LSU Football: Joe Burrow is perfect hometown hero for Bengals

Joe Burrow just led one of the greatest single seasons in history for LSU football. Now he faces an even bigger task: turning around the Bengals.

Joe Burrow is an unlikely hero. Nobody on the planet saw last season coming and he will forever live in LSU and college football lore.

LSU was still a consistently good program, but ever since their last national championship in 2007, it felt like LSU had fallen behind the times. They were on an eight game losing streak to Alabama, with all of the big power moves that Texas A&M had been making recently and their success on the recruiting trail was among the best in the country and it felt like LSU was falling behind in the SEC West.

One season changed that.

With new passing game coordinator Joe Brady, LSU set the college football world on fire. Burrow finished with 5,671 yards passing, 60 touchdowns and a 76 percent completion rate and led the Tigers to the national championship. He went from being a fringe NFL draft prospect to the No. 1 overall selection in the 2020 NFL Draft and became an LSU legend in the process. All from a kid originally from Ames, Iowa, and then The Plains, Ohio.

The Cincinnati Bengals have the reputation as being one of the worst run franchises in pro sports. The Bengals have not won a playoff game since 1991 and have squandered several chances to do so, most infamously how they squandered a playoff game against the Steelers because of some unsportsmanlike penalties.

The last time the Bengals drafted a quarterback first overall it was Carson Palmer. Like Burrow, Palmer won the Heisman Trophy and looked to turn around a struggling franchise. Palmer never did win that coveted playoff game and was later traded. Palmer just never seemed like a natural fit. Burrow does.

Burrow seems to have a charisma that I have not seen from a quarterback in recent years and that previous Bengal quarterbacks could not find. He is a natural leader that galvanized the entire LSU fanbase and state of Louisiana into believing in the 2019 Tigers.

The Bengals need somebody that they can believe in after living through countless years of torture and Burrow already has experience doing just that for a fanbase.

Turning around the Bengals will be no easy task, however. They lack talent in some areas, especially on the defensive side of the football.

Zac Taylor is still very unproven as an NFL head coach, but for all of the good things that Andy Dalton did for the Bengals as a quarterback, he does not have the same level of talent that Burrow has. He made some of the biggest leaps I have seen and improved in so many ways in 2019. His deep ball accuracy was off the charts and his pocket presence even had some folks comparing it to to the likes of Tom Brady.

By drafting Clemson star Tee Higgins, the Bengals added to a pretty talented receiving corps that includes star receiver AJ Green and rising young talents like Tyler Boyd and Joe Mixon. And who knows, maybe with the addition of Burrow, he can get former top ten pick John Ross on track and living up to his potential. And 2018 first-round pick Jonah Williams will also be back from injury to help anchor a struggling offensive line so this Bengals offense might be better sooner rather than later, especially with the addition of Burrow.

Burrow has the charisma and leadership that every quarterback envies and he already has experience being the poster boy for a struggling fanbase that needed someone to believe in. The Bengals need that in the worst way and that is why I think that Burrow is the perfect hometown hero for the Cincinnati Bengals.