After years of LSU weeping and gnashing their teeth over QB play, lamenting "If we only had a decent QB...", the universe and the cfb gods who rule it drops Joe Burrow and Jayden Daniels in our laps in the span of 4 years.
Of course, the days that LSU could make anything out of a good QB are long behind us, as the defense, special teams, recruiting, coaching, just about everything else, is junk.
This is not a good team, but Jayden Daniels is the best player in America. In case you missed it, the kid set three different records Saturday night, an cfb one (only player with 350+ passing and 200+ rushing), an SEC one (most single game total yards), and an LSU one (most QB rushing yards). He also helped the team to a Florida record, of the bad kind, the most yards ever allowed by a Florida team. He busted off a TD run of 85 yards where he left Gator DBs in his wake, then topped that with a 51 yard score where he weaved in and out of every level of defender, sometimes juking them individually, sometimes an entire cluster of them, on his way to a score that somehow looked easy. That last run caused former UGA QB Aaron Murray to drop his jaw and comment he's never seen anything like it.*
Quite simply, the kid is the Gingerbread Man.
His running ability was obvious last year. What I didn't see coming was his giant leap forward in being a pure passer. Even without his legs, he looks like the best QB in America, and would still be top 5 in production. As it is, he leads the nation in total offense, and according to Murray, has 100 more yards through 10 games than did Joe Burrow in 2019 and the same amount of TDs. He won't get near Burrow's records because Burrow played 15 games and went mega-nuts down the stretch in the SECCG and playoffs, but pound for pound, he's absolutely having a comparable season.
Too bad LSU and Kelly run a program that I doubt will field a complete team anytime soon, and if they ever do manage it, the odds are so far against lightning striking twice in 4 years like this that they get even infinitesimally smaller to ever see it again at LSU. Congrats to them for wasting a generational player who somehow showed up for the second time in a generation.
But Daniels is still amazing and fun to watch.
*I have, imo. While JD isn't the long-strider Vince Young was and has a different running motion, the way they seemed to float on air and dance in and around defenders who can never seem to get their hands on them are very similar. Aaron Murray was probably just a pimple-faced kid when VY was doing his thing.
