BREAKING: LSU fires offensive coordinator Joe Sloan

LSU has parted ways with offensive coordinator Joe Sloan following the program’s loss to Texas A&M, sources tell The Bengal Tiger staff.

LSU tight ends coach Alex Atkins will serve as the team’s play-caller for the final four games of the regular season.

The move comes after a 5-3 start to a 2025 season that brought with it expectations of making the 12-team College Football Playoffs.

With back-to-back losses, the Tigers are all but out of the CFB Playoffs race – which led to head coach Brian Kelly being fired on Sunday.

Sloan, who was hired by Kelly in 2022 as the program’s quarterbacks coach, took over play-calling duties as the team’s offensive coordinator ahead of the 2024 season. He replaced Mike Denbrock, who called plays as the offensive coordinator in Baton Rouge for Kelly’s first two seasons before returning to South Bend to fill the same role at Notre Dame.

The Tigers have struggled on offense despite returning a starting quarterback in Garrett Nussmeier who passed for more than 4,000 yards a year ago, which ranked No. 2 for most passing yards in a single season in program history behind only Joe Burrow’s 2019 National Championship season at LSU.

The Tigers enter the bye week ranked outside of the Top 80 teams nationally in both total offense and scoring offense.

Sloan’s time on Kelly’s staff at LSU saw him find success as a quarterbacks coach for Jayden Daniels, who transferred in from Arizona State and played two seasons for the Tigers. In his second and final season, Daniels won the Heisman Trophy before becoming the No. 2 pick in the NFL Draft. After winning the starting quarterback job at Washington, Daniels was named the NFL’s Offensive Rookie of the Year.

When Denbrock left the staff for Notre Dame, Sloan was promoted to offensive coordinator and called plays for an LSU team that finished the 2024 season ranked as aTop 25 total offense among 130-plus NCAA FBS programs.

While Nussmeier’s first season as a starting quarterback saw LSU find success on offense, the 2025 season brought different results as Nussmeier worked through an injury suffered in fall camp as the Tigers fell short of expectations despite returning multiple starters and adding new starters from the NCAA Transfer Portal during the offseason.

Stay tuned to The Bengal Tiger and On3 for the latest on coaching changes in Baton Rouge.