Brett Davis-Imagn Images
By Hunt Palmer
Imagine a roster as a puzzle.
It takes my kid about 25 minutes, with some help from dear old dad, to assemble the easiest level. We’re on dinosaurs now. He loves to find the T-Rex and Stegosaurus. College football coaches are essentially asked to assemble a Rubix cube in 10 seconds to begin January.
Dozens of departures–some planned, some sudden–foul up the puzzle, and it has to be reassembled. If not, Clemson, Ole Miss, Texas A&M, Texas, Alabama and Tennessee are going to take a sledgehammer to it in the fall.
The quarterback is the most important piece.
When Lane Kiffin rolled out his Yoga mat on January 2, he didn’t have one. Eight days later, he still didn’t. Over the course of 72 hours, he nabbed three.
It’s easy to grab five or six wide receivers. They all play at the same time and need someone attracting coverage to the other side of the field to be most productive. Running backs are often okay with someone to split the workload with. Two guards play at once. Same as tackles.
Those pieces fit together.
Quarterbacks replace each other. They don’t work together. And they often times don’t transfer to sit. Kiffin didn’t just get any three pieces. He got 247sports’s No. 1 portal prospect, a former composite five-star with four years of eligibility remaining and a third teamer with a year of starting experience at the college level.
That’s as well as it can be done in this era.
Of the top eight high school quarterbacks in the 247sports Class of 2024, seven have either already transferred or are currently in the portal. That class has only been in school for two seasons. When quarterbacks don’t play, they leave. Kiffin got two to sign up to sit.
Money talks, sure. But so does track record.
Sam Leavitt had options. Kentucky’s new offensive head coach called. Their pocketbooks are deep enough to have lured in a top eight portal haul. Tennessee scores tons of points. He visited. Miami’s last two signal callers have a Heisman Trophy, the No. 1 NFL Draft selection and a berth in the national championship to their names. He spurned South Beach.
Leavitt is callin’ Baton Rouge. He’s the centerpiece to the roster, and his performance and production will probably dictate how far LSU makes it in 2026. No position is as important as quarterback, and LSU got one of the best available.
Huson Longstreet had his options, too. He could have stay with Lincoln Riley who has a shelf full of Heismans and more passing yards in a decade than you can count. Oregon was in the market until they weren’t.
In an era where insurance at the position is flimsy, LSU has a damn solid policy should Leavitt’s foot heal more slowly than anticipated.
Think of the SEC programs that have needed their backup quarterbacks over the last two seasons.
Texas was in a playoff run in 2024, and Quinn Ewers went down. Carson Beck missed a playoff game for Georgia. Graham Mertz and DJ Lagway traded time in the training room in Gainesville. Blake Shapen was lost for the year at State, and South Carolina had no chance against LSU once LaNorris Sellers gave way to Robbie Ashford in Columbia.
In 2025, Garrett Nussmeier, Austin Simmons, Shapen and John Mateer all missed crucial time.
Calling Longstreet the quarterback of the future at LSU is presumptive in this era, but he brings a huge talent to the backup role in 2036, something increasingly hard to find.
Andrew Irvins, Director of Scouting for 247sports said Longstreet has a “rifle for an arm” is “very effective on run-pass options with his initial burst” and is “likely to find most success in a power-based spread attack”. I’m not sure you could have found a better piece to a Kiffin puzzle.
And a third team quarterback isn’t brought in to change the program. No one expects Clark to be Trinidad Chambliss. But his production at Elon provides emergency depth which may be even harder to come by than a backup.
All told, Kiffin whipped this quarterback Rubix cube around and slammed perfection on the table in no time. How the group learns, develops and executes remains to be seen. LSU is far from a lock for the next CFP.
However, what is apparent is that his aptitude for assembling a roster has translated from the era he excelled in at Ole Miss to the one we’ve entered as he arrived in Baton Rouge. He’s very much equipped to handle the new age of college football. The delicate nature with which he handled the quarterback spot proved it.
Unlike the pieces on my living room floor, he’s no dinosaur.
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