The best things about LSU in 2025 ...Middle East

By now, we all know the negatives of LSU’s 2024 season. It marked Brian Kelly‘s first season without 10 wins since 2016. LSU went from having a second-half lead at Texas A&M with a clear path to Atlanta as a top-10 team to missing out on the Playoff.

But that’s in the past. The present for LSU is full of promise after Garrett Nussmeier announced he was returning for his senior season, and Kelly began a transfer portal haul that ended the cycle as the No. 1 class. The Tigers are only ranked No. 9 in the preseason national title odds at +1800, but there’s a growing feeling out of Baton Rouge that Kelly’s got a “Playoff-or-bust” team with all sorts of preseason expectations.

Why? Well, there’s a lot to like with the 2025 version of LSU.

There’s no better time to be positive than talkin’ season. That’s what I always say. Each of the next 16 days, we’ll look at the best things about each SEC team. This daily series will align with the SEC Network Takeover, which runs from Saturday, June 28 until July 13, AKA just before talkin’ season officially kicks off at SEC Media Days on July 14.

Mark your calendars! ?️The @SECNetwork Takeover returns June 28-July 13Each of the 16 @SEC schools will takeover the network for a day of school-centric programming with 24 hours of the year's best momentsMore on #SECNTakeover ➡️ t.co/LJHK4ml6wk pic.twitter.com/WScfaJo7Tp

For those keeping track at home, that’s alphabetical order.

So far, here are the teams that we’ve done:

Today, we’ll continue with the best things about LSU in 2025:

Best offensive player: Garrett Nussmeier, QB

If I’m betting on one guy to pick a defense apart for 60 minutes, give me Nussmeier. Period. He worked through his midseason struggles — something that’s more common than we realize for a Year 1 starter — and finished the season on a much higher note. Not only did Nussmeier finish as a 4,000-yard passer, but he also responded to that 3-game losing streak with an average of 307 yards and a 7-1 TD-INT ratio for an LSU offense that averaged 35 points in a 3-0 finish. He’s a pocket passer who only took sacks on 9.8% of the times that he was pressured (best rate among SEC QBs with min. 50 attempts), and he completed 65.2% of his passes when pressured.

Nussmeier showed that he could make every throw, yet he can improve on the deep ball after he had a 39.5% adjusted completion percentage on throws 20 yards beyond the line of scrimmage (PFF also had him tied for 5th with 25 Big-Time Throws in those spots). The addition of Nic Anderson, who averaged 20 yards per catch in his lone full season at Oklahoma, will help there, as will another full offseason in that offense. The most encouraging Nussmeier development was that after he entered the season with the “gunslinger” moniker, he looked like someone who was comfortable making the smart reads and not always looking for the home-run play.

Does that mean LSU will have its 3rd Heisman Trophy winner in the last 7 seasons? Of course not, but it does suggest that we haven’t seen the best from Nussmeier yet.

Best defensive player: Whit Weeks, LB

This is assuming that Weeks is able to make a full return from the broken fibula that he suffered in the bowl game, but as plenty of SEC offenses learned last year, betting against Weeks is foolish. After Harold Perkins suffered his season-ending injury against UCLA, Weeks was a revelation for LSU. He was No. 2 in the SEC with 125 tackles, and he added 10 tackles for loss, 6 quarterback hurries, 3.5 sacks, 2 forced fumbles and an interception. Weeks was everywhere. He had 36 run stops (No. 3 among SEC linebackers) and he added 25 pressures, which was No. 2 among SEC linebackers behind first-round NFL Draft pick Jalon Walker.

Weeks became the heart and soul of Blake Baker’s defense in Year 1. Perhaps he wasn’t the face of some top-10 unit, but LSU was staring at disaster if Weeks didn’t step up and become the player that he was in 2024. You could argue it was LSU’s best defensive effort by any player in the 2020s (2020 Eli Ricks was also pretty darn good). With Weeks now set to return to his linebacker role alongside Perkins at STAR, the question will be if they can thrive alongside one another. If they can, LSU will have 2 stars in the middle of its defense.

Best freshman: DJ Pickett, CB

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but a freshman corner at LSU is getting tons of buzz. Shocking, I know. Pickett is the guy who could step onto the field and immediately make an impact. Why? The former 5-star recruit is 6-4. Yeah, 6-4 as a freshman corner who ran a 10.7 in the 100-meter dash … that’ll play in the SEC. Pickett can be that 3rd or 4th corner who gets reps, and perhaps allows Virginia Tech transfer Mansoor Delane to kick inside later in the season. Time will tell if that’s the case. What we know is that Baker praised him in spring ball for making significant strides in his first few months.

"When you look at DJ Pickett from the first three bowl practices to now he's a different animal"#LSU Defensive Coordinator Blake Baker with high praise for DJ Pickett. Baker says the true freshman corner has showcased his work ethic, humility, and is also training using VR. pic.twitter.com/tuwuDwecmp

Pickett is the headliner in that 2025 class, but don’t sleep on a local kid like tailback Harlem Berry making an impact and winning this title by season’s end. He was also with Pickett during bowl practices, and given how much Kelly has preferred a backfield committee, it wouldn’t be stunning to see him steal some work from Caden Durham.

Picking Pickett or Berry to emerge here is the obvious choice, but it’ll also prove to be the right choice.

Best game: Week 1, LSU vs. Clemson

Wait, it’s all downhill for LSU after Week 1? Hasn’t recent history told us that LSU’s seasons only get better after Week 1? Yes and yes.

The Battle for Death Valley will be must-see TV to open the season, much like the 5 previous LSU season-openers, none of which ended in favor of the Bayou Bengals. You’ve got perhaps the top 2 returning quarterbacks in all of college football, and it’s the 2 coaches who get clowned on the most when they lose in Kelly and Dabo Swinney. The matchup sells itself.

It might not have the same sort of Playoff implications that it had in the 4-team Playoff era, but this is still a monumental game for the ACC-SEC conversation come Playoff time. It hurt the ACC last year that Clemson won the conference and it finished with an 0-3 record vs. SEC competition. Clemson and LSU both have (different) losing streaks at stake and yet, they could be playing in a battle of top-7 teams with preseason Heisman favorites at quarterback.

What an awesome way to kick off 2025.

Best reason for improvement: The portal urgency

After Nussmeier announced that he was coming back to school and Bryce Underwood flipped to Michigan, LSU went on a portal tear unlike anything we’ve seen in Baton Rouge since that became a thing. In addition to adding the aforementioned Anderson, the Tigers pounced on Kentucky dynamo Barion Brown, Florida State edge Patrick Payton, Florida edge Jack Pyburn, Delane and several others to earn the top portal class.

There’s clearly been alignment behind the scenes on the importance of taking that next step in Year 4 of the Kelly era. After all, LSU has never had a 21st century coach who finished Year 4 without a national title. Does that matter? It matters more for how Kelly is perceived than whether he’ll got north of $50 million to not work. This sense of urgency in Baton Rouge has created a “no excuses” 2025. If LSU can’t get to the Playoff and establish itself as a true national title contender, it’ll be fair to wonder if that’ll ever happen under Kelly.

Fortunately for him, there’s a whole lot to like about his 2025 squad.

The best things about LSU in 2025 Saturday Down South.

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