It was a random moment in the days leading up to the 2020 College Football Playoff national championship game when an LSU in-house reporter …
It was a random moment in the days leading up to the 2020 College Football Playoff national championship game when an LSU in-house reporter approached quarterback Joe Burrow, holding a photo of him at five or six years of age, and asked, « Does this look like a Heisman Trophy winner? » Burrow had just won the Heisman Trophy but looked more like Macaulay Culkin in the first Home Alone movie in that photo. Still, he didn’t miss a beat when the reporter showed the photo to the camera and pressed him with the question again. « Looks like a national champion, » Burrow said with a grin. Burrow would soon lead LSU to the national championship. So, welcome to the Joe Burrow experience. It’s been a thrill ride to Super Bowl LVI, thanks in no small part to Burrow’s great ability to play quarterback, his outstanding leadership, and his intelligence to learn from his mistakes and retain solutions to problems, even play to play. But none of that is Joe Burrow’s super power. Not his good arm or his instincts or the threat to run. The thing that several NFL scouts recently told OutKick they put prominently on their report when Burrow was coming out for the 2020 draft was one word: confidence. « That’s a special quality to have and to have that predates my time with him, I can promise you that, » Bengals coach Zac Taylor said Monday as the team prepared to leave for Southern California and their meeting with the Los Angeles Rams on Sunday. « I think that’s something that he gets from his dad and his mom or something he’s always had innately. I don’t know that anyone else deserves credit for that other than Joe Burrow. It’s what makes him special. » Consider those words because his coach believes it’s not Burrow’s excellent work ethic or quick processing or dissecting of defenses that makes him special. It’s Burrow’s confidence. We’ve seen it when, for example, the Baltimore Ravens blitzed him time and again and he roasted them and then exclaimed, « Can’t zero me! » — meaning a zero blitz was bound to fail. « He’s able to elevate his teammates and his coaches around him to believe that special things are possible, » Taylor said. « And, again, he’s just done a tremendous job leading this football team and helping us score points, and when the moments are big, he plays really big as well.
