LSU Should Have "Most" Of Their Quarantined Football Players Back This Week, Orgeron Says

by TD Staff ReporterNovember 16, 2020

Chris Parent / LSU Athletics

LSU is expected to have most of their quarantined football players back at practice on Monday or Tuesday, Ed Orgeron announced.

Orgeron suggested that quarterback Max Johnson will return this week which gives the Tigers more options in practice. With Johnson out last week, TJ Finely took all of the first-team reps and will likely be the starter on Saturday vs. Arkansas.

Here's everything Orgeron said about the players returning this week:

quote:
Q. Can you give me any kind of number update on your roster? Are you confident that you're going to have enough guys to play in Fayetteville this weekend?

COACH ORGERON: We feel we should get most of our quarantine guys back either today or tomorrow. So we feel like the room's going to be full today for the first time. We're actually going to have two quarterbacks practice.

Q. Can you walk us through how you plan on handling the quarterback this week?

COACH ORGERON: TJ has taken the first team reps. Max hasn’t practiced for a week now. We're going to let him get back. We'll see who is the best guy available. Right now it's probably going to be TJ unless Max can have a great week. We'll probably play both of them in the game.

Q. You said most of the players will come back today. Are there any others over the course of the week that are taking a little longer and kind of roughly how many?

COACH ORGERON: As of now, we plan on getting most of our guys back by tomorrow. And I’ll have the report later on during the week obviously this thing is very fluid, can change every day. But I think by tomorrow we should have most of our guys back.

Q. Obviously another part of this is once you get these guys back, just kind of seeing where they are conditioning-wise. Where do you think, what are you guys thinking in terms of easing these guys back into practice this week?

COACH ORGERON: We'll have to ease them back in. First of all, they've been working out on their own. They were in good shape when they stopped, so they haven't been out that long. Hopefully the workouts kept up to pace, they can come and practice. I think it will be fine. But we're going to have to limit their reps in the game. We'll see if some guys need extra conditioning, give them extra conditioning, whatever it might be.

Q. You talked about TJ Finley. You've seen two games from him thus far. Been a while since they've actually played, but what kind of things do you want to see from him in practice moving forward heading into the Arkansas game?

COACH ORGERON: We have to take care of the football. Take care of the football. Make smart decisions which he did the first game. The second game he didn't. And we had three turnovers. You can't go on the road and turn over the football. It's not all on him. It's on the play-calling, keep it simple for him. It's on the other players surrounding playing better. It's about the offensive line protection. It's about everybody.