the 1st round, landing with the Chicago Bears at the 39th overall pick in the 2nd. What they don’t know is why the receiver felt so disrespected that he vowed revenge on the league. It wasn’t because of the fall itself. It was more about the fact that he was lied to. Courtney Cronin of ESPN did some digging into the situation in her recent column. What sticks in Burden’s craw the most is that almost every team he met going into the draft said he was a 1st round receiver.

Luther Burden III wasn’t ready to call it a night. The former Missouri wide receiver had to channel his frustration and disappointment to clear his mind. For weeks, the teams he had visited during the lead-up to the 2025 NFL draft told him they believed he was worthy of a first-round pick…

…Burden carried that mindset to his new NFL home after the Chicago Bears drafted him with the 39th pick in the second round. The selection came as a bit of a surprise to the wide receiver, who said he hadn’t interacted much with the Bears during the predraft process.

Luther Burden learned a harsh lesson about the NFL.

Teams will tell you lots of things, but taking them at their word might not be in your best interests. This is a cutthroat league built on fierce competitiveness and ice-cold business decisions. What they said to Luther Burden was more about what he wanted to hear than what they actually felt. While the receiver has undeniable 1st round talent, teams were never going to tell him the truth: that his dip in production and rumors of maturity concerns meant there was no way they’d gamble a 1st round pick on him. Burden has every right to feel cheated and disrespected. The Bears don’t have to worry about that. They have the excuse of never having a real chance to take him in the 1st round and merely took advantage of other teams’ mistakes. He will use the outrage as fuel for his NFL career. All they have to do is fan the flames.