Joe Burrow's arm is the primary reason he's risen to such prominence as a football player, but his legs are what helped him create a sequence that proved to Clyde Edwards-Helaire that the quarterback was set to become a true force.
Burrow, who's slated to appear in Super Bowl LVI for the Cincinnati Bengals this Sunday, and Edwards-Helaire, a running back for the Kansas City Chiefs, were college teammates at LSU.
And before their Tigers team went undefeated in 2019 and won the national title, Burrow broke free for a lengthy scamper in the previous campaign that Edwards-Helaire still fondly remembers.
"The time that I knew Joe had 'it,' I would say it's 2018," Edwards-Helaire recounted on Friday. "We were playing Georgia. Joe is doing his thing, dotting it up — this is his first year with us — and Joe broke a run for, I want to say, like, 60 or 70 yards."
Get top local stories in Southern California delivered to you every morning. >Sign up for NBC LA's News Headlines newsletter.
"Once he got tackled, just seeing the look in his eyes, the look in his eyes as he stood up, pointing to the first down," he continued. "At that moment I realized that Joe is not a one-dimensional football player. Like, nobody had really seen Joe run at that time, but I knew at that point that Joe was going to do anything and everything that he could in order for us to not only win that game but go as far as as we wanted to go."
Here's the highlight the current Chief is referring to:
While Edwards-Helaire exaggerated only slightly about the length Burrow's run — it spanned 59 yards, not the "60 or 70" that he described — seeing the pocket passer stiff-arm one Georgia defender and then race down the sidelines is quite impressive.
"I feel like at that moment, that was a very special moment," Edwards-Helaire said.
The Bengals are no doubt hoping Burrow can produce a similar game-changing swing on Sunday in Los Angeles.
