By Hunt Palmer
ATLANTA—When you miss a decade, things change.
Last time I took a seat at SEC Media Days, it was 2013 and LSU was considered a quarterback away from the top of college football. This week the talk is that LSU should have the best quarterback in college football for the third time in six years.
How’d that happen?
Joe Burrow took a magic carpet ride through college football in 2019, and Jayden Daniels’s stayed in that whole new world four years later with his sensational season.
The genie grants three wishes, right? It’s Garrett Nussmeier’s turn, right?
I’m afraid it’s not that easy.
Burrow set about every record you can set in college football. He threw 60 touchdowns, most of which were two potential NFL Hall of Famers. Daniels used a combination of lightning quicks, high-end speed and the most productive wide receiver in the history of LSU football. On the other side was the nation’s receiving touchdowns leader.
What those two guys did can’t be the expectation. That’s a slight to what they accomplished which is bringing a trophy back to Baton Rouge that hadn’t shown up since 1959.
To his credit, Nussmeier knows that.
“I think obviously with the track record that LSU quarterbacks have in the past, I have a lot of respect for Jayden, a lot of respect for Joe and what they were able to accomplish in their second years, and also respectively in their first years,” Nussmeier said at SEC Media Days. “But as I said before, I’m me. At the end of the day, I’m Garrett Nussmeier.”
The good news for LSU is that Garrett Nussmeier is good enough. His first season at LSU was more productive than Burrow’s or Daniels’s.
Burrow completed 58 percent of his throws for 2,894 yards and 16 touchdowns. Daniels completed 67 percent for 2,913 yards and 17 touchdowns. Nussmeier bested that with over 4,000 yards passing and 29 scores on 67 percent completions.
Nussmeier doesn’t have to put on a Superman cape like those two Heisman winners. LSU tried that last year with the worst rushing attack in the SEC and a defense thank ranked around 60 in total and scoring defense. Nussmeier was essentially asked to do everything.
The success of the 2025 Tigers doesn’t have as much to do with Nussmeier elevating his play as it does the other units rising to a championship level.
The offensive line has to pave the way for a running game. The defense can’t allow 553 rushing yards over a two-game span like it did against Texas A&M and Alabama last year.
If Nussmeier finishes fifth in the country in yards per game and 10th in touchdowns, LSU should win 10 games.
Just one aspect needs to be tightened up at quarterback.
“One, there’s no hiding from the turnovers,” Nussmeier said. “I think it’s more of an understanding of, you know, the way I am as a player, as an anticipation player, there’s going to be some interceptions. The ones I need to eliminate are the ones that don’t need to happen, the ones where I’m trying to do too much, the ones I’m trying to make a play when I don’t need to.”
The bar for Nussmeier doesn’t have to be seven touchdowns in a national semifinal or 1,134 rushing yards and a 40-to-4 touchdown-to-interception ratio. The bar is winning 10 games and taking a shot at a national title.
While the conversation in Atlanta and throughout the state of Louisiana may involve a Heisman, that would just be a byproduct of the rest of LSU’s roster rising to the occasion.
“Garrett is at LSU because he loves LSU,” LSU head coach Brian Kelly said. “He wants to lead our football team to a championship. If the Heisman follows with that, I think he’s good with that.”
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