If you take into account that LSU lost likely/possible starting quarterback Myles Brennan just before the start of preseason camp, the Tigers’ practice sessions have been pretty uneventful.

Nothing shocking seems to be leaking out from behind those hermetically sealed doors.

So far as we know.

And maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

It was a veritable three-ring circus a year ago for the defending national champions, full of newsy days on the latest opt-outs and ongoing uncertainty over when or if the pandemic-affected season would start.

Head coach Ed Orgeron, at the height of his popularity, even had some making up to do with his locker room after a misunderstanding led him to miss a players-led march across campus to protest nationwide racial inequities.

It was a miscommunication, he admitted, that kept him out of the loop on that one … and maybe set the tone for a defense that one hand never seemed to know what the other was doing.

Maybe the 5-5 season that followed should not have been so shocking.

There was another surge of LSU opt-outs as the year went full-blown awry — the 55-17 loss to Alabama probably the low point — leaving the Tigers down the stretch as a shell of even already-depleted team that started the year. Six of the 11 offensive starters at the start of the season were gone as the Tigers prepared to surely mail in the final two games.

That national championship magic of the previous season seemed like a decade gone by. Players seemed to be looking over their shoulder, wondering who’d be gone from week to week.

But Orgeron somehow kept them together. LSU won both games, including the shocking, thrown-shoe upset of Florida and a wild shootout comeback against Ole Miss.

A 5-5 record is hardly the LSU standard, but winning those final two games — with nothing, really, to play for — might bode well for this season.

On a team that had very little chemistry for much of the season, something besides a thrown shoe happened after the low point.

“We stayed with each other and those guys that chose not to opt out and to finish, I’m very proud of them,” Orgeron said after the Ole Miss win ended the season. “Our team became closer … we continued to fight. There were some games where we didn’t play very well, but we came back and we fought, and we finished strong. That’s what I’ll remember about this season.”

He might have added that in those final two games last season every one of the 90 points — and the Tigers needed all of them given the defensive disarray — were scored by freshmen and sophomores. Even the famous Florida thrown shoe came off the foot of freshman tight end Kole Taylor.

Maybe that’s why things have been so quiet this preseason. Re-upping has replaced the opt-out as the decision du jour.

“Sense of normalcy, leadership,” Orgeron said, noting that 18 of 22 starters are back — many taking advantage of the extra year the NCAA granted due to last year’s pseudo season.

As a result, the Tigers have more new assistant coaches with six than the four starters (from the end of the season) that must be replaced. The coaching shakeup was Orgeron’s reaction to last season. The guys back for an extra year are back because they want to be.

“They made a decision to come back,” Orgeron said. “We’ve got a great freshmen class. Coaches who are hungry. It’s completely different than the atmosphere last year. There were a lot of negative outside influences. There was some stuff that we couldn’t control. I think none of that stuff is happening now.”

As a result, the focus can shift to more typical August concerns.

Is it a good thing that Max Johnson was handed the starting quarterback job due to Brennan’s injury? Johnson was one of two true freshmen to start last season. This season’s newcomer, Garrett Nussmeier, lit it up for 225 yards and three touchdowns in the lone scrimmage. Should he get a fair look?

Was it good that the deep and veteran defensive line lived up to the hype in that scrimmage or cause for concern for an offensive line that theoretically should be much better with its array of opt-back-ins?

Will one of the touted freshmen running backs step up and take over for the duo of John Emery and Tyrion Davis-Price, who’ve been inconsistent in their first two seasons? (I wondered if those two would do the same thing to a veteran when they showed up on campus on two years ago, but Clyde Edwards-Helaire would have none of it.)

Meanwhile, players rave about the new coaches, of course, for that’s the way it goes this time of year.

We’ll find out in due time.

But this is the way a normal August camp is supposed to go.

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Scooter Hobbs covers LSU athletics. Email him at scooter.hobbs@americanpress.com