BATON ROUGE – Brian Kelly has felt like his real quarterback has been missing the last few weeks.
But LSU football‘s 20-10 win over South Carolina Saturday night inside Tiger Stadium, the Garrett Nussmeier he knows made his return by his estimation.
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“He plays with a swagger and he’s better with a swagger, right?” Kelly said of Nussmeier. “I don’t think that he had that the previous weeks. I thought he was a little bit robotic and we said (to him), ‘Listen, you need to be Garrett Nussmeier.’
“And he was.”
Against the Gamecocks, LSU’s senior gun slinger was 20 of 33 for 254 yards with two passing touchdowns. He also took off and ran four times, picking up 30 yards.
Nussmeier also threw a pair of interceptions. One of those came at the goal line off a run-pass-option play that Kelly told reporters following the game Saturday night that the right read would’ve been to hand the ball off to the running back.
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When the LSU quarterback is playing at the best version of himself, his coaches expect some mistakes.
“Unfortunately, some of (Nussmeier playing like Nussmeier) comes with some mistakes. I think that (interception at the goal line) was an aberration, the mistake that was in the red zone. Something that he would immediately say I should have had my eyes on that safety because that’s my read,” Kelly said.
“But I like the version of Garrett Nussmeier we saw. He was a lot more confident. He was a lot more active in the pocket. He had an opportunity to run a couple of times. That’s the version we want. We want to clean up those what I would call uncharacteristic mistakes.”
Since preseason practice, Nussmeier has been hampered by an abdominal strain and playing through that has affected his confidence. The core injury has affected his ability to execute throws down the field and some of his accuracy at times.
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There was noticeably more zip on Nussmeier’s throws against South Carolina and Kelly theorized that many things factored into that like trusting pass protection from the offensive line and better footwork around his release point. But it comes back to his health and how he felt.
“All of those things were a part of it but the bottom line is he was healthy. Thursday, I mentioned to you, we have the ball that has the GPS in it and his numbers were up from any other time during the week. His ab injury, he’s on the right side of it where he feels good,” Kelly said. “He didn’t feel any pain Sunday coming in.
“That’s a really good sign for us moving forward.”
Cory Diaz covers the LSU Tigers for The Daily Advertiser as part of the USA TODAY Network. Follow his Tigers coverage on Twitter: @ByCoryDiaz. Got questions regarding LSU athletics? Send them to Cory Diaz at bdiaz@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Lafayette Daily Advertiser: LSU football QB Garrett Nussmeier found his swagger vs South Carolina
