As LSU prepares to begin what could be a special season in Baton Rouge, the preseason top-five Tigers look like a real College Football Playoff contender.
They return most of their impact players on the offensive side of the ball and should have one of the SEC’s best defensive fronts. This team has few glaring holes, but there is one area that looks like a question mark entering the 2023 season.
While [autotag]Brian Kelly[/autotag] has done a good job of developing home-grown talent, in general, that hasn’t really translated in the secondary. The team has now hit the portal very heavily in back-to-back offseasons to fill out the defensive backfield.
According to On3’s Jesse Simonton, that group is the team’s most pressing question if it hopes to compete for the CFP.
The Tigers are on the shortlist of favorites to win the national title this fall because they return quarterback Jayden Daniels, all five starting offensive linemen, top SEC wideout Malik Nabers, both coordinators and star defensive talent Harold Perkins, Maason Smith and Mekhi Wingo.
But none of that will matter for Brian Kelly & Co., if LSU doesn’t hit on its latest batch of plug-and-play transfers in the secondary. The once proud DBU has resorted to mining the portal for impact corners for the second straight offseason, bringing in five transfers.
Well, Ohio State transfer JK Johnson is already sidelined for the season, and former 5-star Texas A&M corner Denver Harris has been suspended. LSU is really counting on FCS All-American Zy Alexander and Syracuse transfer Duce Chestnut to be ready immediately. It would really help if former 5-star Sage Ryan was a valuable contributor, too.
With Florida State, Mississippi State, Arkansas and Ole Miss all in the first month of the season, this is a unit that will be tested out the gate in September.
That group certainly is a question mark, but there’s no shortage of talent there. Obviously, it would be ideal to be developing more high school recruiting talent in the defensive backfield, but Kelly has done an impressive job using the portal to fill holes.
He’ll hope that doesn’t prove to be a limiting factor this fall.
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