LSU football has done an excellent job navigating this year’s transfer portal window. They addressed several positions of need, signing the No. 1 quarterback in the class, and this week, the Tigers put the finshing touches on the group, adding DE Princewill Umanmielen and OT Jordan Seaton.
Landing this many highly rated players is obviously going to produce one of the highest-ranked classes in the country, but just how high? Well, according to 247Sports, LSU holds the No. 1 transfer portal class in the country by a wide margin. They’ve amassed 87.82 points, according to 247Sports’ system, 24.02 ahead of the next-closest team.
LSU new head coach Lane Kiffin speaks at South Stadium Club at Tiger Stadium
To be fair to the other teams, some of that rating can be attributed to sheer volume. LSU has signed 40 players in this portal window, the fifth-most in the country. However, when looking at the Tigers’ average player rating, they remain near the top of the list. LSU’s average player rating — 88.62 — ranks fourth among teams that have signed 10 or more transfers, behind only Texas, Ohio State, and Indiana.
Advertisement
What this tells you about LSU’s transfer class is that Kiffin and his staff aren’t just signing anyone — which would be an understandable strategy, given that they lost 37 players in the portal. Instead, they brought in a slew of high-upside transfers who can make an immediate impact on the team, and fortified the depth behind them with players who can be trusted to fill in when needed.
Several teams were in similar situations to LSU’s. Take Penn State, for example. The Nittany Lions lost 47 players to the portal, but as a high-level program, they did a good job replacing what was lost, signing 36 transfers. What’s different, however, is the caliber of players they signed. Among teams that signed 10 or more transfers, Penn State’s average player rating — 87.1 — ranked 13th.
Further, LSU was the only team in the country to sign more than one five-star transfer, and the only team to sign more than 10 four-stars.
All of this information is meant to show Tiger fans that this isn’t a situation in which Kiffin and his staff were just desperately signing whoever they could in order to field a team in 2026. These were calculated moves, ones that should give LSU the chance to compete for a national championship next season.
This article originally appeared on LSU Wire: Where does LSU football’s transfer portal class rank now?
