In the least surprising news that you will read today, LSU quarterback Joe Burrow won the 2019 Heisman Trophy. The award was given out on Saturday night in New York City, and Burrow came out on top over three other finalists: Oklahoma quarterback Jalen Hurts, Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields, and Ohio State defensive end Chase Young.
Joe Burrow wins the 2019 Heisman Trophy, the second in LSU history 🏆 pic.twitter.com/KogDywqDQU
— ESPN College Football (@ESPNCFB) December 15, 2019
Burrow, of course, used to suit up for the Buckeyes, but grad transferred to LSU in 2018 amid a quarterback competition with Dwayne Haskins, who at the time was viewed as the overwhelming favorite to win the job, anyway. While Burrow did a solid, albeit unspectacular, job under center during his first year in Baton Rouge, you’d be hard-pressed to have found anyone who could have expected anything like what he ended up doing this season.
The Tigers ran the table in the SEC, winning the conference and entering the College Football Playoff with a No. 2 seed. Burrow was a major reason why, throwing for 4,715 yards and 48 touchdowns — the latter leads all of FBS, while the former is second in the nation. He’s also completed a ridiculous 77.9 percent of his passes, which is in line to set the FBS all-time record, while his passer rating of 201.5 is the second-highest in the sport’s history. (Unfortunately, the record was set this season by Alabama’s Tua Tagovailoa, who saw his year come to a premature end due to a hip injury.)
This has legitimately been one of the greatest individual seasons that we’ve seen by a collegiate quarterback. He has plenty of weapons around him, while the Tigers’ offensive coaching staff received a ton of credit due to the addition of passing game coordinator Joe Brady, but it says a whole lot about Burrow’s abilities with a football that he put forth this kind of campaign and firmly entrenched himself in LSU lore. Fields and Hurts were magnificent this year, while Young was able to impact games defensively in ways that we haven’t seen in a long, long time, 2019 will go down as Joe Burrow’s year.
