Everyone needs to stay cool.
LSU quarterback Joe Burrow has small hands. With the 2020 NFL combine starting on Monday, Burrow got measured. His mitts are nine inches.
That’s very small for a quarterback. As a frame of reference, Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray (5-foot-10) has 9.5-inch hands. That didn’t stop Murray from going No. 1 overall in 2019. And Burrow’s 9-inch hands won’t stop him from going No. 1 overall to the Cincinnati Bengals in the 2020 NFL Draft. (At least, that’s what everyone is expecting.) Small hands don’t matter. We promise.
Still, hand measurement is one of the many elements of the combine which create headlines. And because the NFL ball is bigger than the college ball, there will always be speculation that a quarterback with small hands may struggle to control the bigger ball at the NFL level.
So when NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero tweeted Burrow’s hand size, there was no shortage of commentary on Twitter.
Burrow is going to be fine. His hand size will not serve as a barometer for his levels of NFL success. But this is a great way to kick off combine week, a time of year when the line of conversation about prospects gets comically ungrounded.
