Before he took LSU to the national championship, Joe Burrow was a 3-star recruit at Ohio State. Still a raw prospect, the 18-year-old stayed behind Cardale Jones and J.T. Barrett for three years after. He worked hard, learned the craft, and rose as one of the prominent names in Urban Meyer’s QB room. So much so that he even renamed QB Dwayne Haskins’ name to “Ross” in 2016, flexing the seniority he was commanding in the locker room. Little did Burrow know, though, that the same QB he playfully lampooned would become his reason to exit Ohio State.

“We didn’t say to Joe that Dwayne had beaten him out. And we said he was ahead of him,” Day said on the ‘Not Just Football’ podcast about Haskins taking Burrow’s QB1 spot in 2017. “We just wanted to make sure we were communicating that to him, even though we didn’t want him to leave and he didn’t want to leave.”

When it came to reaping the rewards of his waiting, he broke his hand in his sophomore season. The injury, combined with Haskins’ performances later in the 2017 season, led to then-OSU OC and QB coach Ryan Day making the call. It wasn’t an easy decision to deny someone like Burrow the QB1 opportunity. And so, Day had “long conversations” filled with “tears” with the former LSU QB.

“Joe is extremely special in a lot of areas,” Ryan Day said. “I say to this day, if any of those guys want to get into another three-point competition or a tire pull with Coach Mick, they’re going to lose to Joe Burrow.”

J.T. Barrett was initially the starter in the 2017 season, but a knee injury sidelined him for the Michigan game in November. At the time, the QB room included both Burrow and Haskins, as Ryan Day selected Haskins to lead the team against Michigan. Ohio State won the game 31-20 as Haskins passed for 94 yards and rushed for another 67 yards. That performance was one of the biggest factors in Ryan Day and Urban Meyer’s decision to go with Haskins in 2018. For Joe Burrow, though, it wasn’t a setback.

How Dwayne Haskins helped fuel Joe Burrow’s success

Dwayne Haskins passed for a whopping 4,831 yards for Ohio State in 2018, becoming the 15th overall pick in the NFL draft. On the other hand, Joe Burrow joined LSU and started learning the offense. The numbers weren’t spectacular in his first year as Burrow passed for 2,894 yards and rushed for another 368 yards. But it was a beginning. Most importantly, no one was ready for what Joe Burrow would do in 2019, as he rejuvenated LSU’s archaic offense.

“When Ryan Day got to Ohio State, and he was my QB coach, we started to talk a lot about things from an NFL-type perspective. It just kind of made sense to me, and it kinda always has,” Burrow said about Ryan Day’s influence on him.

Despite seeing no significant snaps at Ohio State, Joe Burrow acknowledges the “four or five-year process” that helped him to become one of college football’s greatest players. In his final season at LSU in 2019, he tormented defenses as if he were playing in his backyard, notching 5,671 passing yards and winning the national title for the Baton Rouge program. The Heisman Trophy and a first overall pick became a no-brainer for voters and NFL GMs.

“I wasn’t ready to play at all, and everyone knew it,” Burrow said. “I started from the bottom, and working and working and working. That’s a theme with all the great quarterbacks, Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, and Drew Brees. They didn’t have it easy at any point. Adversity is a key component in building the kind of players who succeed at the next level. I’m forever grateful I went through that adversity.”

Joe Burrow is in the NFL now with the Bengals. He is the team’s QB1, still going strong, still torching defenses, though recovering from an injury. The former OSU QB has already accumulated 20,810 passing yards for his team and is on a whopping $275 million 5-year contract.