Imagine if Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow never played again after his knee injury during his rookie season in 2020.
That’s how writer Bill Koch puts the brief career of quarterback Greg Cook into perspective. The University of Cincinnati star was taken fifth overall by the Bengals in the 1969 NFL draft in hopes he would make the Cincinnati expansion franchise the most feared team in the 1970s, instead of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
But a shoulder injury in his third game sidelined the dreams of Cook, owner Paul Brown and Bengals fans, writes Koch in his book, Unfinished Painting: The Untold Story of Bengals Phenom Greg Cook (available at Joseph-Beth Booksellers and Amazon).
“If he had stayed healthy, we would have been the dominant teams (in the NFL) for the course of his career,” says Bengals President Mike Brown, son of team founder Paul Brown.
At the completion of his senior year at UC, Cook held Bearcats records for most career passing yards (4,908), touchdown passes (34), completions (332), and attempts (655). He set a NCAA record with 554 passing yards in a 60-48 loss to undefeated Ohio University in 1968. He threw four touchdown passes and ran for another while completing 35 of 56 passes against the Bobcats.
Tom Rossley, one of Cook’s favorite Bearcats receivers, contends that Cook would have been the best quarterback of his generation — better than Hall of Famer Terry Bradshaw, who won four Super Bowls with the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 1970s.
Brown speaks fondly of Cook in the book, calling him the most talented player the franchise has ever had. “He was that good. He was, in my mind, as good as (John) Elway or Roger Staubach.”
Two future Pro Football Hall of Famers were drafted ahead of Cook in 1969. Running back O.J. Simpson went first to the Buffalo Bills. “Mean Joe” Greene was grabbed fourth by the Steelers, just ahead of Cook.
The Bengals took linebacker Bill Bergey in the second round, and future Hall of Famer defensive back Ken Riley in the sixth. Other players drafted after Cook include quarterbacks Terry Hanratty and Bobby Douglass, running back Eugene Edward “Mercury” Morris, wide receiver Charlie Joiner, tackle Rufus Mays, defensive end Fred Dryer, and Xavier University guard John Shinners. In 1969, NFL teams drafted 442 athletes over 17 rounds. The 2025 NFL draft will go only seven rounds April 24-26 in Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
Bergey and Paul Brown compared Cook to the legendary Otto Graham, the pro football and college Hall of Famer who led the Cleveland Browns to championship games every season from 1946 to 1955.
Cook, in his first NFL start, tossed three touchdown passes, one for 69 yards, in a 27-21 victory over Bob Griese’s Miami Dolphins. The next week he threw a 78-yard touchdown pass to Bob Trumpy and a 39-yard TD to Bruce Coslet in a 34-20 win against the San Diego Chargers.
Head coach Paul Brown told reporters after the Chargers game that Cook was “really quite some young man. If I could use a word, it would be ‘fantastic.’ He just doesn’t play like a rookie. If he stays with it, I’ve got myself another Otto Graham.”
With Cook, the Bengals jumped out to a 3-0 start in 1969, after going 3-11 in the team’s inaugural season.
“We scared the hell of the American Football League,” Trumpy tells Koch.
But in the third game, a 24-19 win over the Chiefs, Cook was sacked twice in the first half. He was never the same.
It’s not clear to Koch, after reading all the game stories and watching films of the game, which hit injured Cook's shoulder. Only one thing was sure: Nobody knew at the time that the injury was serious, says Koch, a former sportswriter for the Cincinnati Post and Cincinnati Enquirer. Unfinished Painting is his tenth book.
“When it happened, you didn’t think he was injured badly. And then he never mended right,” Mike Brown says.
The injured Cook played in seven more games in 1969. He ended up leading the AFL in passer rating (88.3), yards (1,854), and completion percentage (53.8), and being named the AFL’s Offensive Rookie of the Year by the Associated Press.
Cook did not play in 1970 or 1971 and retired in 1972. His comeback in 1973 ended after completing just one of three passes for 11 yards.
The title Unfinished Painting is a reference to Cook’s talent off the field as a watercolor artist. Two of his paintings hang in offices at the Bengals’ Paycor Stadium. The Chillicothe native said he was drawn to UC by its College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning.
After retiring from football, Cook had a difficult life. He divorced. He drank too much alcohol. Sometimes he lived with friends or couch-surfed. For a while, he lived in a friend’s storage shelter. Cook’s pride kept him from accepting too much help from Mike Brown, former teammates Trumpy and Mike Reid, and others, Koch says.
“When his drinking really kicked in is when he would kind of disappear,” says his son Brandon Cook.
“Everybody I talked to loved Greg Cook, and tried to keep up with him after football,” Koch says. “Some tried to set him up with a studio where he could paint, including Mike Reid. Greg didn’t want to accept help. They just loved this guy as a person and wanted to help him.”
Cook died of pneumonia in 2012 at age 65 in Christ Hospital. Before he was intubated, Cook asked the nurse, “Do you think anyone will remember me?”
It would have been different if Cook hadn’t been injured in the Kansas City game. Or if today’s medical science could have been used to diagnose and repair his right shoulder.
“Everything would have been about Greg Cook and the Bengals, rather than Terry Bradshaw and the Steelers,” says Rossley, his former UC teammate.
