Brian Kelly provides thoughts on Jayden Daniels, Garrett Nussmeier amid competition
The LSU quarterback competition went from three to two to start the week with the announcement that Myles Brennan would be walking away from football. With that decision, it leaves Jayden Daniels and Garrett Nussmeier as Brian Kelly’s two options. To this point, he says he’s still seeing a mixed bag from both in their day to day work.
Kelly discussed what he is seeing in the LSU QB competition during his press conference earlier today. He says while they’re placing more of an emphasis on taking care of the ball, the pair have down well with timing, protection and operation as a whole.
“I thought what they did well was distribute the football on time, protected themselves. I thought yesterday we made some untimely errors. We threw a couple interceptions in the red zone. You can’t turn the ball over. I thought they were very good with the football today,” said Kelly. “I don’t like talking about managing because (it) gets a definition that they’re just doing well enough to get by. They were smart with the football today, they made plays and I thought did a really good job of operating.”
Those thoughts were in general, though. It was later on that he highlighted some of the specifics between Daniels and Nussmeier. Daniels, the more experienced of the two, has used his athleticism to excel in some of LSU’s run-pass schemes according to Kelly. Meanwhile, Nussmeier has done well in reading the defense in their zone action.
“In particular I thought the ball came out of Daniels hand really well today, especially off the RPOs. It was accurate,” Kelly said. “I thought (Nussmeier) made some really good reads off of zone read action, which has been one of the things that we’ve been working on. So, in particular, those two things (stuck out) for each one of them.”
Brian Kelly is coming down to the wire in picking LSU’s starter come September 4th. Brennan’s decision made things easier but he still has two great options to pick between for the Tigers. He shared his thoughts on where the two stand at the moment. Now, with the season nearly upon us, he’ll need to wind down to one before they kick off against Florida State.