2020 LSU Football Position Breakdown Part 1: Quarterbacks
Ed Orgeron and the rest of the Tiger coaching staff have tucked the national championship win in the back of their minds and are now full steam ahead in preparing for the 2020 season.
There will be plenty of turnover with the coaching staff and roster as nine veteran starters decided to chase their NFL dreams a year early. Orgeron will have to find replacements for coordinators Joe Brady and Dave Aranda as well.
Over the next week we'll be breaking down each position group as the final signing period for the 2020 season approaches. Pretty much every position group will have new faces that will be asked to step up, some more than others, so let's get to it.
Quarterbacks
Projected Starter: Myles Brennan (junior)
This will finally be the year LSU gets to see what Brennan is made of, which has been three years in the making for the QB. When he stepped foot on LSU's campus in 2017, Brennan was viewed as a guy stocked full of potential but who needed to add on some weight to take the pounding of an SEC schedule.
At just around 185 pounds his freshman season, Brennan has spent the last few years trying to add on weight.
“The biggest thing was just forcing the food into my body even though I didn’t want it,” Brennan said in March 2019. “Just constantly throwing it in there, just paying attention to the calories I was taking in. I would eat 4,000-5,000 calories a day; I’m burning 2,000-3,000 a day at practice."
The soon-to-be junior is now listed at 207 pounds and after spending one year behind Danny Etling and two years behind Joe Burrow, he's ready to do some eating on the field. After losing the job to Burrow in the fall of 2018, it would've been very easy for Brennan to cut his losses and transfer.
Instead, Brennan decided to ride the ship and learn everything he could from Burrow, offensive coordinator Steve Ensminger and Brady.
Now it's his time to shine. Over his three-year career, Brennan has completed 42-of-70 passes for 600 yards, two touchdowns and three interceptions in 17 appearances. He'll likely have to fend off Peter Parrish as well as incoming freshmen TJ Finley and Max Johnson, but Brennan will be given every chance to win the job being the most experienced quarterback in the room.
Following an act like Burrow's historic 2019 season will certainly have its ups and downs, but it doesn't sound like confidence will be an issue for Brennan.
"I’m just going to worry about me and this team. I’ll make sure we get back to here," Brennan said moments after the championship win.
"It's Myles Brennan time and he's gotta step up," Orgeron told "Off the Bench" Tuesday morning. "All of the pieces are in place, there's a lot of people that want to come to LSU, recruiting's going great and I'm excited about it."
A Look at the Depth Chart: Peter Parrish (freshman), Max Johnson (freshman), TJ Finley (freshman)
The quarterback room will be a little more crowded in 2020 as LSU will have four scholarship quarterbacks on its roster next season. Parrish is the only other scholarship quarterback that was on the roster in 2019 and will likely start out taking reps with the second team.
Parrish is a bit of a wild card mainly because not much is known about him other than the fact that he's a dual-threat quarterback that spent his first year learning the LSU system. If LSU continues to run the spread next year, which makes obvious sense, Parrish will need to prove he can be accurate with the ball in the pocket.
The two freshmen, Johnson and Finley, are the most intriguing because they're the new kids on the block and both are full of potential. Finley, a Ponchatoula native, enrolled with LSU before the Peach Bowl and started practicing with the team immediately.
With the media able to view practice during that time, at first glance, Finley's 6-foot-6, 257 pound frame could be mistaken for a linebacker. But he has an absolute cannon of an arm and it will be interesting to see how much of the offense he can pick up between now and spring camp.
The other scholarship quarterback in the room is the lefty four-star freshman Johnson, a pro-style guy that fits the LSU offensive scheme perfectly. Johnson threw for 2,143 yards and 30 touchdowns as a senior at Oconee County High School in Watkinsville, Georgia.
Like Finley, Johnson will need to pick up the offense quickly if he seriously wants to contend for the starting job.
While it hasn't happened of yet, you also can't rule out a last minute transfer at the quarterback position to add a wrinkle to the depth chart. Burrow, who became the most decorated passer in this program's history, didn't transfer to LSU until May 2018.
At the end of the day, Brennan just seems like the perfect fit at quarterback next year, especially considering the offense LSU will continue to run and the inexperience of the other options.
