Is Joe Burrow already LSU’s best quarterback of all time?

Joe Burrow has been sensational for the LSU Tigers this season. He might only get two years in Baton Rouge, but is he the best quarterback in LSU history?

2019 has been a wonderful year in LSU Tigers football thus far. The Bayou Bengals improved to 5-0 on the year after beating the brakes off Jordan Love‘s Utah State Aggies to the tune of 42-6 in Death Valley on Saturday afternoon. Love had garnered some NFL Draft attention as a prospect at the start of the year, but he’s no Joe Burrow. Burrow can play quarterback at an elite level.

Burrow had his fourth consecutive 300-yard passing game on Saturday afternoon, which is a school record. He completed 27 of 38 passes for 344 yards, five touchdowns and an interception. He also had 10 carries for 42 yards and an additional trip to pay dirt.

This is another brilliant performance for the best quarterback in LSU football in well over a decade. Along with a stellar defense, LSU has every reason to believe that the Tigers can reach the College Football Playoff for the first time in 2019.

Burrow will go pro after this year once his eligibility is exhausted. He’s probably going to be a first-round pick, or he has most certainly willed himself into the conversation Baker Mayfield style. While he will only have two years under his belt at LSU, can we start to think that he’s the greatest quarterback in Tigers football history? Will he be able to stake his claim at the end of the year?

With his 344 yards on Saturday, Burrow went from No. 11 all-time in passing yards in LSU history to No. 7 ahead of Jordan Jefferson. Burrow will need a little bit under 1,000 more passing yards to surpass Zach Mettenberger to get to No. 6.

If he gets to 6,000 in his LSU career, Burrow will find himself in the top five all-time in passing. However, he won’t catch Tommy Hodson, who threw for 9,115 for the Tigers from 1986-1989. His five touchdown passes on Saturday moved him from No. 8 to No. 4 all-time, behind only Hodson, JaMarcus Russell and Herb Tyler.

Burrow now has 22 touchdown passes on the year to three interceptions. He will almost certainly surpass Russell’s single-season record of 28 in a campaign. Look for him to do that at some point in two weeks when the Bayou Bengals make their biennial trek to Starkville to take on the Mississippi State Bulldogs.

So there’s a good chance Burrow will find himself inside of the top five in every major passing statistic in LSU football history by the end of the season. Assuming he stays healthy, he will have at minimum eight more games to shine, as the Tigers will go bowling with one more victory this season.

Add in the chances of breaking every single-season record of note and possibly leading the Tigers to the College Football Playoff for the first time in school history, and yes, there is a pathway to Burrow being the greatest LSU quarterback of all time. Being a potential first-round pick will only help echo that sentiment. That being said, it is a tad too early to crown him just yet.

At this time, Burrow does not have any All-SEC recognition, has not been named an All-American, has not been a finalist for any major quarterbacking award, has not been taken in the first round of an NFL Draft and he has not led LSU to the Playoff or won the Tigers a national title.

He can certainly do a few of those things, but for now, it’s not fair to put him ahead of more accomplished former LSU signal-callers like Hodson, Bert Jones or maybe even Russell. His stats are better or will be better than guys like Mettenberger, Matt Mauck, Matt Flynn or Rohan Davey.

Hodson has the career stats and the All-SEC nods that give him the edge now. Jones was an All-American in 1972, won NFL MVP with the then-Baltimore Colts in 1976 and has been inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. Russell was First-Team All-SEC in 2006 and then went on to be a most glorious bust as the Oakland Raiders’ No. 1 overall pick in the 2007 NFL Draft.

So at this time, Burrow has done enough to make the LSU quarterbacking Mount Rushmore. If he’s an All-SEC quarterback this year, going against the likes of Alabama’s Tua Tagovailoa and Georgia’s Jake Fromm, is a finalist for all the major awards and leads LSU to an SEC West title or a Playoff berth as an at-large team, Burrow can be the greatest quarterback in LSU history.

It’s still incredibly early to say that he is, but it’s totally in play at this point. He has at least eight more games to make his case. LSU has not seen a first-round talent like this since Russell, as dynamic of a playmaker as Jones or as prolific of a passer as Hodson.

In short, Burrow has all the best traits of the trio he’s being compared to. But will he continue to put up numbers against the likes of Florida and Alabama in the second half of the season? He hasn’t shown any signs to suggest he’s going to slow down now.

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