Joe Burrow vs. Trevor Lawrence showdown is quarterback nirvana

Potential No. 1 overall picks in consecutive drafts, and maybe both Heisman Trophy winners, Joe Burrow and Trevor Lawrence will have everyone’s attention as LSU and Clemson meet in the National Championship Game.

There’s no searching for or manufacturing hype around Monday night’s National Championship Game in New Orleans. It’s squarely there, swirling around LSU’s Joe Burrow and Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence.

It’s hard to dial up a more perfect storm to cap this season: the year’s most dominant player — the Heisman Trophy winner Burrow — taking on the young king who took over the game’s biggest stage in leading his team to a championship as a freshman in 2019 with Lawrence.

“Two great quarterbacks,” Clemson coach Dabo Swinney said in a teleconference. “… That’s the way a championship game ought to be.”

More than that, it has the potential, when we look back at it, to be an individual showdown the likes of which we’ve never seen.

Their production is impressive enough. Burrow ranks first in the nation with 55 touchdown passes, first in pass efficiency (204.6) and second with 5,208 yards. He’s trending toward spots in the record book, with his efficiency rating on pace to break Tua Tagovailoa‘s mark of 199.44 set last season and his 77.6 completion percentage has him headed toward knocking off Colt McCoy‘s 2008 record of 76.7.

While Lawrence might be over 1,700 yards behind his counterpart in yardage, behind a slow start to the season, he’s riding a school-record steak of 202 consecutive passes without a touchdown and has a 71.1 completion percentage over the last eight games.

Oh, and he’s never lost a college game at 25-0.

It doesn’t take a reading of the tea leaves to know Burrow is the presumptive choice to be taken with the first overall pick by the Bengals in April’s NFL Draft, and Lawrence — who has had NFL types salivating since the exploits of his freshman season — is the favorite to be taken No. 1 in the 2021 draft.

While the LSU quarterback already has his stiff-armed trophy in hand, with Tagovailoa leaving Alabama, Lawrence will enter 2020 as a Heisman favorite.

With all apologies to Ohio State’s Justin Fields or Oklahoma’s Jalen Hurts, both transfers with their intriguing storylines had they survived the semifinals — Fields would be facing a former Buckeyes quarterback in Burrow and Hurts would be back in a title game for a fourth straight season — there was no other potential quarterback matchup in this College Football Playoff that could have delivered this kind of buzz.

It only helps that they are coming off epic performances.

Burrow followed his regular-season exploits with 493 yards and seven touchdowns in LSU’s dismantling of the Sooners in one semifinal. In the other Lawrence, whose numbers over these past months may have paled in comparison to Burrow’s, reminded anyone who slept on him after a slow start to his sophomore season about his penchant for coming up big in big moments, throwing for 259 yards and rushing for a career-high 107 to knock out the Buckeyes.

The quarterbacks, who met for the first time this past summer in the Manning Passing Academy, are saying all the right things about one another in the buildup, a veritable mutual admiration society.

“He’s a winner, 25-0, and hasn’t been beat yet, Burrow said of Lawrence. That tells you a lot about him. … The way he takes command, the way he takes charge, obviously, the RPOs, his reads are right on it, has a strong arm. But his ability to run, he surprised me.”

“I like a lot of things about his game, Lawrence said of Burrow. Just his pocket presence is really good. His accuracy, obviously, and just how he’s pretty mobile, too. He can extend plays and has a really good feel for pressure and doesn’t take too many sacks. I like a lot of things about his game.”

As Burrow said when asked about the matchup and whether he pays attention to the opposing passer, “We’re focused on going up against the defense and trying to beat what they throw at us. So I’ll watch our defense out there and obviously watch the game, but we’re focused on going up against their defense.”

In that regard, both face a stiff test. The LSU quarterback, who has had under 300 yards against just one Power 5 opponent — Oct. 12 vs. Florida, a game in which he was 21-of-24 (87.5 completion percentage) for 293 yards and three scores — will have to contend with the nation’s second-ranked defense in the form of Clemson, which is yielding just 264.1 yards per game. Meanwhile, Lawrence’s will contend with an LSU defense that held the Sooners’ explosive offense to 322 yards, 215 below its season average, in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl.

It’s not hard to close your eyes and imagine what unfolds in the Superdome being just the first chapter for two players who will be expected to be the franchise cornerstones for whoever takes them at the next level.

Without getting too far ahead of ourselves, it’s that foundation for the future where things get truly enticing, and eventually, turn this matchup potentially something we’ve never seen before.

It’s been rare, but not unprecedented, for players taken No. 1 in consecutive drafts to face off. In 1953, Stanford’s Bobby Garrett met Oregon’s George Shaw; Washington’s Steve Emtman took on Washington State’s Drew Bledsoe in 1991; Ohio State’s Dan Wilkinson played Penn State’s Ki-Jana Carter in 1993 and, the in closest thing for the potential of Burrow vs. Lawrence, Peyton Manning and Tim Tebow clashed in 1997 when Tennessee faced Kentucky.

But that quarterback duel — an epic in which Manning won 59-31, throwing for 523 yards and five touchdowns, while Couch had 476 yards and two TDs of his own — was just an SEC East game. Like all of those other matchups that featured future No. 1, it came during the regular season.

A Heisman winner facing the next year’s winner has been more common, happening 10 times. The first coming in 1939 with Iowa’s Nile Kinnick vs. Michigan’s Tom Harmon, then happened again in ’40 with Harmon against Minnesota’s Bruce Smith. Army’s Glenn Davis vs. Notre Dame’s Johnny Lujack followed in 1949; Wisconsin’s Alan Ameche against Ohio State’s Howard Cassady (1954); Navy’s Roger Staubach vs. Notre Dame’s John Huarte (1963) and Huarte against USC’s Mike Garrett in ’64; UCLA’s Gary Beban and USC’s O.J. Simpson (1967); Texas’ Earl Campbell vs. Oklahoma’s Billy Sims (1977); Miami’s Gino Toretta against Florida State’s Charlie Ward (1992) and — in the game that given the benefit of hindsight has been elevated in its own right — Ohio State’s Troy Smith vs. Florida’s Tim Tebow in 2007.

That Smith-Tebow clash, like Burrow vs. Lawrence, will be for a national title as the Buckeyes and Gators met in the BCS Championship Game, but Tim Tebow wasn’t Tim Tebow at that point, with the freshman still operating in package plays with Chris Leak the starter.

The closest we’ve come to what Burrow vs. Lawrence could end up being occurred in the first game of the playoff era was when Florida State’s 2013 Heisman winner Jameis Winston faced ’14 winner Marcus Mariota and Oregon.

Mariota passed for 338 yards, two touchdowns and an interception and ran for another 62 yards and a score, while Winston finished with 348 yards, one touchdown and an interception, the Ducks cruised 59-20. That game, though, was a semifinal, and not that it diminishes the performances, but neither ended that initial playoff with a championship.

Either Burrow or Lawrence will, with the LSU quarterback looking to put the finishing touches on one of the most prolific seasons in history and his Clemson counterpart with a chance to go back-to-back and remain undefeated as a college starter, which would put him on an all-time great path.

Enjoy their clash for what it is, a showdown overflowing with star power, but keep that in the back of your mind: this spring’s likely No. 1 pick vs. the presumptive top pick for 2021, Heisman winner against a potential Heisman winner, and on the biggest stage the sport can provide.

It will be epic, and it could just be the beginning.

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