ATLANTA — When he walked into a room during the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl week, everyone’s eyes followed.
Joe Burrow talks, people listen.
When he walks, his team follows.
There’s an aura about the 2019 Heisman Trophy winner. A quarterback that is the ultimate leader. One who isn’t brash, but meek.
Burrow has navigated this journey from a small southeastern Ohio town to childhood dream Ohio State and now LSU with grace and reflection. He remembers where he came from and the road it took to get where he is at, but it isn’t something that deeply fuels Burrow.
That’s the separation between LSU’s savior and what many call Oklahoma’s in 2017 Heisman Trophy winner Baker Mayfield.
But when one watches Burrow and talks to those who are around him, the description is almost exact to what the Sooners had in its chosen son.
“It’s defending a coach on the field,” said LSU defensive coordinator Dave Aranda. “Ultra competitive. More athletic than you think. Anticipates, anticipates moves and counter moves and is a team player.”
A pinpoint passer with a killer instinct. A quarterback that takes hits and doesn’t care. One who can play a Houdini act as the pocket collapses and escape to greener pastures.
An emotional leader that has put an entire program and fanbase on his back—quite literally by paying homage to the state and people of Louisiana by putting ‘Burreaux’ for his last name on senior day. A player who was able to crank up the ‘gets us’ meter up to full blast.
Burrow’s worst game on the year came on that senior day against Texas A&M on Nov. 30. He threw 32 passes, and completed 23 of them (71.9 completion percentage) for 352 yards and three touchdowns.
His worst game.
“(Joe Burrow)’s very comfortable in their schemes, he does a great job getting the ball out of his hands, very accurate passer,” said Oklahoma head coach Lincoln Riley. “And then he’s made so many huge plays outside the pocket this year, extending time, whether it’s taken off or whether he’s making plays on the move. That’s where he’s really hurt people. And plays a lot of the style that Baker (Mayfield) did for us. Very, very similar in a lot of ways, and it’s very, very effective, very difficult to defend.”
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Burrow and LSU were warming up ahead of LSU’s biggest game of the year in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
At Bryant-Denny Stadium home of the Alabama Crimson Tide, the opponent warms up right in front of the Alabama student section. There are all sorts of players the Crimson Tide student body could have chosen to heckle.
They, though, chose No. 9.
And it was the worst decision the Alabama student section could have made.
“We warm up in front of the student section and their student section is hollering ‘F Joe Burrow, F Joe Burrow’ and I was like ‘keep saying it’ because I know it was firing him up,” said LSU offensive coordinator Steve Ensminger. “He’s the type of guy that when he gets hit, it makes him better, whether it was UCF last year or the A&M game this year … that’s just the type of guy he is.”
Burrow lit Alabama up that day for 393 yards through the air on 31-of-39 passing and three touchdowns, while also adding 64 more yards on the ground—which includes sack yardage—to bury LSU’s biggest rivals national championship hopes.
He was electric.
Making big-time throw after big-time throw while facing violent pressure and taking hit after hit.
Biletnikoff Award winner Ja’Marr Chase has tried to figure out what NFL or other quarterback Burrow relates to. He’ll admit he’s failed in that venture, saying that Burrow isn’t someone we’ve seen.
In less than 48 hours, it will be Oklahoma defensive coordinator Alex Grinch’s task to figure out who Joe Burrow is and slow him down.
Grinch, who is an avid reader, historian, and has a great memory, will likely have his biggest comprehension test of his life.
“Well, it’s difficult because one of the things you’re trying to do every week is find deficiencies,” he said of the challenge of facing a Burrow-led LSU offense. “You’re trying to find these are their areas of strength. Often times, those aren’t the hard ones to find. They kind of jump out the film. It’s the deficiencies that you’re trying to look for. Trying to go through a game and find out why they struggled, and the issue you run into with these guys is the deficiencies just aren’t there. What about this game? You watch this game and they don’t jump out to you. Watch this quarter from this game and watch this series. You get my point.
“(Burrow) can beat you with his arm, can beat you with his legs. Has elite weapons around him. That’s obviously why they find themselves here. It will be a great test.”
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Oklahoma, to a much lesser extent, knows what this offensive resurgence from LSU is like.
The Sooners were closer to the middle of the pack offensively in 2014 in a league that was churning out yards and points like it was the giving season.
In future Heisman Trophy winner Mayfield in 2015, Oklahoma once again had a quarterback that had it. The Sooners surged offensively with him and Riley, putting together one of the best offensive seasons with Mayfield at the helm in 2017 and then the single best offensive season in college football history in 2018 with Heisman Trophy winner Kyler Murray.
The it factor isn’t one thing or the other and either one has it or doesn’t.
What Mayfield had spread amongst his teammates, and it’s something that can give a locker room the right ingredient to success.
“It gets confidence going,” said Oklahoma co-offensive coordinator and inside wide receivers coach Cale Gundy. “It gets everybody believing that you got a guy that’s in control and in any given moment he can strike. He can score. He can lead his team. That’s about as strong as feeling as you can have on your football team.”
It’s clear Burrow has whatever it is.
LSU is the best offense in college football according to ESPN’s Bill Connely’s SP+* due to him, after finishing last year at 30th. They were 83rd in the country in yards per play (5.3) in 2018 and rose to third in the country at 7.5 yards per play.
Burrow has breathed that confidence into LSU’s locker room due to his personality and play, and it’s something that frightens the one who has the job to stop him in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl.
“I think the commonality between (Baker Mayfield, Kyler Murray and Joe Burrow), and I’m not a quarterback guru by any stretch of the imagination, but just the command, just the lack of rattle, lack of … you feel like you did right by confusing them in coverage and then you’re reward is that they scramble and they go find a guy for a 50-yard gain,” Grinch said. “You sit there from a coordinator’s standpoint and say, ‘I wish I would’ve called something else,’ but then earlier in the down you couldn’t have made a better call.
“So when you can’t fool a guy, when you can’t reap the benefits of maybe a disguise or you brought pressure from a certain side that caught them, not something that they expected and they reap the benefits and you don’t, then you go back to, ‘OK, what’s the answer to that? What’s next on the list?’ If our good calls turns into bad calls then that’s a difficult Saturday. So just the command that way, guys that regardless of what they see, regardless of what you throw at them, regardless of even if you get a hit on them the play before, they jump back up and they’re attacking you. So that’s what you see, just an absolutely command. He trusts his arm, he trusts the guys around him, he trusts his legs, as he should, and it’s a scary sight to see watching it on video.”
The Big 12 and the rest of college football have been at the burden of Riley’s quarterbacks in all five of his years.
Oklahoma has an offense that has captivated much of the college football world.
For just this week, that’ll change, and it’s solely because of the king of the bayou.
“Joe (Burrow) has heart,” Chase said. “In football, the it factor is heart. If you don’t have heart, then how do you play football?”