Jay Gruden thinks Joe Burrow will make A.J. Green 'the happiest guy in the world'

CINCINNATI — The Bengals selected Joe Burrow with the top pick in April's NFL Draft because they believe he has the potential to be an elite passer in the pros.

He was the best player in college football last season. One of his biggest strengths is his accuracy. He's great at throwing it short, intermediate and deep.

Former Bengals offensive coordinator Jay Gruden believes A.J. Green is going to enjoy playing with Burrow.

"He's great and he's coming out of LSU that ran a lot of pro concepts," Gruden told Geoff Hobson of Bengals.com. I tell you, the happiest guy in the world had to be A.J. because Burrow throws an unbelievable deep ball… Burrow has a great top. The nose (of the ball) comes down. A.J. will love that."

Gruden, who is now the Jaguars offensive coordinator, helped the Bengals take Green and Andy Dalton in the 2011 draft. He spent three seasons in Cincinnati and helped the Bengals make the playoffs in three consecutive years.

Green hasn't met Burrow in person, but they have exchanged text messages over the past few months.

The seven-time Pro Bowler believes the new duo can be successful this season, despite the lack of physical reps in practice.

“A lot of people just play into the ‘how long is it going to take to get clicking?'" Green said last week. We’re all football players. We’ve been doing this a long time. Hobson was talking about how Andy [Dalton] and I came in in 2011 and we went 9-7. We didn’t have any kind of expectations, but I feel like when you have the No. 1 pick and what we did in free agency and me coming back, TB’s coming back, John, Tee and all these pieces that we added on defense… I feel like the talent level that we have now is way different than we had in 2011 — our defense was great, but I feel like our offense matches our defense right now.”

There are high expectations for Burrow and Green entering the 2020 season. They believe they can surprise some people, despite a worldwide pandemic preventing them from getting on the field together this offseason.

Rookies reported for training camp to undergo COVID-19 testing earlier this week. Veterans are schedule to report on July 28.