Scooter Hobbs column: Different kind of QB quandary

Published 1:50 pm Sunday, April 10, 2022

Some of us are old enough to remember an LSU team when the quarterback cupboard was so bare that the Tigers had to scrounge around the wide receivers room to find someone to take a snap.

It was called the Texas Bowl, a failed experiment in which a proud program attempted to send a JV team to a nationally televised disaster.

It only seems longer ago than three months due to the riches now available in that quarterback room as the Tigers hit the midway point of their first spring under new coach Brian Kelly, who’s being touted as LSU’s experiment with adult leadership.

But in a way Kelly’s mission is no different than most springs under most coaches at LSU. He has a quarterback — let’s just call it a “situation” — to sort out. And it’s somewhat of his own doing.

Compared to the Tigers’ last game, it looks like an embarrassment of riches.

You’ve got Myles Brennan, who has all the tools, not to mention uncommon patience, for what surely is his last season.

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The future is there with two of the most highly touted recent recruits LSU has had at the position in recent years — Garrett Nussmieier and Walker Howard.

They will likely intern and wait their turn for a year

Some of us real codgers may be old enough to remember when Brennan, the scion of the famed New Orleans restaurant family, was on a five-meal-a-day diet, heavy on the starches, trying desperately to put weight on his 6-foot-4, but mere 190-pound frame.

Since then, now on his third LSU head coach, Brennan has backed up Danny Etling before a Heisman Trophy winner showed up (with a sore back), then lost the starting job to an abdominal injury that still baffles the medical community, took an ill-advised fishing trip which eventually landed him back in surgery and into the NCAA transfer portal, from whence he did a rare U-turn and ended up right back in LSU’s lap (apparently without injury) for a yet a sixth season.

If that sentence was a load to plow through, imagine living it. No one questions his perseverance.

And he has sworn off flip-flops, the guilty shoe wear in that fishing mishap that broke his non-throwing arm and shelved him for last season.

But Brennan, who may be drawing Social Security by the time he’s done with LSU, no doubt never dreamed of a season he’d one day eat himself up to 235 pounds and then find himself in yet another quarterback battle with a 185-pound water bug. He probably catches fish, or used to, as big as Jayden Daniels.

Yet shortly after Davis coaxed Brennan back home, the new coach also dipped into the portal to get the flashy — but often erratic — Daniels to transfer in after three years starting at Arizona State.

If Brennan felt betrayed, he’s had the proper decorum not to mention it.

But it’s game on for the starting job.

It shouldn’t be a case of splitting hairs — they are diametrically opposed quarterbacks. It will likely come down to what LSU (Kelly) wants at the position.

Brennan has the power arm. No one questions it. And he got better in each of the mere three starts he made before pulling some unexplainable something or another in his abdomen in 2020.

Daniels is electrifying with his feet, with wide receiver speed and agility at the position, but with the reputation of being hit-and-miss with his arm. He’s also had a penchant for giving up on plays too soon and improvising accordingly.

After everything Brennan has been through and the loyalty and patience he’s shown, you could say he deserves the starting job.

But you’d be wrong. This isn’t Little League. As good of a feel-good story as it would make, this is big-boy SEC football and Kelly’s job, all sentiment aside, is to give LSU its best chance of winning.

I have a hunch that will be Brennan anyway. Certainly the safer choice. And by all accounts he’s had the better of it early in the spring.

On the other hand, Daniels is getting accustomed to his new digs and isn’t as familiar with the receivers yet. He also seems like too good of a weapon to waste.

Well …

Nobody wants to hear the phrase “two-quarterback system.”

But if they need to find something for Daniels to do, why not experiment with a compromise?

Design some stuff in which he can play the TH position — Taysom Hill.

Nobody ever accused the Saints of a two-quarterback system.

Just a thought.

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