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BATON ROUGE, La. — When Danny Etling made his first appearance in an LSU uniform in Saturday’s 34-13 win over Jacksonville State, running back Derrius Guice noticed something from the Purdue transfer.
“I knew he was nervous,” Guice said. “So I told him to calm down, let the game come to you. We have your back.”
And, in a pivotal second quarter, Etling delivered, throwing for 100 yards and a touchdown to spark the Tigers’ win and perhaps earn his first start Saturday when No. 20 LSU opens SEC play against Mississippi State at Tiger Stadium.
That might have been more of a decisive conclusion if he continued his good play in the second half of the Jacksonville State game. He didn’t complete a pass in the second half, and LSU’s offense went into neutral the way it did under first-stringer Brandon Harris, who appears to have lost the starting job, at least for now.
On Monday, head coach Les Miles refused to name a starter, saying instead that both candidates should be ready to play. He said he would make no public comment on who the starter will be until he addresses the issue with his team.
“Now, we’ll need both guys to play in every game,” he said. “We’re not turning our back in any way on competition in that position.”
If LSU indeed plays both quarterbacks on Saturday, they will join this year’s trend in the SEC to have unsettled quarterback situations, albeit late and after most of the other teams that have been playing multiple quarterbacks seem to have found their guy, at least for now.
For example, LSU’s opponent this week played both Nick Fitzgerald and Damian Williams in the season-opening loss to South Alabama, but Bulldogs coach Dan Mullen appears to have settled in on Fitzgerald as the starter after he rushed for 195 yards (a school record for a quarterback) and passed for 178 more in a win over South Carolina last week.
At Alabama, true freshman Jalen Hurts appears to have won a competition with Blake Barnett after both played in each of the first two games, and Hurts was better. At Auburn, the Tigers played three quarterbacks in the season-opening loss to Florida State but went with Sean White for the majority of the snaps against Arkansas State.
Others remain more unsettled. Georgia has had a battle between freshman Jacob Eason and senior Greyson Lambert with neither clearly pulling away. At South Carolina, freshman Brandon McIlwain and senior Perry Orth, a former walk-on, have both seen significant playing time.
The difference between LSU’s situation and those battles is that the Tigers entered the season seemingly without controversy. In a season where most SEC teams are looking to replace departed signal-callers, Harris started all 12 LSU games last year and was generally considered to be one of the league’s top four quarterbacks coming into the season (after Ole Miss’ Chad Kelly, Tennessee’s Josh Dobbs and Texas A&M’s Trevor Knight, an Oklahoma transfer).
In the spring, Miles played up the competition between Harris and Etling, who could not play last season per NCAA transfer rules. But Harris left spring as the unquestioned starter, and the same was true throughout August camp.
There simply was no quarterback controversy in Baton Rouge.
So consider Harris the first clear starter to have — and this is still an assumption at this point — lost his starting job.
Even as other quarterbacks — think of the impressive Hurts and the fast-rising Austin Allen at Arkansas — begin to emerge as budding stars, Harris has taken a decisive step backwards after going 13-for-25 for 139 yards with a touchdown and 2 interceptions in a game and a quarter this season.
For that, he’s getting support from his teammates.
“You’re going to go against a little adversity. It’s college, it happens,” Guice said. “You just have to keep moving forward. You can’t keep going back because you are going to make the same mistakes. Just be open to learn and improve and learn from people.”
Miles said he hoped that the opportunity to watch from the sideline might be beneficial to Harris.
“We would like to think that a respite from the starting quarterback, and the pressures thereof, might allow him to take a deep breath and step forward and compete,” he said. “We saw it as a positive.”
Meanwhile, it looks like Etling’s moment to again take the wheel. At Purdue, he started 12 games in two seasons and passed for 2,490 yards, 16 touchdowns and 12 interceptions.
After losing the starting job, he opted to transfer and visited LSU, where offensive coordinator Cam Cameron shares his Terre Haute, Ind. roots.
“I knew right from the beginning that he was one of the guys,” said Ethan Pocic, who hosted Etling on the visit. “I knew he’d fit in.”
Etling has built his relationship with his teammates since opting to attend LSU. Players and coaches have talked about how likeable and mature the Indiana native is.
“The only thing I can tell you is that Danny has a nice rapport with his teammates, and I think he’s an asserting guy,” Miles said. “I think he wants to make plays for them. I think everybody rooted for him as he took the field.”
Miles said that when Etling ran the scout team offense last year, he turned the heads of the defensive starters.
“They said this guy can play,” Miles said.
For a quarter Saturday against Jacksonville State, he proved that to be true enough that he’s in yet another SEC quarterback competition.
At best, he has his second chance to start for a Power 5 conference school.
