LSU football has a lot of things they'll hope to do differently in Week 2 against McNeese State, and one of those things could be getting some run for backup quarterback Garrett Nussmeier.
LSU coach Ed Orgeron spoke to that plan in an interview on SportsTalk with Mike Detillier and Kristian Garic Tuesday evening, three days after a season-opening loss to UCLA at the Rose Bowl.
“Garrett has had a tremendous camp. We had a 2-minute drill yesterday, he had two outstanding scrambles for touchdowns," Orgeron said. "He’s learned the offense. He can throw it. He has a quick release. He’s dangerous.”
Nussmeier, also the son of a former NFL quarterback in Doug Nussmeier, has drawn rave reviews throughout camp as a gunslinger. Orgeron has referred to him as a bit like Johnny Manziel, but he's had to be coached up on making smart, safe decisions and limiting turnover.
But even with that plan, don't overreact to the freshman's appearance in the game, as it's more about getting the young passer experience under his belt than a statement on Max Johnson's performance. The sophomore had a solid passing line of 330 yards and 3 touchdowns, but it was clear to see some of the shakiness throughout the game that was stunningly absent in a pair of wins to close the 2020 season.
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Johnson will get his "chance to grow" at the position, Orgeron said, but his performance still must show improvement. Part of that is on the coaching staff putting him in a position to succeed. One of the ways they'll plan to do that is by limiting some of the decisions he'll have to make at the line of scrimmage, the coach said.
Max has to improve. ... I love Max to death, he was under duress. I can’t blame him. We had too much on his plate," Orgeron said. "So we’re going to take things off of his plate and put it on other people that make some calls and stuff, especially at the line of scrimmage, and let him play his own game. Because I thought he played phenomenal for us last year. So I wanted to see what was causing him to be so inconsistent.”
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MORE FROM ORGERON'S INTERVIEW
ON RB JOHN EMERY'S STATUS
“He’s still unavailable. I don’t know if I’ll found out something this week.”
When asked if the issue was injury-related, Orgeron repeated: "He's unavailable."
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ON THE RACE TO IMPROVE
“You have two new coordinators and obviously they had great ideas and obviously they had gameplans that they thought would work. … We could’ve put our guys in a lot better position a lot of times. But there were some times that we practiced the exact same situation and our guys didn’t perform like they should. So it works both ways. There’s some accountability on the coaches, accountability on the players. But look, I told the team after the game, ‘look it all falls on me. Just one person to look at and that’s me. And I’ll take it and move forward.’ ”
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“All those things that hurt us was a major emphasis going into camp, things that had hurt us last year. We did get better, but, hey, the speed of the game, they outnumbered us a couple of times on the edge. We should’ve had more people there. A couple of times we had guys in position, they didn’t play their technique right. I think it was a combination of both. Again, it’s something that can be fixed. It wasn’t a talent issue at all, it wasn’t a want-to issue at all. It wasn’t the coaches not trying. I mean, everybody was pumped up, ready to go. We wanted to win this game for the state of Louisiana, south Louisiana, we knew they were hurting. So we were more disappointed than anybody.”