LSU’s running game struggled in Week 1 with John Emery. Now what?

LSU running back John Emery II’s season is over.

The 6th-year graduate student led the team in rushing in the opener before tearing an ACL in practice Tuesday.

Those events in a span of less than 48 hours are consistent with Emery’s star-crossed career – great promise shadowed by great disappointment.

The Tigers leaned on Emery more than any other running back in the 27-20 loss to USC last Sunday night in Las Vegas and he responded with team-highs of 10 carries and 61 yards, though 1 run of 39 yards skewed an otherwise unimpressive performance by Emery individually and the run game as a whole (25 rushes for 113 yards).

Emery’s absence leaves LSU with a thinner stable of running backs than coach Brian Kelly would prefer. The group now will be led by Josh Williams, a former walk-on who joined Emery as the only remaining players from the Tigers’ 2019 national-championship team, sophomore Kaleb Jackson and highly touted freshman Caden Durham — the No. 6-ranked running back in the 2024 class.

Even though Emery had been in the program for 5 seasons before the start of this one, his career stats were suggestive of merely 1 good, not even great, season. Prior to Sunday he had played in 37 games with just 5 starts. He had 1,062 rushing yards, 14 rushing touchdowns, 36 receptions, 318 receiving yards and 2 touchdown catches.

Williams’ career stats are similar to Emery’s – 48 games, 11 starts, 206 rushes, 1,045 rushing yards, 11 rushing touchdowns, 40 catches, 337 receiving yards, 1 receiving touchdown. Last season Jackson rushed 31 times for 165 yards and 4 touchdowns.

Redshirt freshman Trey Holly, the all-time rushing leader in Louisiana high-school history, could join the mix, but he’s suspended while awaiting a September court date after pleading not guilty to one felony charge of illegal use of a weapon.

LSU planned to increase its reliance on the running backs this season. That’s unlikely to change because of Emery’s injury, but doing so successfully becomes more challenging in his absence.

The Tigers’ leading rusher each of the past 2 seasons was quarterback Jayden Daniels, and Garrett Nussmeier isn’t nearly the running threat that Daniels was, so the running backs will have to take on a bigger workload.

Kelly hopes to take advantage of a veteran, talented offensive line to enable the running backs to thrive, though the first sample didn’t look exactly as he had envisioned.

The running game can still be successful, but the line must perform better and the remaining backs must be able to absorb the workload that Emery would have had.

Emery had the only explosive running play in the opener and at his Tuesday news conference Kelly identified 3rd-and-short situations as an area where the offense must improve in terms of creative play-calling by the coaches and execution by the players.

And that’s an area where the absence of Emery might be most significant because of his versatility. The former 5-star recruit from Destrehan (La.) High School could do everything that is asked of a running back — including blocking in pass protection.

His presence on the field in any given situation wouldn’t tip off the defense to what LSU was most likely to run. But just as other seasons were disrupted by health or academic issues, this one ended early, too.

Presumably Emery, who received his degree in interdisciplinary studies in May, could apply to the NCAA for yet another season of eligibility. But that’s a down-the-road consideration and his coaches and teammates have to move forward for the rest of this season without a player they were counting to be a key contributor.

There’s good news and bad news in this development for the Tigers. The bad news is obvious, and the good news, relatively and ironically speaking, is that the program has a lot of experience at adjusting to getting less than they had hoped for out of him.

Les East

Les East is a New Orleans-based football writer who covers LSU for SaturdayDownSouth.com. Follow him on Twitter @Les_East.