01-16-2020, 11:29 PM
(01-16-2020, 09:15 PM)Gdale_Bengal Wrote: Man. I just think his attitude and confidence alone will help turn the team around
Me too. Dude is too cool for school. This is from Brody Miller’s story in The Athletic...
Joe Burrow isn’t just smoking a cigar. No, he’s strutting with it, head cocked back, shoulders pronounced, smoke blowing into the air above him. He’s selling this. He wears a hat reading “Big Dick Joe.” He’s leaning into every aspect of his ever-growing legend, reclining back against a leather sofa with another puff of smoke and a subtle grin across his face.
The LSU quarterback, the Heisman Trophy winner, is the opposite story of Orgeron. He’s the outsider from Ohio. He’s a transfer who couldn’t win the job at Ohio State now joining a school that simply couldn’t develop an elite quarterback. Like Orgeron, though, he’s the one now puffing a cigar with the last laugh.
See, Burrow doesn’t get to be this guy often. That’s how he’s here in the first place. He’s compulsively competitive, a hyper-focused football obsessive known for death stares at his receivers and countless hours working on timing. He’s the most confident human in any room he enters. He just picks his spots when to display that.
Watch Burrow as he walks off the field during each drive Monday night. It’s nearly robotic how machine-like his reactions are both good and bad.
LSU punts for an unprecedented third-straight drive. Burrow goes to the bench, sips his water twice, puts on his headset.
Burrow throws a 52-yard touchdown pass to Ja’Marr Chase to break the seal. Burrow goes to the bench, sips his water twice, puts on his headset.
Burrow takes a massive hit to the ribs on a late first-half touchdown pass, knocking the wind out of him and forcing him to bend over as he exits the field. Burrow goes to the bench, sips his water twice, puts on his headset.
And despite Clemson throwing the kitchen sink at him, despite LSU’s worst start of the season and blitzes constantly confusing them up front, the magician adjusts. LSU was shocked to see Clemson play man coverage. So he slides in laser quick short passes. He dances around sacks and makes throws downfield. He takes off on designed third-and-long runs when nobody expects it.
So when Burrow knows they’ve sealed it, when he throws for 463 yards and five touchdowns with another rushing score to finish one of the best seasons in college history, that’s when you can see the non-robotic Burrow. That’s when he emphatically points at his ring finger while walking to the sideline. That’s when he dances, waving his arm up and down as the LSU band finally plays “Neck.”
And as Burrow’s won every award and broken nearly every record, go back to Burrow sitting down at SEC Media Days in Hoover, Ala., in July.
“My goal had always been to win a national championship being the quarterback of the high-profile team,” he said. “My goal growing up was never to play in the NFL. I wanted to play for — originally it was Nebraska — but it turned into somebody at this level and compete for a national title.”
Burrow is officially a cigar-smoking legend now, one who will have a statue of him in Baton Rouge sooner rather than later. He’s reached a place in LSU lore that may never be matched. He’s asked about his hero legacy in the state.
“What we did tonight can’t be taken away from us,” Burrow says. “I don’t know about the whole hero thing, but I know this national championship will be remembered for a long time in Louisiana.”
