Luther Burden came back from his draft party undrafted.
Sitting in his apartment around 11 p.m. after Round 1 of the NFL draft last month, Burden didn’t quite know what to do. He was too amped — furious, really — to sleep. He’d never felt so motivated.
“I was like, ‘I need to get out of here,’” he said.
The wide receiver turned to his girlfriend and told her that he wanted to go to Missouri’s indoor football complex.
He caught passes. She ran the Jugs machine, feeding footballs between two spinning wheels and watching the spirals rifle toward Burden.
They stopped around 1 a.m.
“I feel like teams that passed up on me are going to regret it …” Burden told the Sun-Times on Friday. “Pretty much, teams said they were going to take me, that would love to take me, but chose otherwise. I was … not shocked, but it was just like, ‘Really?’ …
“I just want to make everybody pay.”
When the Bears drafted Burden in Round 2, he was still seething about sliding out of Day 1. Truthfully, he’s still annoyed.
“I believe in myself,” said Burden, who finished his prep career at East St. Louis High School. “That’s all I really need. As long as I believe in myself, I can do anything. It’s how I was built. I always wanted to be the best on the field at all times.”
This is how confident Burden is: he was issued No. 87, not considered a jersey befitting a premium receiver, because, he said, “all the good numbers were gone.” Burden, who wore No. 3 at Missouri and in high school, plans on getting a single-digit number once training camp ends — and other players are cut.
“I shouldn’t be in 87 for long. …” he said. “I’ve been a low number guy my whole life. The lowest possible number that comes up, I’ll look forward to it.”
The Bears like that confidence. But Burden will have to walk the line between self-assuredness and cockiness — particularly in a league when rookies are best seen and not heard.
He’s been impressive through two days of rookie minicamp. He caught the first ball thrown his way in team drills Friday off his shoe tops. Saturday’s practice ended inauspiciously, though. After catching a 60-yard pass in the final minutes of practice, Burden fell to the ground, perhaps on top of the ball. He stood up slowly and was having his midsection looked at by trainers when practice ended.
Offensive coordinator Declan Doyle declined comment when asked about the injury, saying he wanted to defer to head coach Ben Johnson, who didn’t do interviews Saturday. The Bears will be careful this time of year, as regular season games are still four months away.
There’s no questioning Burden’s gameday production — he was first team All-SEC player each of the last two years and in three college seasons caught 192 passes for 2,263 yards and 21 touchdowns.
“He’s a playmaker,” Doyle said. “When the ball’s in his hands he was one of the best guys that we evaluated in this process.”
Before the draft, though, some scouts questioned whether Burden was a good practice player.
His reaction?
“It’s just noise,” Burden said. “Block the noise out. Don’t listen to it.”
The Bears weren’t considered likely to draft a receiver on Day 2. A run on running backs made them reconsider — Quinshon Judkins and TreVeyon Henderson, both of Ohio State, were taken with two of the three picks before the Bears’ No. 39.
After Friday’s practice, Johnson was asked if he was surprised that Burden fell to the Bears.
“I’m not surprised by anything in the draft anymore,” he said. “I was very excited when he slid to us but nothing that happened [Friday] would make me feel any different. I thought he did a great job. It’s a great start.”
It’s up to the coaching staff to make all the pieces fit — Burden and first-round pick Colston Loveland, a tight end, are joining an offense that already features pass-catchers DJ Moore, Rome Odunze, Cole Kmet and Olamide Zaccheus.
“There’s only one ball — that’s part of the deal,” Doyle said. “We have to make sure that we’re taking all that into account in the gameplan process. We’re very early in that. We don’t have to deal with those problems quite yet, but those are really good problems to have as an offense.”
This season marks the first time in his life, at any level of football, that Burden hasn’t been the focal point of his team’s offensive attack.
“He’s got to learn the system first and he’s got to learn kind of our way of doing things …” Doyle said. “It’s not like, ‘Hey, you’re coming in to have this amount of targets.’ It’s, ‘Hey, let’s get him in here, let’s get him competing, just like everybody else is competing.’ And then when it comes time in the fall, that’s when we’re going to decide who’s going to touch it and who’s going to give us the best chance to have success.”
It’s up to Burden to seize that opportunity, both now and in the fall.
“My opportunity is going to come,” he said.