What will Joe Burrow do on an open date Saturday? Watch football, of course

It’s a chill weekend for Joey Football.

While many of his LSU teammates are hunting or fishing or playing video games on the first of two open weekends for the No. 4 ranked unbeaten Tigers, starting quarterback Joe Burrow plans to be a couch potato.

“I’m going to sit on my couch and watch football,” he said.

Just like Burrow did last Saturday night when the Tigers got back to Baton Rouge by 6 p.m. after he threw for 398 yards and a school-record six touchdowns in a 66-38 early afternoon victory at Vanderbilt.

“I watched Notre Dame-Georgia and Texas-Oklahoma State last weekend and those were pretty good games," Burrow said.

Surely, he heard national announcers gushing about his day at Vanderbilt, his ridiculous season so far being ranked first nationally in completion percentage (100-of-124, .806 with 17 TDs and two interceptions), second in passing yards (1,512) and second in passing yards per game (380).

He’ll probably hear it again this weekend, that he’s the fastest rising Heisman Trophy candidate in the nation, that LSU’s new pass-happy offense averaging a nation-leading 57.8 points as well as 563.5 yards is the college football surprise of the first month of the season.

Knowing Burrow, he’ll acknowledge it all and then pick up his I-pad at commercial breaks to study Utah State’s defense, LSU’s opponent next Saturday in Tiger Stadium.

Excellence never rests.

“We’ve done some really good things and some not so good things, probably like every team in the country feels that way,” Burrow said earlier this week. “We’re going to have to get better to get to where we want to get to. Everybody knows what that is. It’s a great start, but we have to keep it going through SEC play.”

Excellence is never satisfied.

“That was probably the worst game I’ve played so far,” Burrow said of his 25-of-34 day at Vanderbilt. “I don’t want to say bad game because I still played very well. But I played better in the first three, so I have some things to correct just as we do as an offense.

“I made some decisions I usually don’t make the ball. Held the ball a little too long sometimes, which was unlike me in the first three games.”

Excellence is always looking for an edge.

“I break down every play what I could have done better,” Burrow said of his self-film study. “Even if it was a good play, what could I have done to make the play easier on myself and my team?”

Burrow’s improvement over last season has been dramatic, and there are several reasons why he’s become one of the hottest QBs in college football.

First, there’s the fact in the off-season he recognized and corrected a weakness, such as throwing on the run.

“I worked the on-the-run throws, which I was very bad at last year,” Burrow said. “I was very disappointed in myself and it’s something I’ve worked hard at.”

Also, he worked on what he calls “off-platform throws.”

“It’s about going through your progression reads while manipulating the pocket with your feet at the same time, getting your feet set for awkward throws," Burrow said. "As soon as a guy gets open, I get my feet set a lot quicker than last year.

“I watched (Green Bay Packers QB) Aaron Rodgers (film), he’s pretty good at it. I watched a lot of my old high school games when I was pretty good at it. I worked on it all summer.”

Something else Burrow continuously did the entire off-season was throw and throw and throw to all his receivers. It’s a major reason for his astronomical completion percentage.

“I’m throwing the ball before they are coming out of their break and they are exactly where I expect them to be when I expect them to be there,” Burrow said. “Last year it wasn’t that way. I’d only been here a month and a half (after joining the team as a graduate transfer from Ohio State) before the season. We really couldn’t get the timing we needed.”

There’s also the fact LSU’s receivers “are catching everything, whether they are open or not,” Burrow said.

“Last year, we had a problem catching the football,” LSU coach Ed Orgeron said. “This year, we’re catching the ball better, we have a route progression, we have answers, we have look overs at the line of scrimmage, it’s exactly what we’ve wanted.”

Which is an offense that rarely gets stumped by an opposing defense.

“This offense is built on triangles,” Orgeron explained. “We’re always going to form a triangle. Three receivers somewhere, somehow are going to form a triangle. Joe is going to have a spot there; we go high to low (in progression) and we’re making a decision based on the defense.”

If it seems like Burrow always has a choice of targets, it’s because he does.

“Everyone has to cover the entire field when they play us, we have too many weapons,” Burrow said. “They are too many places to go with the ball.

“When we have five people out on the route, you’ve got to pick your poison. Play deep and you give up the underneath routes at 7 or 8 yards a pop. Playing tight and we’ll go over the top. We have multiple weapons we can go to.

“I just take the ball where the defense gives me. But if you go back and watch the film, it’s multiple places I can go with the football. The receivers always come back (after a play) and let me know `I was open.’ I say, `That guy was open too, so he got the ball.'"

Finally, the most overlooked reason why LSU’s new offense has been almost perfect is the off-season transition to learn new passing game coordinator Joe Brady’s schemes as well as the run-pass option game he installed.

The proof is in the lack of offensive penalties, whether it’s false starts or delay of game, the operational infractions expected when a new system is installed.

In the last three seasons, LSU has had a different offense.

This year, the offensive penalties have dropped dramatically. And when the Tigers are whistled for an offensive penalty, they still have the capability and confidence to score.

Here’s the offensive penalty stats after the first four games in each of the last three seasons. The name of the offensive coordinator is in parenthesis:

2017 (Matt Canada) – 15 penalties committed in 10 possessions. LSU scored two touchdowns, a field goal and didn’t score on the other seven possessions.

2018 (Steve Ensminger) – 14 penalties committed in 11 possessions. LSU scored two TDs, three field goals and didn’t score on the other six possessions.

2019 (Ensminger and Brady) – Six penalties committed in six possessions. LSU has scored three TDs, two field goals and the only possession it didn’t score on was when it was flagged for an offensive infraction on the last play of the first half against Northwestern State.

Orgeron credited Burrow’s experience and the working relationship of Ensminger and Brady as why the offensive operation has worked without hitches.

Despite their age difference – Ensminger is 61 and Brady just turned 30 last Monday – Burrow couldn’t be happier with the Tigers’ offensive brain trust before games and especially in the heat of the battle when Burrow is on the sideline headphones while the Tigers’ defense is doing work.

“The mesh between Coach E and Coach Joe has been flawless,” Burrow said. “While Coach E is getting ready for the next series calling plays, me and Coach Joe are talking about what I saw (from the opposing defense), what he saw. Coach E will chime in “Here’s what we’re thinking on the next series.' It has been great, I’m really happy with the relationship we’ve all built.”