re: Aside from Burrow and Daniels, who's the most dramatically improved player you can recall?

Bert Jones

Brandon LaFell. Went from the outhouse to the penthouse

People’s worked magic with Swinson.

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Aside from Burrow and Daniels, who's the most dramatically improved player you can recall?

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Gonna go with a bit of an unusual call here-

Odell Beckham Jr.
Freshman in 2011, came in as a legacy player (son of Odell Beckham, duh), seemed solid but not great on a team with a meh offense. 41 catches for 475 yds, 2 TDs. Seemed like a good "hands" guy without much flash.

2012, he showed flashes of speed we didn't see in 2011, with 2 punt returns for TDs, as well as longer receptions- still just 43 receptions, but 713 yds; still only 2 TDs.

2013 he had 59 catches for 1152 yds and 8 TDs, but you saw shite that wasn't just stats. Catching was effortless, dude was 1-handing kickoffs and passes like it was nothing. Led the SEC in KR yardage, ran back a missed FG for a TD. He then went on to become the top WR in the NFL from 2014-2019, til he hit the injury wall in 2020.

I still remember seeing him that freshman season and thinking he was "ok", and never expected him to become what he did.

Jayden Daniels leap after already being a 4-year college starter was unbelievable. I was one of the few on here that predicted he’d be a heisman contender his last year because he was an incredible athlete and even I didn’t imagine him being as good as he was. His IQ increased tremendously and the game just slowed down for him

Besides them though I’ll go with CEH. With all the backs we’ve had come though here did not envision him becoming one of the best we’ve ever had and a 1st round draft pick

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His IQ increased tremendously and the game just slowed down for him

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Did it, though? I don’t think you can make those drastic leaps in production just because the light turned on for him in ‘23. I think playing at ASU really fricked with his psyche. After his freshman season, he didn’t really ever play with a great WR and I’m sure it was just programmed into his head to “whatever you do, don’t turn the ball over. That combined with his gifted speed and of course he was timid to through the ball around. Why risk a pick when I can probably pick up 8-10 at least. And he was

I think it was more his discipline and commitment than anything. He did a lot of work on that simulator and watched a ton on film. Add that with the emergence of emergence of Malik (he was a stud in ‘22, but a frickING stud in ‘23), BTJ, the OL, and Mason Taylor, well…And he threw to all the receivers all that summer where he probably didn’t do as much pre’22 because he got here so late.

I don’t think that means he wasn’t smart enough to go through his progressions in ‘22. I mentioned ASU, shite, he’s probably been told most of his life “whatever you do, DON’T THROW A PICK!! Just take off and run!!!” because he was just so damn special at it.

So it was like his brain got wired wrong, and they had to retrain it. I don’t think that’s necessarily just an increase in intelligence, but we’re probably just talking semantics.

Also Denbrock said they changed the route combos a ton from ‘22 to ‘23. In ‘22, we ran a lot of comebackers, where the WRs were catching the ball with their backs to the end zone. They made it a big deal to call routes where guys could catch it in front of them so they could keep running in ‘23. So a lot more happened than he just got smarter. They rewired his brain, he hit a couple of deep balls early, got confidence, and trusted it all year.

Hell, I think Burrow was probably almost as good in ‘18 as ‘19. Not his numbers, obviously, but if you had given him the ‘19 Chase, Jetts, Marshall, Clyde, Moss, OL, and most importantly the new offense back in ‘18, I think he’d have put up ridiculous stats that year, too.