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LSU lands at No. 4 in USA Today’s SEC preseason rankings

Untitled design (1)by: Julie Boudwin07/16/25
NCAA Football: SEC Media Day
Jul 16, 2025; Atlanta, GA, USA; LSU Tigers head coach Brian Kelly talks to the media during SEC Media Day at Omni Atlanta Hotel. Mandatory Credit: Jordan Godfree-Imagn Images

With training camp just around the corner, the anticipation for the 2025 college football season continues to build — and expectations remain high in Baton Rouge. USA Today released its preseason SEC rankings this week, and LSU checked in at No. 4, behind Texas, Georgia and Alabama.

For head coach Brian Kelly, now in his fourth season at LSU, the goal is clear: get into the College Football Playoff and make a deep run. The Tigers were on the outside looking in last year with a 9-win campaign, and now they return one of the SEC’s most experienced quarterbacks in Garrett Nussmeier, who’s poised for a big year after a breakout 2024 season.

Offensively, Nussmeier leads a group that showed its explosiveness last fall, but LSU’s ceiling in 2025 may be determined by its improvement on the other side of the ball. After struggling with consistency on defense a year ago, Kelly and his staff addressed that unit heavily in the transfer portal, including multiple players expected to make an immediate impact.

The Tigers open the season with a marquee matchup at Clemson, a game that could shape the national perception of this LSU team early on. Kelly said reminders of the task ahead are everywhere, quite literally.

“If you go through our weight room, we’ve got a Clemson paw print on the bags that we hit every day. It’s on every monitor in the building to go 1-0,” he said at SEC Media Days. “I think it was important to have a tangible, specific goal for us to start the season. And I think it’s important—our kids want that. They can taste it.”

USA Today tabbed Texas as the preseason No. 1 team in the conference as Arch Manning steps into the starting quarterback role, while Georgia and Alabama round out the top three. Florida and Oklahoma followed LSU to close out the top six.

Here is the full list of USA Today’s 2025 SEC preseason rankings in order:

  1. Texas
  2. Georgia
  3. Alabama
  4. LSU
  5. Florida
  6. Oklahoma
  7. Tennessee
  8. Ole Miss
  9. Texas A&M
  10. Missouri
  11. South Carolina
  12. Auburn
  13. Vanderbilt
  14. Arkansas
  15. Kentucky
  16. Mississippi State

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