LSU has three Heisman Trophy winners, and the spacing tells its own story. Billy Cannon won in 1959. The next LSU winner came sixty years later, when Joe Burrow took the award by the largest margin in its history. Jayden Daniels followed four seasons after that. Two of the three went on to be top two picks in the NFL draft.
| Year | Player | Position | The season |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1959 | Billy Cannon | Halfback | The Halloween punt return against Ole Miss |
| 2019 | Joe Burrow | Quarterback | 60 touchdown passes, 15 and 0, national title |
| 2023 | Jayden Daniels | Quarterback | 3,812 passing yards, 1,134 rushing, 50 total touchdowns |
Billy Cannon, 1959
Cannon won the Heisman a year after leading LSU to the 1958 national championship, and the award is remembered for a single play. On Halloween night 1959, with top ranked LSU trailing No. 3 Ole Miss 3 to 0 in the fourth quarter, he fielded a punt at his own 11, broke seven tackles and ran 89 yards for the only touchdown in a 7 to 3 win. It is the most famous play in the program’s history and the radio call is still played in Tiger Stadium.
He was the first overall pick in the 1960 NFL draft and signed instead with the Houston Oilers of the new AFL. His later life included a federal counterfeiting conviction in 1983 and a long stretch as the dentist at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, and his number 20 is retired.
Joe Burrow, 2019
Burrow transferred from Ohio State in 2018 as a backup who had never started a game. In 2019 he threw for 5,671 yards and 60 touchdowns, both FBS records, with six interceptions, on a team that went 15 and 0 and beat seven top ten opponents. He won the Heisman with 2,608 points and 841 first place votes, a margin of 1,846 over Jalen Hurts that remains the widest in the award’s history, and his acceptance speech about poverty in his hometown of Athens, Ohio raised more than half a million dollars for a local food bank.
He went first overall to Cincinnati. Our national championships page covers the 2019 season.
Jayden Daniels, 2023
Daniels, a transfer from Arizona State, threw for 3,812 yards and 40 touchdowns and ran for 1,134 yards and ten more, the first player in FBS history with 3,500 passing and 1,000 rushing yards in a season. His 606 total yards against Florida included a 372 yard passing, 234 yard rushing line that no quarterback had produced before. He won the Heisman over Michael Penix and Bo Nix and went second overall to Washington, where he was the NFL’s Offensive Rookie of the Year.
LSU went 10 and 3 that season and did not win the SEC, which made Daniels the first LSU winner without a title.
The Sixty Year Gap
LSU went from 1959 to 2019 without a Heisman winner despite national championships in 2003 and 2007. The closest calls were on defence, where Glenn Dorsey and Tyrann Mathieu each finished fifth, and at receiver, where Ja’Marr Chase in 2019 and Justin Jefferson were part of Burrow’s supporting cast rather than candidates themselves. Both of the recent winners were transfer quarterbacks who arrived with modest reputations and left as top two picks, which is the model Lane Kiffin has followed with Sam Leavitt in 2026.
Our Heisman winners by year page has every recipient since 1995.
The Bottom Line
LSU has three Heisman winners: Billy Cannon in 1959 on the strength of one punt return, Joe Burrow in 2019 by the largest margin ever recorded, and Jayden Daniels in 2023 after the first 3,500 and 1,000 season in FBS history. Two went first or second overall in the draft. Sixty years separated the first two and four years the last two.