ESPN's Bill Connelly Explains Why Sam Leavitt, LSU Can Be Trusted Down The Stretch

ESPN's Bill Connelly recently broke down which teams and players in college football can be trusted heading into the final stretch of the regular season, and LSU quarterback Sam Leavitt made his list.

Connelly praised Leavitt's recent improvement after a rocky start to the season, highlighting his impressive performances in back-to-back wins over Mississippi State and Auburn.

He also noted that LSU has climbed to No. 4 in his SP+ rankings and emerged as the second favorite to win the SEC, with Leavitt's improved play being a major reason for the Tigers' rise.

Here's what Connelly had to say about Leavitt and LSU:

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Trustworthy: Sam Leavitt
Sam Leavitt was a wild man to start the season. He scrambled constantly early in the season and topped at least 50 non-sack rushing yards in each of LSU's first three games, but he also threw five interceptions in those games and went just 16-for-27 for 158 yards in a loss to Ole Miss. He threw a pick in each of the next three games that followed, and he took three sacks in the Tigers' 35-34 loss to Kentucky. Despite solid scoring averages, it was hard to trust either him, his offensive line or the LSU offense as a whole.

In his past two games, however, Leavitt has been almost mistake-free. In wins by a combined 69-17 over Mississippi State and Auburn, he has completed 63 of 83 passes (76%) for 676 yards, seven touchdowns, no interceptions, one sack and a Total QBR of 92.8. (For a frame of reference, Darian Mensah leads the nation with an 89.7 Total QBR for the season.) He's still scrambling around at times, but he has averaged just 5.5 carries in these past two games, half of what he averaged in the first three games.

Leavitt is settling down, in other words, and amid the chaos of the past two weeks -- in the most chaotic of power conferences -- LSU has looked steady and spectacular. As a 7-point favorite against an Auburn team coming off an upset of Georgia, LSU traded jabs for about 10 minutes, then started landing haymakers. The Tigers scored TDs on four of their last five drives of the first half to open an insurmountable 31-10 lead, then played things safe and ran out the clock for a 38-17 win.

The SEC logjam at the moment is amazing, for all the reasons I mentioned above. Of the conference's 16 teams, only two have one conference loss (Georgia and Kentucky), and eight are just one game behind in the loss column. But LSU has moved up to No. 4 in SP+, and while the edge isn't massive, the Tigers have jumped up to the No. 2 favorite in the conference. The home stretch is rough -- home games against Alabama and Texas, followed by trips to Tennessee and Arkansas -- but their odds of success are increasing, and Leavitt's stability is a major reason for it.

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LSU has received plenty of national praise this week, but the Tigers would be wise to ignore all the "rat poison" with Alabama, Texas, Tennessee, and Arkansas still on the schedule.