Two starting LSU offensive linemen dealing with notable injuries

The injury news continues to stack up for LSU during the bye week as head coach Brian Kelly announced that two of his starting offensive linemen have significant situations after the loss to Ole Miss.

Starting left guard Paul Mubenga has a high ankle sprain, while starting right tackle Weston Davis has a fractured nose and concussion. Davis suffered the concussion before the Ole Miss game which is why he was ruled out less than 30 minutes before kickoff.

“[Davis] is moving forward and doing well, my expectation is he can clear protocol, but that’s one thing I never like getting into,” Kelly said. “He’s moving in the right direction.

“Paul has a high ankle sprain. Some respond better than others. Braelin had one as well, so we’re going to play it day by day.”

Both players had started the first four games of the season for LSU and have over 220 snaps on the season, but it is unclear what their status is for the South Carolina home game in ten days. In Davis’ place, freshman Carius Curne stepped in and had a solid showing, but it was not enough as the Tigers’ once again were unable to run block and struggled at times in pass protection.

While Curne is the projected starter if Davis misses significant time, the replacement for Mubenga is less obvious. It’s likely between redshirt sophomore DJ Chester and redshirt freshman Coen Echols, two players who got plenty of reps at guard over the offseason and into fall camp.

Of course, most of the talk this week has been about Garrett Nussmeier’s health, but Kelly did not get into specifics in his Wednesday night press conference. Running back Caden Durham does appear to be making progress as Kelly said he was running more today and in more of the action.

We’ve talked about Aaron Anderson’s situation after being banged up through the game against Ole Miss as well. Overall, this is a team that needs the bye week badly to lick its wounds and bounce back from the loss. Can Kelly and his LSU staff get everything back on track and pushing forward as SEC play is now in full force? We’ll have to wait and see.

“Certainly the open date is for us to work on the things that need to get better,” Kelly said. “We need to be more consistent in all phases of our game. We’ve had some really bright spots, and those are the things that we’re going to be able to highlight to our team. But we have areas that we need to continue to work at to get better. So, this is a work week. This is a week where we look to be better in the details. We’ll take advantage of it that way and then get ourselves ready for South Carolina next week.”