LSU has Myles to go before Sept.
As of today, Myles Brennan is possibly still best known for being the scion of the famous New Orleans restaurant family who — don’t you just hate him? — has trouble putting on weight.
But there’s no reason to believe Brennan can’t replace Joe Burrow and even flourish as LSU’s next quarterback.
Probably won’t win the Heisman Trophy.
Might not throw 60 TD passes.
And he’ll be hard pressed to throw for 5,670 yards.
Nobody seriously expects him to, although he certainly has the arm to do it, won’t lack for offensive weapons and should know the offense as well as anybody.
But, if it please the jury, I would like to make one suggestion as LSU continues spring practice trying to replicate a perfect national championship season.
Just let this quarterback situation play out.
Don’t force it.
Brennan is the heir apparent, so to speak. It is, in the vernacular, his job to lose.
That got harder to do Wednesday when head coach Ed Orgeron confirmed that redshirt freshan Peter Parrish has run afoul of the dreaded “violation of team rules” and was suspended indefinitely.
That leaves two incoming freshmen T.J. Finley and Max Johnson, both of whom enrolled early to take part in the spring, to challenge Brennan.
It was almost confusing a year ago when, for the first time in forever, the big spring-August question mark didn’t revolve around quarterback, so the Tigers surely would like to do it year after year. It was such a refreshing change for QB-Challenged U.
So go with it again. And hope.
Just don’t assume anything.
The Advocate of Baton Rouge unearthed a quote from the days leading up the national championship game when Brennan told his father, “This is my team now. I love Joe and Joe did his job. But the day after the national championship, it’s my team.”
That’s a good attitude to have. Brennan needs to believe that.
And never mind it might be a bit premature. If LSU is to win big, let alone make the playoffs again, it will have to become his team. I’m guessing that, considering the way quarterback ownership of a team worked out a year ago, most of his teammates would like to see it become his team.
But, just a guess, they’ll let him know when it’s his team.
It wasn’t Burrow’s Team, for instance, when he first arrived as a transfer from Ohio State, never having taken a starting snap.
Reports vary as to when LSU became the Fighting Burrows.
But, contrary to the rags-to-riches Heisman Trophy story, it was Burrow’s Team well before last season began.
Maybe it was the Auburn game of his junior season when he willed a fourth-quarter rally on hostile foreign turf. Probably it was the Georgia game of that year when, out of nowhere, he directed a 36-16 dissection of the No. 2 Bulldogs.
And if there were any lingering doubts, picking his limp carcass off the floor of the Fiesta Bowl to destroy Central Florida erased them all.
Point is, he might have been a surprise to the nation last year, but he already had a lot of skins on the wall and a whole lot of locker room cred before the season started.
Certainly, there was no question who LSU’s quarterback was heading into last season, even if nobody saw the Heisman Trophy coming.
The Brennan story, as it’s trying to be written, is a familiar one, a feel-good tale.
It’s the old standby of patience, of loyalty, of waiting one’s turn.
And it’s hard not to pull for him. He thought he was in line to start just before Burrow arrived in August of 2018. Brennan probably wasn’t ready then, but despite the presumed two-year delay in his career, he never even shot a sideways glance at the NCAA transfer portal.
He should be rewarded … if he can get the job done.
LSU’s poster child for that kind of quarterbacking patience was Matt Flynn, who had to sit until his fifth year before leading the Tigers to the 2007 national championship.
But there are plenty of anecdotes when there turned out to be a reason a “patient” quarterback had been waiting his turn for so long.
Again, no reason Brennan’s story can’t have a happy ending.
“I expect Myles to explode,” Orgeron said last week while previewing the spring, “I expect him to do all the things that he needs to do to be a great quarterback.”
No reason to doubt Orgeron.
But when you should get skeptical is if tall tales start coming from behind the palace gates of the practice field, all promoting this seamless transition from Burrow to Brennan.
The worst past example of that was spring to August of 2016, when it almost seemed like an orchestrated propaganda campaign to pump up Brandon Harris, who’d struggled through the previous year.
Players, coaches, support staff, it was like they were all programmed (or instructed) to talk about the “new-and-improved” Harris, the “night-and-day” transformation.
It was bad enough that the opener came and it was the same old Harris. But eventually it was obvious that Danny Etling was a far better choice. Enough people wondered what kind of coaches could have compared them that long without realizing it that Les Miles was fired four games into the season.
I guess the moral of this story is to hope for the best with Brennan.
But keep an open mind.
Scooter Hobbs covers LSU athletics. Email him at shobbs@americanpress.com
(ON FILE: LSU Tigers quarterback Myles Brennan (15) rushes for a gain against Utah State Aggies at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on Saturday, October 5, 2019.) (AP Photo/Lake Charles American Press, Kirk Meche)
Kirk Meche