2025 LSU Football Position Preview: Quarterbacks

Can LSU claim its third Heisman winner in seven years? Is QB1 for 2026 currently on the roster?

This time a year ago we had a pretty good idea about what LSU had at quarterback, but nothing seriously concrete.

Garrett Nussmeier had the QB1 job locked up heading into fall camp, but AJ Swann was the most experienced quarterback on the roster. The fact of the matter is, outside of one start against Wisconsin in the bowl game, no one could say for certain what “Garrett Nussmeier: Starting QB” was going to look like.

The result? More good than bad! Nuss had a statistically better year one than those has-beens Joe Burrow and Jayden Daniels did, and with the lack of a running game, missing a true deep threat receiver and frustrating play calling, I could argue that Nussmeier was asked to do more in his first year as starter than either of LSU’s Heisman winners.

Joe Burrow blew up year one to year two, won a Heisman, won a national championship and went first overall in the following draft; Jayden Daniels blew up year one to year two, won a Heisman, should have won a national championship, and went second overall in the following draft; it seems pretty logical Nussmeier is in line for that same type of explosion…right?

* At Mississippi State

Garrett Nussmeier heads into 2025 as one of the top quarterbacks in the country, the nation’s leading returning passer, and at the time of this writing is the No. 2 betting favorite for the Heisman (+850 per our sister site DraftKings) and the betting favorite to go first overall in next April’s draft (+380 per FanDuel).

But while individual success is cool, it doesn’t mean the same without the team success behind it. Nussmeier literally had a front row seat to Jayden Daniels’ epic 2023 season be rewarded with a trip to Tampa, so he’d be the first to tell you that a CFP appearance is the goal, not a trip to New York.

Just as you need elite starting pitching to make a run to Omaha, or elite guard play to go deep into March, you need a top-tier quarterback to be playing deep into the college football playoff. LSU’s got that with Nussmeier.

Nuss has an absolute cannon of a right arm. Go back and watch that throw he made against Ole Miss to tie the game and ask yourself how many human beings on this planet can make that throw, because there ain’t many.

He also might be the toughest sumbitch in the country. Remember when it looked like he broke his collarbone against Oklahoma? He was back out there a few plays later and diving headfirst for first downs. That’s the kind of toughness from a quarterback that rallies teammates, and in this era of transferring Nuss toughed out three years on the bench for this opportunity in 2025.

While LSU’s immediate future at quarterback is crystal clear, what happens in 2026 isn’t as obvious. Thanks to Michigan throwing a historically massive bag at Bryce Underwood, LSU wasn’t able to add a quarterback to its 2025 recruiting class, and they’re behind the 8-ball with getting one in the 2026 class.

But just as LSU went into the portal to add Joe Burrow and Jayden Daniels, the Tigers went into the portal in December and might have found its quarterback of the future: Michael Van Buren. Because of a season-ending injury to Blake Shapen, Van Buren got thrust into the fire as a freshman at Mississippi State and started eight games for the Bulldogs.

Van Buren had practically nothing to work with and still finished with 1800 passing yards and accounted for 16 total touchdowns versus seven interceptions while completing 55 percent of his passes. He popped a couple of times last season, he threw for 306 yards and three touchdowns against Georgia, a season-high 309 yards against Arkansas and 280 in last season’s Egg Bowl.

The combination of Nussmeier and Van Buren might give LSU the best quarterback room in the country, and I’d be willing to bet a lot of teams would love to have its QB2 be as experienced as Van Buren is.

LSU’s quarterback room clearly has tiers: Nussmeier is in his own category, while Van Buren is the clear-cut QB2; but beyond those two, LSU has a couple of projects: Colin Hurley and Ju’Juan Johnson. Hurley was 16 when he arrived on campus and now he enters his second year with the program. Hurley was in a nasty single-vehicle car accident in January, but rejoined the team in April. He’s still so young so it’s damn near impossible to tell what his future holds, but he’s got a really impressive arm so maybe he could push Van Buren for the starting job in 2026.

Johnson, on the other hand, might be the biggest project on the roster. Johnson was recruited to LSU as a defensive back, but switched over to offense early on last season, took snaps at running back, and is now playing quarterback. Sure! His skillset is the opposite of Nussmeier’s and probably more in line with the quarterbacks that Brian Kelly has had success with over the course of his coaching career. Whether Johnson is a quarterback or just a gadget player remains to be seen.