AFC Notes: Joe Burrow, Najee Harris, Bengals, Browns, Steelers

Bengals

Bengals QB Joe Burrow is in no rush to sign his next contract, adding that he’ll allow the process to play out.

“It gets done when it gets done,” Burrow said, via PFT. “We’ll see.”

Burrow is focused on working out a deal that not only benefits himself, but the team as a whole.

“I’m focused on getting a deal done that’s good for us, good for me, good for the team, good for everybody,” Burrow said.

Burrow added that holding out or not showing up to camp is not the best route for him due to the fact that he’s already missed so much preparation time throughout his career.

“I think every situation is unique and every guy is unique and every position is unique, too,” Burrow said. “I think personally, I feel in my position, I don’t want to waste any of these days I have to get better. I’ve wasted enough days the last two years, with injuries and appendicitis, and COVID the year before that. I don’t want to get out of camp wishing I had seven more days that I could’ve gotten better. So, that’s the reason I’m here. Maybe business comes first at some point. But I need these days to be my best.”

Browns

Browns owner Jimmy Haslem isn’t prepared to call this a make-or-break year for GM Andrew Berry and HC Kevin Stefanski.

“I’m not going to go there, I’m not going to,” Haslam said, via 92.3 The Fan. “That’s not fair to anybody to do. It could be extremely extenuating circumstances. I just say we’re all excited about this year.”

Haslem admitted that expectations are high for the team, but isn’t going to put any specific benchmarks on the performance.

“I’m not saying the expectations aren’t high, I’m just not going to draw a line for you guys what they are,” Haslam said.

Haslam added that he’s more than comfortable with the team’s expectations and what the team views as success.

“They have incredibly high expectations for themselves and I’m comfortable with their expectations themselves,” Haslam said. “I really am. I mean, these guys are winners. They’ve been winners before. They’ve done well in everything they’ve done. They expect to do well. Our assistant coaches expect to do well. Our players expect to do well. We’ll leave it at that.”

Haslam still has the utmost confidence in Stefanski to perform.

“I think he’s a good coach,” Haslam said. “I mean, he proved it in the first year, did a tremendous job. Second year we had some bumps and bruises with Baker and his injury, etc. And last year was just, it was difficult. We’re in a much better position just overall than we were last year.”

Steelers

Steelers RB Najee Harris explained that the only way running backs are devalued in the NFL is when it comes to their contracts.

“They ask me alone — ‘The game’s going to rely on you, you need to do this for the team, you got to do this right here. Hey, it’s time to close out the game. Hey, we need to lean on you right now,’” Harris said, via Brooke Pryor of ESPN. “And it happens a lot of places like Cleveland, Tennessee, even with the Niners; there’s numerous teams where this happens at. Only time when they choose to say that [the position] is devalued is when it’s time to pay the running back…It’s not devalued at all. They just don’t want to pay a running back.”

Harris expressed his frustration regarding what happened to Giants RB Saquon Barkley and his contract situation, adding that he’s a focal point of the offense and deserves to be compensated as such.

“Saquon accumulated for almost 30% of the offense,” Harris explained. “Why can’t you look at that and say, ‘OK, well he said he’s not trying to break the market or set the market, but he’s trying to get compensated of what he thinks is fair…I know that they know themselves, that ain’t fair what he’s getting. He wanted a long contract to know his security there. Right now, he doesn’t have no security. They’re just going to probably utilize him the same way. And if something happens to him again, they’re going to probably look somewhere else. It’s like, man, what is the security that we have? We don’t have no security right now. You guys are using us to accomplish what you guys want. And then when it’s time for us to re-up or ask for something that we think is right, you guys just turn the cheek and say, ‘Well, you have wear and tear.'”

Harris said he’s spoken to the NFLPA about possible solutions in order to give running backs more security and one of the options was not franchise-tagging running backs based on position.

“For them to say that the running back position, you’re slotted at this much money, I don’t think that that’s right because of what we’re asked to do,” Harris said. “There’s a lot of running backs who’s doing receiving. There’s a lot of running backs doing blocking and all that stuff. For you to just say running back and that’s our market, and if it doesn’t hit that, then it goes down lower. That’s not right. They need to change that.”