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If Leonard Fournette has a Heisman Trophy-type season, LSU will be awfully good.
But you knew that.
And if Brandon Harris and his receivers can play pitch-and-catch with efficiency, the combination of Fournette and the passing game will be unstoppable.
Tell us something you don’t know, right?
There are obvious keys to LSU’s season, then there are the little things you don’t think about, such as the wild card players who can help make or break the Tigers’ championship home. Here are 11 players, broken up into seven parts, who will be bigger-than-you-think factors in LSU’s championship aspirations.
LT Maea Teuhema
There’s no doubt that Teuhema, who became a starter at guard as a true freshman last year after coming to Baton Rouge as one of the nation’s top-rated offensive line prospects.
But this year, he slides to the all-important left tackle spot and gave mixed results in the spring. We don’t know if Harris is ready to become a good passer or if Fournette is ready for the Heisman run, but we know for sure that if they are on their backside in the backfield, they won’t reach their potential.
And what we don’t know is if Teuhema is ready to be that road-grader for Fournette and that blindside protector for Harris.
NT Davon Godchaux
As LSU shifts from its traditional 4-3 defensive alignment to some version of the 3-4, teams will no doubt be tempted to run right at Godchaux, the rare nose tackle who plays at under 300 pounds.
The plan is for LSU to run a hybrid version of the 3-4 that takes advantage of Godchaux’s quickness, as opposed to the more standard version, where the nose tackle is usually a space-eating behemoth.
But if that plan goes awry and opposing blockers are able to knock Godchaux back, it’ll be difficult for the Tigers to improve their defensive performance compared to last year.
WRs Jazz Ferguson, D.J. Chark and Tyron Johnson
Sure, the passing game’s improvement will ultimately start with Harris, who has a couple of proven targets to throw to in Malachi Dupre and Travin Dural. But the Tigers have lacked a reliable third receiver for a few years.
Ferguson left the spring with the inside track to that role, but watch out for the speedy Chark and Johnson, who came out of high school more highly regarded than the other two.
LBs Duke Riley and Donnie Alexander
In Kendell Beckwith, LSU has a solid building block at linebacker, but otherwise the Tigers are pretty unproven. Riley and Alexander appear to be in a competition to line up next to Beckwith inside.
Both are veterans — Riley a senior and Alexander a junior — who have seen snaps, but not a lot of significant snaps. If they can provide a veteran presence at the position (and if the defensive line holds up), the Tigers will be hard to run against.
Ks Colby Delahoussaye and Connor Culp
With incumbent place kicker Trent Domingue leaving the program after his scholarship was not renewed, LSU has two possible replacements, Delahoussaye, a former starter, and Culp, a highly regarded true freshman.
LSU is still a program built on the running game and defense. That means enough games will be close that the kicking game will be a factor. Delahoussaye is a solid 24-for-29 on field goals in his career, but he is coming off a tragic car accident that killed two passengers, both fellow kickers, at a summer kicking camp.
Not only must he put that tragedy behind him, he’ll also have to get past the injuries sustained in the accident.
Meanwhile, Culp comes to LSU one of the highest-rated kickers in the country last year out of Phoenix.
Field goals will likely be a factor for LSU. Will one of these two be ready to step up and make them?
P Josh Growden
The redshirt freshman is set to be LSU’s third straight Australian punter. On a team built on a running game and defense, having a punter who can flip the field on opponents is crucial.
Will Growden be that guy?
FB John David Moore
In LSU’s first five games with Moore acting as Fournette’s lead blocker, the Tigers averaged 346.4 yards per game rushing, and Fournette became the first player in SEC history to rush for more than 200 yards in three straight games.
After Moore was lost for the season to a knee injury against Florida, LSU averaged just 189 yards a game rushing and the Tigers had two games where they didn’t get triple-digit yards rushing.
Moore proved to be a devastating lead blocker, and the impact of his loss was probably greater than people remember. Can he rebound and again be an effective — and healthy — lead blocker?
