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Unless we have some surprises, 2016 will not be the year of the quarterback in the SEC.
With players like Dak Prescott and Brandon Allen departed for the NFL, and with Alabama (again) breaking in a new starter, there’s a lack of signature signal-callers in the league.
With that in mind, this is a year where a couple of the best quarterbacks LSU will face won’t be in conference play or, for that matter, even from the Power 5 conferences.
So, if you want to see LSU play top-flight quarterbacks this year, maybe this is the season you don’t put your tickets to the rent-a-wins on Craigslist.
Here are the top four quarterbacks LSU will play, based on a mix of career résumé and perceived ability:
Chad Kelly
Sure, the SEC is lacking in star power at the position, but a huge exception is in Oxford, where the once troubled Kelly has reinvented himself as the SEC’s best quarterback.
Kelly threw for 4,042 yards and 31 touchdowns, and rushed for 500 yards and 10 touchdowns in his first season with the Rebels. Those are the kind of numbers one can carry a team with, and Jim Kelly’s nephew may have to, considering the star power Ole Miss lost to the NFL with Laquon Treadwell, Laremy Tunsil and Robert Nkemdiche all departed.
The Rebels visit Baton Rouge on Oct. 22, and look for Kelly to be called on to try to do it all in an effort to pull off an upset.
Nick Mullens
When LSU scheduled Southern Miss a few years back, it probably could not have predicted the Golden Eagles’ resurgence that they experienced last year, going 9-5 after winning just four games the previous four years.
Mullens, who passed for 4,476 yards and 38 touchdowns, was a big reason for the surprising turnaround and now USM has more than just a guaranteed check to look forward to when the Eagles come to Baton Rouge on Oct. 15, the week before Kelly and the Rebels visit.
Southern Miss is a Conference USA favorite and while Mullens, like Kelly, lost many of his best weapons from last year’s team, many think USM is in position to contend for a major bowl. That should make the LSU game a little more interesting than the standard non-conference roll-over.
Eli Jenkins
Before you scoff at the notion of an FCS quarterback being a threat to LSU, remember North Dakota State’s Carson Wentz went No. 2 overall in the NFL Draft this spring.
Jenkins’ Jacksonville State Gamecocks lost to Wentz and NDSU in the FCS national championship game and Jenkins enters his senior year with 8,357 total yards in his career, making him quite possibly the second-best dual-threat quarterback LSU will play behind Kelly.
Jenkins passed for 2,788 yards and 21 touchdowns last year and added 1,161 rushing yards and 15 more scores. The redshirt senior has the talent to keep an otherwise overmatched JSU team competitive when the Gamecocks visit Baton Rouge on Sept. 10, much the same way the Gamecocks pushed Auburn in 2015.
Trevor Knight
Sure Knight lost his starting job at Oklahoma after throwing just 14 touchdown passes to 12 interceptions in 2014. Sure, he’s only starting at Texas A&M because the Aggies had just suffered an incredibly mass exodus of high-end QB talent.
But look at it this way: The guy Knight lost his OU starting job to, Baker Mayfield, has turned out to be one of the best quarterbacks in college football. And also consider that Knight has among his successes a 348-yard passing game with 4 touchdowns against Alabama in the Sugar Bowl at the end of the 2013 season.
So what if Knight is an OU discard? In a year where much of the SEC is either looking for a new starter at QB or deciding whether to go in different directions after the returning starter failed to impress, Knight’s record looks pretty good in comparison.
By the time A&M hosts LSU on Nov. 24, he may also have the reps that he needs with his new team to really get after the Tigers defense.
