When undrafted free agents arrive on their first day of rookie minicamp, there’s a lifelong dream’s worth of emotions weighing down that duffle bag of gear.
They want to walk to the correct locker room and impress the coaches. They don’t want to get lost and jeopardize being late for a meeting or practice. They want to be noticed but for the right reasons.
They want to feel like they belong.
For Cincinnati Bengals undrafted receiver Cole Burgess, with his Division III SUNY Cortland background suffocated by questions of whether he belongs at the game’s highest level, there was a deep, comfortable breath associated with his first arrival at Paycor Stadium.
The exhale came from meeting the Bengals’ solitary member of the NFL’s SUNY Cortland pipeline, offensive coordinator Dan Pitcher.
“When I came down here,” Burgess said. “He met me right at the door.”
Understandable, even beyond football, Pitcher would want to personally thank the player most responsible for the first national championship in the history of his alma mater nestled in the anonymous football hills of New York State.
Burgess and the Red Dragons broke records — some of them Pitcher’s — all while he ditched transfer-happy college football trends to stay loyal to a school he felt fit him. He did so with one idea in mind.
“I felt like we could do something special,” Burgess said. “I’m just going to ball out at this level. I felt like if you are good enough, they are going to find you.”
Little did he know, he’d be found by a proud alum locked to every step of Cortland’s championship season. Maybe the person best positioned to discover a nonexistent prospect pipeline to the NFL and properly appreciate one of the more fascinating developmental projects in the draft.
“He just needed an opportunity,” Cortland head coach Curt Fitzpatrick said.
The man overseeing the opportunity met him at the front door.
Bengals sixth-round draft pick in 2023 Andrei Iosivas was tabbed as a raw, small-school prospect out of Princeton. That’s proper use of the term “small school.” Next to Burgess, Iosivas’ background looks more like the SEC.Burgess grew up in the Northeast, attending Greenwich High School with a graduating class of around 70. He played in the smallest classification the state of New York offered without shifting to eight-man football.
“As small as you can picture,” Fitzpatrick said. “He was a wildcat quarterback, they snapped him the ball and he just ran left and ran right.”
A four-year starter, he was All-State.
The wildly athletic, but notably stringy Burgess was a turbo-boosted vacuum in center field for the baseball team.
A four-year starter, he was All-State.
He dabbled in track, working around the other seasons.
He set the school record in the 300 meters.
Landing at Cortland, he continued to play football and baseball, upgrading from the smallest classification in New York to one of the smallest classifications in college athletics.
In his first two years on campus, he returned three kickoffs for touchdowns, blocked a punt and led the team in receiving. Meanwhile, he saw the next two seasons wiped out — 2020 by COVID and 2021 by suspension for throwing an off-campus Halloween party during the pandemic.
Fitzpatrick, a new coach who recruited Burgess at Greenwich while coaching at SUNY Morrisville, saw a rare athlete starting to figure out. Soon after, he understood the rest of the story.
“When I got the job and started to coach him, when he looked me dead in the eye and said his goal was to play in the NFL, I said, ‘OK, that’s a lot of kids’ dream,'” Fitzpatrick said. “But one, the talent he has, lot of guys want to play in the NFL but don’t have the physical tools to do it — which he does. Then his drive. He loves football. He practices like it’s a game. Full speed. He’s got a bulldog mentality.”
Burgess averaged 22 yards per reception with 11 touchdowns in 2022. The scouts were circling. As were bigger programs.
After all, only one player in program history ever played a game in the NFL, the late defensive end R-Kal Truluck from 2002-2005. If the NFL was the dream, there were no examples to prove it could be a reality.
The understandable decision would be to finally check off the box of facing bigger competition and transfer but Burgess opted to stay. The first game after his decision came in the opener against 10th-ranked Delaware Valley.
It was Hall of Fame weekend in Cortland. Among those being inducted was a former star quarterback from 2008-’11. His name was Dan Pitcher.
In his first trip back to the school in a decade, he watched Burgess catch six passes for 62 yards and a touchdown, pacing a surprising 42-13 victory. Pitcher played with talented receivers while setting passing records during his college career, but “nobody that moves like he moves,” he said.
Burgess eventually caught 87 passes for 1,375 yards and 16 touchdowns on the season. With each passing week as Pitcher checked in on box scores and YouTube highlights, he kept coming back to the same place.
“This guy is good,” he said. “In the back of your mind you are thinking, rookie minicamp invite. Let him try out.”
Cortland went 14-1 and as the five-game playoff run unfolded, Burgess’ star brightened. He racked up 28 receptions for 395 yards and six touchdowns over the final three playoff games.
It concluded when he caught the game-winning touchdown pass in a 38-37 national championship victory against No. 1 seed North Central. History made.
“He played his best in the postseason,” Fitzpatrick said, “when the lights were brightest and pressure was on. He’s a great pressure player.”
Burgess never took part in the college all-star games since the season went so long He received an invitation to the Tropical Bowl and was going to go if Cortland lost. He paid the deposit, but happily let that go.Still yet to play a single game against elite competition, his real impact would come later when he used the University of Syracuse and University of Buffalo pro days to work out. Then everything changed.
The 6-foot, 192-pound Burgess tested nearly off the charts across the board with a Relative Athletic Score of 9.80, ranking seventh among all receivers in the notably deep 2024 receiver class.
Back in Cincinnati, deep in the draft process, Pitcher perked up staring at 99th percentile scores. That rookie camp tryout idea no longer applied.
“That’s when it was like, all right, he’s a little more than that,” Pitcher said. “He has developmental guy written all over him.”
The Bengals suddenly had competition. If Burgess wasn’t drafted, he’d be looking for an ideal landing spot. The reputation of receivers coach Troy Walters and recent developmental receivers in Cincinnati (Trenton Irwin, Iosivas, Kendric Pryor) earning roster spots in the league played a role. As did a developing relationship with Pitcher.
“We were talking about potential landing spots,” Burgess said. “The seventh round rolled around and it looked like I wasn’t getting picked, and I knew if I didn’t get picked, I was going to the Bengals. I feel like it’s just the whole package. The connection, obviously, but feel like there is opportunity for me to come here and make an impact, make the team and who knows, I feel like the sky is the limit ”
Indeed, who knows? He has college production and an elite athletic profile. He’s just never played a single snap against top competition.
“That’s the great unknown, right?” Pitcher said. “He has the traits. It’s not like you are looking at the guy saying he’s not going to be able to run fast enough to separate. Well, that’s not true. He’s not quick enough to separate. Well, that’s not true. He’s not going to jump high enough to contest for the ball. That’s not true. He has all the things that allow you to produce in those situations. He’s just never been asked to do it against players of the caliber he’s going to be facing. That’s a good and a bad thing. We’ll figure it out.”
So far, so good in the earliest returns as OTAs officially begin next week. His intelligence, desire and character have come as advertised. Pitcher hopes he can provide a “degree of familiarity” for the undrafted free agent, but admits he’ll be coached up just the same as everyone else they placed a hopeful chip on in April.
“I was very honest with Cole, I want him because I think he has the ability to do well as a player,” Pitcher said. “I liked his mentality and how he was going to approach things. Once he steps foot in the building, whatever he gets or doesn’t get is on his accord. Whether or not me being here is helpful to him or not is on him.”
Nobody knows if Burgess was a small fish swimming in the Finger Lakes or a big fish hiding in the Finger Lakes. Either way, he’s in Cincinnati now. Everyone in the building — and following closely back at SUNY Cortland — awaits the answer.
It was just nice to know somebody who truly understood his story was waiting at the door.
“It’s motivating, too,” Burgess said. “Now that’s my motivation. I want to prove him right and make him proud. He reached out and helped me get here, now I feel like I owe it to him to show him I can play ball.”
