When Pro Football Focus launched its preseason 2020 NFL draft guide in mid-August, 10 quarterbacks were included as legitimate prospects. LSU's Joe Burrow was not among that list of 10. He was carrying a sub-60% completion percentage and sub-80 PFF grade from the 2018 college football season.
Fast-forward nearly three months and Burrow has not only joined that group but is now No. 1 overall on the upcoming PFF top-100 draft board.
To say he has looked like a different player this season would be an understatement. The jump-ball thrower with shaky pocket presence and inconsistent accuracy has turned into the most poised and accurate passer in the country. Let's dig into the numbers to see exactly how the light switch flipped for the fifth-year senior as he and the Tigers head into the game of the year against Alabama.
Signs of elite play
Through eight games, Burrow has thrown for 2,805 yards, 30 touchdowns and only four interceptions for unbeaten LSU. He is completing 78.8% of his passes and averaging 10.8 yards per attempt. That's a far cry from the 2,894 yards (over 13 games), 16 touchdowns, five interceptions, 57.8% completion percentage and 7.6 yards per attempt that had had last season in his first run with the Tigers after transferring from Ohio State. (He attempted only 39 passes over two seasons with the Buckeyes.)
Why are we so sure Burrow isn't just a fluke? One of the bigger reasons is found in the fact that this leap didn't exactly come out of nowhere. We saw his elite ability for the Tigers at times in 2018. On four occasions, he earned single-game passing grades over 89.0 (against Louisiana Tech, Ole Miss, Rice and UCF), including two of his last three games.
Over those four games -- nearly a third of the season -- Burrow recorded a 94.0 passing grade from us. He hit 13 big-time throws (PFF's highest-graded pass attempts based upon ball placement, velocity, targeted depth and other factors) compared to only three turnover-worthy plays (PFF's lowest-graded throws and potential turnovers regardless of the true outcome of the play).
The problem is he disappeared in the other nine games. In those, his PFF passing grade averaged 60.7, and his turnover-worthy plays outnumbered his big-time throws 15-11. Burrow's yards per attempt fell from 10.4 in the four elite performances to 6.5 in those nine disappointing games, and his adjusted completion percentage dropped from 79.6% to 66.8%. Plummeting like that in more than two-thirds of your games is a nonstarter at the quarterback position.
Even so, Burrow's high-end potential shown in 2018 correlates well to the high-end output of the other 2020 quarterbacks. Here's how Burrow's four highest-graded games from that season stack up with the best four of any singular season for those other top QBs:
Tua Tagovailoa, Alabama: 95.5
Joe Burrow, LSU: 94.0
Justin Herbert, Oregon: 93.7
Jordan Love, Utah State: 92.8
Jake Fromm, Georgia: 92.1
From a scouting perspective, that provides optimism that Burrow's 2019 play will be sustainable in the NFL, and while few could have predicted he'd be elite week in and week out this season, that level of play didn't truly come out of nowhere.
Standout traits
The two things that make us most confident in Burrow as the top QB in the draft class are his accuracy downfield and his performance in SEC play.
Pro Football Focus charts the ball placement of every throw in college football, and 65.3% of Burrow's 111 attempts targeted 10-plus yards downfield this season have been deemed to have perfect or near-perfect ball placement. The next closest in college football is USC's Kedon Slovis at 57.1%.
Burrow also leads the country with 22 touchdowns on passes targeted 10 or more yards downfield. His 65.3% accuracy on such throws compared to that of the quarterbacks who were drafted in the first round last April during their final college seasons is impressive: Kyler Murray hit 53.3% of his throws 10-plus yards downfield, Daniel Jones 49.1% and Dwayne Haskins 43.7%.
Burrow has also shown up in the biggest moments. In four games against SEC opponents this season, Burrow has an 87.8 passing grade -- which would break the previous PFF record for an SEC quarterback (87.3 set by Alabama's Blake Sims in 2014). Against a Florida secondary with two potential Day 1 or 2 draft picks starting at cornerback, Burrow went 21-for-24 for 293 yards, three touchdowns and zero interceptions. He threw only one pass that was deemed inaccurate.
So what's different this season? How can we explain the statistical spike?
His consistency put him on the map, but his decision-making and sharp reads through the progression of the play -- specifically on the longer-developing throws -- are what has taken him to the stratosphere as a draft prospect. His ball-charting numbers point to just how accurate he has been with the football, as he's clearly seeing the game much faster and learning to trust his arm when throwing into windows. Burrow is making NFL-caliber throws at a higher clip than any other quarterback in the country, and it isn't even close.
Joe Burrow connects with Justin Jefferson for an LSU touchdown.
Comparable jumps in draft stock
Burrow's ascent from fringe prospect to a possible No. 1 pick isn't unprecedented, as incredible as it sounds. In fact, last year's first overall pick saw a similar rise. Here's a quick look at some of the most improbable jumps into the top 10 we've seen since PFF started grading college players in 2014.
Kyler Murray, QB, Arizona Cardinals (No. 1 pick in 2019): Though Murray looked solid in mop-up duty for Oklahoma on 24 dropbacks in 2017 before his Heisman campaign, the only extended look we had seen from him was as a freshman in 2015 where he earned a 56.2 passing grade on 147 dropbacks at Texas A&M. Even after winning the Heisman, few thought he'd choose football over baseball, and even fewer thought he'd be a top-10 pick.
Quinnen Williams, DT, New York Jets (No. 3 pick in 2019): Before putting together the highest-graded season we've ever seen from an interior defender in our six years of grading college football, Williams had played all of 151 snaps and registered five pressures for the loaded Alabama defensive line.
Daniel Jones, QB, New York Giants (No. 6 pick in 2019): Jones was known, but just not seen as a high pick early in the draft season. He had earned PFF passing grades of 66.5 in 2016 and 57.8 in 2017 before registering an 80.8 the year leading up to the draft. And in his 2017 season, Jones had 31 turnover-worthy plays compared to 19 big-time throws. He was probably even more of a long shot to be a top draft pick heading into his final season at Duke than Burrow was coming into 2019.
Josh Allen, OLB, Jacksonville Jaguars (No. 7 pick in 2019): Allen's ascent last season at Kentucky was well-documented. Between his junior and senior seasons, he added 20 pounds of muscle and completely transformed his game. Most projected him as an off-the-ball linebacker after his junior season, but the added muscle bumped his pass-rushing grade from 82.2 in 2017 to a PFF-record 94.4 last year.
Mitchell Trubisky, QB, Chicago Bears (No. 2 pick in 2017): While he did grade well on limited snaps in 2015, Trubisky couldn't even get the starting nod over eventual undrafted free agent Marquise Williams at North Carolina. Trubisky is the ultimate cautionary tale about small sample sizes at the quarterback position. His dreadful outings against Virginia Tech (13-for-33 for 58 yards, 0 TDs, 2 INTs and a 29.2 passing grade) and Georgia (24-for-40 for 156 yards, 0 TDs and a 57.1 passing grade) were swept under the rug during the draft process for the allure of potential.
Solomon Thomas, DT, San Francisco 49ers (No. 3 pick in 2017): As a sophomore at Stanford in 2015, Thomas registered only 25 pressures on 363 pass-rushing snaps for an uninspiring 66.9 pass-rushing grade. The next season he would nearly double that to 47, though his down-to-down efficiency was still nowhere near elite with a 76.2 pass-rushing grade.
Eli Apple, CB, New Orleans Saints (No. 10 pick in 2016): The traits were obviously there as an Ohio State sophomore in 2014 to be a high draft pick, but the production was nothing special. Apple gave up 432 yards on 34 receptions allowed on 65 targets, along with four touchdowns and three picks. His 69.4 coverage grade was fairly middling, and we saw a big leap from him to 82.0 the year before he was drafted by the Giants (who have since moved on from him).
The ceiling
This weekend's matchup with Alabama looms large for Burrow's draft stock, and it could serve as his true introduction as a legitimate threat to land that top pick. He'll be dealing with a handful of potential first-rounders on that Crimson Tide defense. How he fares will be very important for draft evaluators.
A precedent has been set for an unknown to become the first overall pick, and the data behind Burrow's move this season is astronomical. There's a reason he has the Tigers at 8-0 and in the hunt for a berth in the College Football Playoff and a reason why he's arguably the favorite to win the Heisman Trophy.
And if he continues this level of play, he could very well be the first overall pick in the 2020 NFL draft, too.