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The area, red zone touchdowns, we struggled the most in last year when only ensminger was calling plays .

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Brady’s impact on LSU has been profound. The former assistant to an assistant has proven to be as much of a revelation for this team as Burrow. The 30-year-old is soft-spoken and polite and gives off every bit of the wunderkind vibe that folks on the outside suspect. His handwriting is so neat, so perfect, that it’d make the folks who draw up chalkboard menus for those ritzy cafes swoon. On gamedays, he wears slick suits with goofy socks to go with Air Jordan 11 Concords and big headphones, listening to the same hip-hop music that his players listen to. He has been humble and deferential to Ensminger at every turn. This is actually LSU’s offense, not one guy’s or another’s. Ensminger is the primary play-caller. Brady handles a lot of Red Zones and third downs.

On Friday, the day before the championship’s media day, word gets out that new Carolina Panthers head coach Matt Rhule has an interest in hiring Brady as his offensive coordinator. Brady addresses those questions as deftly as he can — “I hope I’m a Tiger as long as they want me at LSU.”

Privately, his colleagues are convinced this will be his last game at LSU. “Joe loves the NFL and wants to be an NFL coach,” says one of his colleagues. “His stock is never gonna be hotter than it is right now.” Brady has already agreed to a deal with LSU for about four times what he had been making, but the deal gave him the flexibility if the NFL came calling. The NFL coaching life is more in line with Brady’s wiring. It’s all football, as opposed to the drag that college recruiting can be. Like the times when some kid wants to take an unofficial visit in the summer because he has a baseball tournament in the area so you drop whatever you’re doing to come in and meet him.

Brady, though, is a natural at recruiting. “He’s not just a good recruiter,” Orgeron had told me a few weeks earlier. “He’s excellent. You should see his reports. He’ll get on a plane and he’ll write me a report and it’s like he’s Todd McShay or somebody. Unbelievable.”

Maybe the biggest eye-opener of all from being around Brady and this team is his rapport with the receivers. This had been an underachieving, underwhelming bunch until he showed up and help turn it into the top group in college football. Chase blossomed into being a Biletnikoff winner. Justin Jefferson, the former two-star recruit so skinny when he arrived teammates thought he was a walk-on, might leave as an NFL first-round pick.

At team meals when most of the coaches sit with each other around four round tables, Brady is usually found on the other side of the room, his closed-crop red hair standing out among the receiver crew. At the final big team meeting the night before the game where Orgeron addresses his players, the rest of the assistants are in chairs in the back of the room. Brady is in the second row next to Chase, with Jefferson’s arm around his neck, for most of the meeting. It feels as much like big brother-little brother as it does coach-to-player.

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