So. Many. Options.
It’s funny, heading into this 2025 season the LSU passing game seems like it’s full of contradictions.
- Garrett Nussmeier’s the leading returning passer in America!….except he lost four of his top five receivers from last year.
- The bulk of LSU’s production is gone!…except they went into the portal and upgraded. Which brings me to my last contradiction…
- LSU brought in a ton of talent out of the portal and they’re S T A C K E D at receiver and tight end!!!…except now Joe Sloan and Cortez Hankton need to figure out how to divvy up one ball among all this talent. It’s certainly a good problem to have, of course, but it will be something that needs to be figured out.
*At Florida State
**At Oklahoma
***At Kentucky
On Wednesday, the day fall camp officially opened for LSU, Brian Kelly told reporters that the receiver room is “as deep as I’ve ever had” and believes “we have eight SEC, high-caliber receivers.”
He’s probably right on both counts, but I wonder how much that depth shrinks as the season progresses. Just as a basketball team will shorten its bench come playoff time, or a baseball team’s bullpen shrinks in the postseason, I’m not sure come November (or, hopefully, December into January) LSU will be consistently utilizing eight different wide receivers. Call it a football team’s version of natural selection, but there’s going to come a point where certain guy(s) simply cannot come off the field. We just have no way of knowing who separates themselves until the games get started.
For the sake of this argument, let’s actually work backwards and talk about the players least likely to contribute first. With all due respect to the underclassmen, I highly doubt the two redshirt freshmen, Jelani Watkins and Kylan Billiot, and the two incoming freshmen, TaRon Francis and Phillip Wright, factor much into LSU’s season. They’ll certainly see playing time in the buy-games against Tech, Southeastern, and Western Kentucky, but unless one of those youngsters is the second coming of Justin Jefferson, I really doubt Garrett Nussmeier will look their way on a 3rd and 7 in Tuscaloosa. Being the young depth waiting in the wings isn’t the worst thing in the world either. Look again at the table: there’s six receivers on this roster that will be draft-eligible at season’s end. Jobs will be available for youngsters like Francs and Watkins…they just won’t open up until 2026.
If we’re shrinking the receiver rotation down some more, after all we still have tight ends and running backs to get involved, I would imagine fellow redshirt freshman Kyle Parker sees his playing time shrink as the season progresses. Parker made a really impressive catch in the UCLA game, but his freshman season was cut short by a torn tricep tendon. Parker flashed last season, remember he was playing the Chris Hilton position against USC, and he’ll likely be heavily involved down the road, but this logjam of talent might keep Parker on the outside looking in.
So now we have a two-deep for three wide receiver spots, and it’s an equal mix of incoming transfers and guys who were here last season. We have our three returners: Zavion Thomas, Aaron Anderson, and Chris Hilton, and we have three new faces: Destyn Hill (Florida State), Nic Anderson (Oklahoma), and Barion Brown (Kentucky).
After being virtually nonexistent in 2023, Aaron Anderson really impressed in 2024, ranking top-10 in both receptions (61, 3rd), and yards (884, 7th). Anderson isn’t the stereotypical small but fast receiver; despite his 5’8” stature, he’s not scared to go across the middle. He’s as tough as they come, and he’ll likely be Nussmeier’s favorite target in the early season while he builds chemistry with the other receivers.
While Aaron Anderson is the Tigers’ leading receiver from last season, I’m willing to bet that it’s the other Anderson, Nic, who ends up being LSU’s No. 1 guy in 2025. A fourth-year junior, Nic Anderson erupted onto the scene in 2023 with Oklahoma, catching 10 touchdowns at an absurd rate of 25.7 yards per catch. Anderson was poised to build upon that success in 2024 and enter last season’s draft, but a “significant tear” to his quad kept him on the sidelines for all but a handful of plays in Oklahoma’s game against Tennessee. Despite the tear, Anderson was viewed as a top-10 portal entry, and he’s one of LSU’s prized additions.
Just as I said in the running back preview that Kaleb Jackson will have a role this season because, if nothing else, he’s physically different than LSU’s other backs, that same logic applies to Nic Anderson. Standing at 6’4”, Anderson is by far and away LSU’s tallest wide receiver. He’s seven inches taller than Aaron Anderson, and four inches taller than Chris Hilton. At the absolute bare minimum, Anderson should be a go-to red zone target just on size alone, but I suspect he’s in line for that breakout season that he should have had last fall.
Speaking of guys who shoulda had their breakout last fall, for one final time y’all say it with me: is this the year Chris Hilton stays healthy? We’ve been asking ourselves this question for the better part of the last five summers and the answer has always been no.
Hilton isn’t the greatest receiver LSU’s ever had, but after last fall he might have a claim as the most transformative one. Simply put, the LSU offense just didn’t function the same without him last season, but when he healed up and got his sea legs under him, he changed the Tiger offense in the Oklahoma game and Texas Bowl. There’s really nothing new to say after all these years: stay healthy and stop jumping for every ball thrown your way.
I am very curious to see how LSU divvies up the reps between Zavion Thomas and Barion Brown. Brown, a senior, wouldn’t have left Kentucky to just be a kick returner and maybe a No. 4 option out wide; and by the same logic, Thomas, another senior, probably wouldn’t have stayed at LSU if he was just going to be a kick returner and maybe a No. 4 option out wide. Between the two of them, they have nearly 5,500 total all-purpose yards and will probably give LSU the best returner tandem in the country. But how much will any of them factor into the receiver rotation, especially once as top-heavy as LSU’s?
The single biggest question mark in this wide receiver room might be “what do you have in Destyn Hill?” Hill has had one of the weirder careers anyone has had. He was originally a top-100 overall prospect in the class of 2021, and Louisiana’s No. 7 overall prospect. Hill was thought of as the 4th best receiver that year behind some guys you’ve probably heard of: Chris Hilton, Brian Thomas Jr., and Malik Nabers.
But while Thomas and Nabers are entering their second year in the NFL and Hilton is a fifth-year senior, Hill is entering his redshirt sophomore year. Hill signed with Florida State in 2021, but for reasons that either can’t (or won’t) be explained he didn’t arrive on campus until the 2023 season. His first career appearance was the LSU-Florida State game in Orlando, and he saw the field as a 21-year-old freshman.
Anyway, Hill played in 10 games during that 2023 season and made two starts all while catching six passes for 87 yards. He missed all of 2024 after tearing his ACL in the preseason. So, what do you have in Destyn Hill? Well…who knows? The recruiting services said he’s a good route runner and with that 6’1” frame, and he’s got the speed to blow past people. Plus, he was productive for Karr and if you can shine at a program like Karr, you can probably play.