re: Mike Scarborough brought up something with Jacques Doucet regarding Walker Howard

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I don't understand how you guys just delete Nussmeier from the program. Last I checked he's still on the roster.

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I’m not at all. IMO, this chatter about Walker is due to the fact that Nuss may stick around and let this play out for another year and Walker isn’t sure he can beat him out.

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How would he pass up Nussmeier? Neither of them have played and Kelly called Nussmeier 1B in the preseason as a freshman.


I don't understand how you guys just delete Nussmeier from the program. Last I checked he's still on the roster.

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If Nussmeier is the better player, then it’s pointless to worry about Howard. If Howard is the better player, it’s pointless to worry about Nussmeier.

They’re two highly-rated guys who are only a year apart. In today’s environment, it’s highly unlikely that you keep both on the roster for long. There’s virtually no chance that we have RS JR Nussmeier, RS SO Howard, RS FR Collins, and FR Hurley on the roster in 2024.

That’s precisely why you take a guy every year and let the cream rise to the top. If a kid is truly special, he should be able to compete (especially when we are talking about competing for the #2 spot) in his second year.

If he can’t win that spot and feels he’s better off transferring, that sucks but you deal with it. You try to convince him to stay, improve, and keep challenging. Maybe they buy in or maybe they don’t. But you don’t try to shoehorn guys into roles based on their egos, theoretical ceilings, or how likely they are to leave. That’s not how you build a culture of accountability. You build the culture by honestly assessing your players’ development and placing them on the depth chart accordingly.

The last thing I would add is that even if Howard is #3, that doesn’t necessarily mean he will still be running scout team next year. We will have a new true freshman (Collins) on the team, so at that point it just depends how Kelly chooses to run his practices.

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How would he pass up Nussmeier?

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By being better. There is this thing called practice, and LSU does it while you are not looking.