*The quotes in this story are taken from Joe Sloan’s interview with Jacob Hester on Off the Bench Thursday morning
By Hunt Palmer
Comparisons to Joe Burrow and Jayden Daniels are inevitable for Garrett Nussmeier in 2025.
When the last two fifth-year starters won Heisman Trophies and piloted the nation’s best offense, the next one is going to wear that expectation—right or wrong.
Last season Garrett Nussmeier started a full season for the first time in his college career, and his offensive coordinator Joe Sloan felt like the results were positive.
“He was as prepared as he could be and had developed as much as he could have possibly developed in order to be prepared to play,” Sloan told Jacob Hester on Off the Bench. “And then there’s experience and development you have to get from playing. And there’s some situations that happened in the season that now he’s aware of how those things transpired within the way he plays the game, and then practicing and preparing year-round to make sure you can avoid some of the negatives and highlighting your strengths.”
Both the strengths and the negatives were rather easy to identify from a macro perspective. Nussmeier finished third in the country in completions and fifth in passing yards per game. The Tiger offense trailed only Ole Miss is passing among SEC teams.
Production was no problem.
The untimely mistakes certainly were.
Nussmeier was intercepted three times in the second half at Texas A&M in a loss and turned the ball over three more times in a blowout loss to Alabama.
“He’s been able to really watch and dive into every bit of his film from the last year, and now take that into spring with having a really good plan on exactly what he wanted to improve on and what we wanted to improve on in all the different facets of what we do,” Sloan said.
As much tape as Nussmeier watched entering 2024, watching Daniels operate the offense and actually replicating his successes are two different things. And Nussmeier and Daniels are two very different players.
Now Nussmeier has a season of his own tape to evaluate not dissimilar to what Burrow had in Steve Ensminger’s offense and Daniels had in Mike Denbrock’s offense. Nussmeier has worked with Sloan for four years.
“Now when you watch him from January up until spring ball…We were able to kind of reset in spring ball and say, ‘okay, this is what’s really getting better. This is what we need to adjust and maybe shift our focus. Let’s look at our footwork here, or let’s look at what we’re thinking about here,’” Sloan said.
Some of the mistakes Nussmeier made were caused by rushed decisions and lack of poise. Some were complete misreads. He’s working daily to clean that up.
The son of a coach, Nussmeier has young lifetime of football understanding. Now he’s armed with the college playing time to add to that.
“I think you just see a calmness and an understanding every day of what he needs to do,” Sloan said. “And I think that’s the piece experience brings you. That’s hard to have until you actually play.”
