Expectations have been sky-high in Baton Rouge since the moment Lane Kiffin took the job, but you probably know that.
Saturday’s opener against Clemson will be the first real test of whether this LSU team can live up to them.
Four days out from kickoff, one storyline stands out above the rest heading into that showdown airing on national TV: the offense finally looks ready.
It didn’t start that way.
LSU’s offense was sluggish through the early stages of fall camp and the defense won the majority of those reps.
For a group breaking in a new system with a mostly new cast of players that wasn’t a shock.
But that slow start makes the turnaround over the back half of camp stand out even more. It could end up being the exact piece this roster needed to match the hype surrounding Kiffin’s debut season.
Kiffin was blunt about what he wants most from his team Saturday, win or lose in style.
“First off, win, most importantly, no matter what,” Kiffin said. “But then, the style that they play with. Like, when you come to watch, like, that’s an exciting team to watch that plays really good football. Man, they really master situations. They’re really well coached. They have a style about how they play, which I think we’ve done at previous places.”
Why the late jump matters so much
A rocky start to camp is easy to overlook once the results start trending the right direction, and that’s exactly what’s happened with quarterback Sam Leavitt and the rest of the offensive group.
Leavitt struggled early like most of his teammates, but he’s grown more comfortable in Kiffin’s system by the week. The improvement hasn’t gone unnoticed.
Kiffin isn’t one to inflate his evaluations either, which makes his praise carry extra weight.
“I think that Sam has had a great camp, and I’m usually pretty hard on the evals of anyone,” Kiffin said. “So I can’t imagine it going much better for him. Now we gotta make more plays around him, protect better, be more consistent, but he’s been great.”
The run game has followed a similar arc and that’s arguably the bigger storyline.
LSU sat at the bottom of the SEC in yards on the ground last year, so any real jump there changes what this offense is capable of becoming.
Kiffin has watched that improvement build day by day.
“The running game has looked really good, and the running backs have really improved,” Kiffin said. “It’s really kinda exciting to watch now. It doesn’t mean anything if we don’t go do it Saturday. But the way that it’s progressed, knowing that, like, almost nobody was here from this offense and how it looked at the beginning of spring to how it looks now is exciting to see it all start to work together.”
The defense was never the concern
Blake Baker’s defense hasn’t needed a turnaround because it’s been solid from the jump.
That side returns several key starters and added transfers who should contribute right away, and it’s carried a much higher bar than the offense all spring and fall.
The one lingering question sits at defensive tackle, where LSU still has bodies competing for reps.
Kiffin expects that group to rotate against Clemson rather than settle on a clear top group.
“D-tackle, still a lot of guys doing good things in there – some old, some young – and so we’ll rotate in there, but I would say outside of that, things have started to settle down,” Kiffin said.
A finished product still has to show up
LSU has put in months of work building toward this opener, from spring practices through fall camp and a scrimmage last weekend built to give the team a taste of real game conditions.
None of that guarantees anything once the lights come on.
But if the offense carries its late-camp progress into Tiger Stadium, LSU won’t just be chasing the hype around Kiffin’s arrival.
It’ll have the missing piece needed to actually meet it.
