NEW ORLEANS _ Joe Burrow returns here Thursday night to take the walk at the NFL Honors show, but the good folks of Louisiana never rolled up the red carpet for one of their favorite sons.

Still.

Five years after Burrow engineered college football perfection at LSU and staged his own awards show.

The electric emotion of his Heisman Trophy speech clings outside the gates of LSU on the hardscrabble streets of the Old South section in Baton Rouge. Burreaux jerseys linger in this city's French Quarter. From West Monroe, the home of Andrew Whitworth, to Belle Chasse, site of Chris Henry's grave, the 2019 season lives.

"I remember when I met him at the parade. It was at Death Valley. At LSU. That's when I became a fan," says Braylen Cage, all of nine years old when he celebrated the championship that day. "I shook his hand. I took a picture with him, but I lost it."

Now he's14 and in a team photo as a running back and second-string quarterback at IDEA Bridge, a Baton Rouge charter school, and on Tuesday after class he's talking about how he imitates Burrow.

"The way he moves his feet," Cage says. "The way he drops backs three times and moves that right foot. It twitches."

Dustin LaFont enjoys watching Cage light up talking about Burrow. He's one of his students in Front Yard Bikes, the afterschool youth workforce development program he founded on Baton Rouge's struggling but stout south side.

It's one of the many programs in Louisiana and Ohio receiving grants from The Joe Burrow Foundation. Grants that keep people even like LaFont, a CNN community hero from a few years ago, revived and inspired.

"Joe Burrow didn't wait to give back to the community," LaFont says. "That's something we tell our kids. You may not have all the resources of a Joe Burrow, but you can give back right here and now to help your community today. The way Joe immediately started giving back to the community, it's pretty special and still resonates."

Still.

On Tuesday, 80 miles to the north of the young Cage, Bryan Broaddus, a Dallas sports personality, is on radio row in the Super Bowl whirl sifting through his phone. He's trying to find a photo of his son taken with Burrow when Burrow was a counselor at the Manning Passing Camp and he first stepped into Louisiana from Ohio.

Broaddus has done it all in the business. He was a center at LSU in the early '80s before getting on the coaching staff for a few years. Then he got into scouting. Then writing. That makes him a Burrow-ologist.

"There's a culture here that has a history to it, a spirit to it. When you embrace it, the spirit becomes a part of you," Broaddus says. "Guys go into the league and play pretty well, but when they spend time in Louisiana, it really becomes a part of them. I think in Joe's case it became a part of him."

Emily Chatelain has a 10-year-old son who wears a Burrow Bengals jersey and a Burrow LSU jersey. So do all his friends. They watch the Bengals every Sunday. Whenever he hears a Burrow is coming to Baton Rouge, he always asks if he can go.

"No," she tells him. The Burrow who is usually on the way is Joe's mother Robin. Sometimes it is both Robin and his father Jimmy Burow, the driving forces of their son's foundation.

Emily Chatelain is the executive director of the Three O'Clock Project, a non-profit aimed at serving meals to children who can't get them after school, during the summer, or during natural disasters like the 2016 flood. It earned a grant from the Burrows. Two months ago when Chatelain took them to a middle school, she asked the crowd of kids if they remembered the name of the quarterback who led LSU to glory in 2019.

The stands erupted with "Joe," and "Burrow."

"We don't forget," says Chatelain, who remembers how Burrow's call to action against poverty and hunger in his Heisman speech fueled more hope for projects like hers. "It's been five years, but it's such a monumental thing. That a kid not from here, to come here and just embrace Baton Rouge like a second home, that really resonated. We gave him a chance. He came here, everybody had open arms, and he just fell right into family."

The Burrow Foundation is helping the Three O'Clock Project strike high noon later this summer when it breaks ground for a 40,000-square foot commercial kitchen in one of Baton Rouge's "food deserts," where people lack access to healthy and affordable food. A pilot food rescue kitchen is soon to be launched from a church that funnels food targeted for waste to a chef.

Chatelain continues to be amazed at the Burrows' encouragement to go big or go home. The sprawling oasis of food figures to cost at least $10 million.

"The foundation is a catalyst for some of the bigger projects," Chatelain says. "They tell us, when you know what you want, let's do it. They've really been a catalyst for us jumping into the bigger projects that might have taken a lot longer without them."

At Old South, LaFont's kids not only build bikes, but build what he calls a community in their own haven. The grant from the Burrows focuses on a garden, a major component of teaching work skills.

"It starts with rotating soil and plants and goes all the way to learning how to prepare and cook food. From the garden to the table to the plate," LaFont says. "A lot of skill sets to help take care of their families. Really meaningful to us.

"We never crossed paths with him when he was at LSU. For the Burrow family to take time to learn who we are and care who we are, we can't be more grateful."

Braylen Cage runs through his afterschool week like Joe Burrow goes through his progressions: "I just got done playing basketball. We build bikes. On Friday we go on bike rides. We get fed snacks. Chips. Crackers." He also has plans on Sundays.

"I watch y'all," Cage says of the Bengals. "Because they have two of the best players in the world on their team."

Ja’Marr Chase, Burrow's big-play partner in 2019 and now, grew up here on the outskirts of the city overtaken by the Super Bowl this week. That's where Bryan Broaddus kept flicking through his phone looking for that Burrow picture. His son had told him his dad played at LSU and Burrow said, "Let's take a picture."

Dad never found the picture, but he offered a snapshot of how they feel about Burrow in the Bayou.

"I think everybody accepts him because he's got his own spirit to him. The way he is, people gravitate to him, towards that," Broaddus says. "A special person. I'll aways be grateful for that."