LSU quarterback Burrow wins Heisman Trophy in a landslide
LSU quarterback Joe Burrow won the Heisman Trophy in New York on Saturday night, beating out Oklahoma’s Jalen Hurts and Ohio State’s Justin Fields and Chase Young.
Burrow was heavily favored to win. He received 90.7% of the first-place votes, 93.8% of possible points, and was named on 95.5% of ballots. All three are new records.
Hurts finished second, Fields third, and Young fourth. Burrow’s margin of victory over Hurts (2,608 points to 762) was also a Heisman record. The LSU quarterback received 841 first-place votes, far more than Hurts (12), Fields (6) or Young (20).
He led LSU to a 13-0 season, SEC title and No. 1 seed in the College Football Playoff. He threw for 48 touchdowns and 4,715 yards on a 77.9% completion percentage. All three of those were SEC records, and the completion percentage is an NCAA record.
The quarterback, who turned 23 on Tuesday, had won the Davey O’Brien Award (best QB) and Maxwell Award (best overall player) earlier this week.
Burrow, Hurts, and Fields were part of college football’s game of quarterback musical chairs. “The story of this Heisman Trophy is all the transfers. I think it’s great for college football,” Burrow said before the ceremony. “When people ask me that, I tell them, ‘Would you rather see me on the bench? Justin on the bench? Jalen on the bench?’”
Young had joked about it as well, telling Fields that “If Joe was here, you would not be starting right now.”
Young — the first defensive lineman to be a Heisman finalist in a decade — had 16.5 sacks in just 11 games.
Burrow transferred from Ohio State to LSU before last season, and Fields transferred into Ohio State from Georgia after getting stuck behind Jake Fromm there.
Hurts transferred from Alabama to Oklahoma, where he became the third straight Oklahoma QB transfer to become a Heisman finalist. NFL No. 1 overall picks Baker Mayfield transferred in from Texas Tech and Kyler Murray transferred in from Texas A&M.
The Oklahoma streak is likely to end this year: Burrow is considered a consensus No. 1 pick, although Young could go No. 1 depending on which team holds the pick.
Burrow was unexceptional in his first season with LSU. He completed 57.8% of his passes, throwing 16 touchdowns and five interceptions in 2018. Maybe he just needed to get his bearings after three years on Ohio State’s bench, because he was spectacular in 2019. He went from five interceptions to six, and 16 touchdowns to 48. He completed nearly 80% of his passes, and somehow increased his yards per attempt from 7.6 to 10.7.
Part of that improvement should be credited to new passing game coordinator Joe Brady. The 30-year-old Brady won the Broyles Award as college football’s best assistant for his work revamping LSU’s legendarily hidebound offense.
Burrow shredded Alabama for 46 points in November, establishing LSU as the team to beat, and put up 37 on Georgia to clinch the No. 1 seed last Saturday.
LSU’s Billy Cannon won the Heisman in 1959, and he was the school’s only winner of the award until Saturday night. Burrow snaps a 60-year drought.
The Tigers beat Fromm’s Georgia team in the SEC championship game, and they’ll face Hurts’ Oklahoma in the first round of the playoff. The other national semifinal is Ohio State-Clemson.