Joe Burrow leads LSU with eight touchdowns in dominant Peach Bowl performance against Oklahoma
Joe Burrow comes out firing, throwing seven touchdowns — including four to Justin Jefferson — in a dominant first-half performance. (2:05)
ATLANTA — Forget about a Heisman jinx.
LSU quarterback Joe Burrow picked up where he left off against Oklahoma in Saturday’s College Football Playoff semifinal at the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
Burrow, who won the Heisman Trophy earlier this month in the most lopsided vote in history, threw seven more touchdowns in the first half — and rushed for an eighth in the second half — before being taken out in the fourth quarter with the No. 1 Tigers leading the No. 4 Sooners 56-28.
Burrow’s seven touchdown passes were the most in a half of a bowl game by any player in FBS history and tied for the most in an entire bowl game (Central Michigan’s Cooper Rush had seven against Western Kentucky in the 2014 Bahamas Bowl).
Burrow had more touchdowns than incompletions in the first 30 minutes against the Sooners, throwing for 403 yards on 21-for-27 passing. He finished the game 29-of-39 with 493 passing yards.
Burrow and Tigers receiver Justin Jefferson hooked up for four touchdowns in the first half, covering 19, 35, 42 and 30 yards. Jefferson’s four touchdown catches are the most by a player in a Peach Bowl, a New Year’s Six game and a CFP semifinal.
Burrow added two more touchdowns to Terrace Marshall Jr., and another one to tight end Thaddeus Moss.
Burrow became the first player to throw seven touchdowns in a CFP game, the first in SEC history to throw at least five touchdowns in five games of a single season, and he set an LSU bowl record for touchdown passes (he shared the previous mark with four in a 40-32 win over UCF in the PlayStation Fiesta Bowl last season).
Burrow’s seven touchdown passes in the first half broke the Peach Bowl record, surpassing the previous mark of four shared by East Carolina’s Jeff Blake in 1991 and Texas A&M’s Johnny Manziel in 2013.
With 55 touchdown passes (and undoubtedly counting), Burrow became only the fifth player in FBS history with 5,000 passing yards and 50 touchdowns in a single season. Fresno State’s Derek Carr (2013), Hawaii’s Colt Brennan (2006), Texas Tech’s B.J. Symons (2003) and Houston’s David Klinger (1990) were the only other players to do it.
Burrow is three touchdown passes shy of tying the FBS single-season record of 58 set by Brennan in 2006.