Who Is LSU’s Starting Quarterback This Year?

The LSU Tigers football team has had a pretty good run of starting quarterbacks recently. For every Max Johnson and Myles Brennan there's a Heisman Trophy winner. Since 2018, LSU has had Joe Burrow (Heisman winner, National Champion, and #1 overall NFL Draft pick) and Jayden Daniels (Heisman winner and #2 overall NFL Draft pick) have started multiple seasons for the LSU Tigers.

But with Daniels heading into his NFL career, LSU will be handing the starting job over to a new player. A transition that actually started last year.

Since 2021, Garrett Nussmeier has been in the quarterback room in Baton Rouge. He was recruited under the Ed Orgeron regime, and is now on his 3rd Offensive Coordinator since joining the program. But a lot of that adversity may actually help Nussmeier in the long run.

The 6'2 redshirt Junior was born in Lake Charles, but played his high school football at Edward S. Marcus High School in Flower Mound, Texas. He was a 4-star recruit that received multiple offers from major programs. He was recruited by Texas, Miami, Georgia, North Carolina, Texas A&M, and Baylor...to name a few. But he picked LSU, and stuck with the program through his redshirt year, losing the starting job to Myles Brennan, and being denied a petition to the NCAA to allow him to start a bowl game in the 2022 Texas Bowl. In a world where transferring between schools is so easy, sticking with a program is very impressive.

Now, Nussmeier gets his chance to start. This new chapter of the program actually started during the 2024 ReliaQuest Bowl in January, when Nussmeier got the start when Jayden Daniels withdrew from the game. In that game, Nussmeier threw for 395 yards and three touchdowns against the Wisconsin Badgers, earning him MVP honors for the bowl...and that was his first start.

So heading into this season, Nussmeier will be the unquestioned started for LSU, and has already established that he's got the skillset to win a bowl game MVP award.