Three Things to Watch: Southeastern Louisiana

By Hunt Palmer

LSU’s now annual meeting with an in-state FCS program has arrived. The Tigers welcome the Lions of Southeastern Louisiana to Baton Rouge on Saturday night.

These games are what they are—a mismatch for a paycheck.

LSU will win the game by a ton of points like they did against Nicholls (42-21), Grambling (72-10) and Southern (65-17) previously in the Brian Kelly. Southeastern will take its $750,000. LSU will play its reserves, and both teams will carry on to conference play which actually matters.

There is nothing LSU can really accomplish against Southeastern that can be translated to the matchup with Ole miss or anyone else down the road in SEC play.

From that perspective, it’s tough to come up with three matchups to watch, so we’ll change the verbiage and call them “things to watch” instead.

LESS NUSS, MORE MIKE

There is certainly value in confidence. The passing game hasn’t hummed yet, so hopefully Garrett Nussmeier can pilot the offense to some early scoring drives. If that includes a deep shot landing, all the better.

Nussmeier has already proven he can produce through the air against elite competition, so lighting up Southeastern isn’t going to move the needle much. But it beats the alternative.

Michael Van Buren needs some snaps. He was shaky in fall camp, missing badly on some open throws and struggling to move the ball on what we now know is a pretty salty defense. If Nussmeier were to miss extended time later in the season, I think LSU would be in serious trouble. But if it’s a short-term absence like last year’s Oklahoma game when Nussmeier went back to the locker room for a couple of drives, it would be nice if Van Buren had some game snaps in this offense under his belt to draw from in a tough spot.

I think, both in terms of Nussmeier’s rest and Van Buren’s experience, it’s important that LSU makes a quarterback change around halftime on Saturday night.

TACKLE TIME

Weston Davis has had some issues in his first three starts. The former five-star recruit has all the measurables you want in a tackle. He’s 6-foot-6 and has long arms and light feet. He was a basketball standout in high school. He needs reps to develop as he’s relatively early in his football life.

Saturday night’s reps, while against subpar competition, are low stress. And they could create some confidence.

The flip side is that this is also a time to get freshman Carius Curne some snaps to see what he can do. Curne was an early enrollee who made some waves in spring. He worked at left tackle the first three weeks of camp and spent a good portion of the last two weeks working at right tackle until he missed a little bit of time with injury.

Curne is also a gifted athlete who could give the Tigers an alternative at right tackle. When Tyree Adams went down at Clemson, DJ Chester was inserted. He’s out of position on the edge. At the very least, LSU needs a backup option to emerge. The possibility exists that a replacement could, as well.

Right tackle will be a spot to watch.

SACKS

This one is a touch selfish. I’m angling toward one of my preseason predictions that LSU would blow by its 2024 sack total. Right now, they’re nowhere near the pace. The Tigers have seven sacks in three games. That’s a pace of about 30. I was thinking closer to 50. This is a spot where some sacks could show up.

No one on the defense has multiple sacks to this point. It’s time for Patrick Payton, Jack Pyburn, Gabriel Reliford and company to start pushing that total north.