GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
LSU quarterback Garrett Nussmeier knew he was having a bad game as he faced a 4th-and-5 at the Ole Miss 23-yard line and trailing 23-16 with 32 seconds to play Saturday night. He was just 20-of-49 passing (40 percent) for 289 yards and one touchdown with two interceptions. And that amid little pressure as he had not been sacked.
What followed may be “burned” into his memory for the rest of his life, Associated Press writer Brett Martel said in a question Saturday night about his next two snaps.
Only 22 and in the throes of a busy, basically two-minute-offense life, Nussmeier had trouble slowing down and adjusting to the question.
“Uh … yeah … I’m going to enjoy this win for the next 24 hours, and then we’ll focus on Arkansas,” he said right out of coach-speak central casting.
This is why they say youth is often wasted on the young. Nussmeier may not realize it now, but 50 years from now, they may still be writing about what happened on his next two snaps, particularly in LSU-Ole Miss lore.
Former LSU quarterback Bert Jones, now 73, was at Tiger Stadium Saturday night, no doubt at some point reliving again his game-tying, 10-yard touchdown pass to Brad Davis with no time on the clock on Nov. 4, 1972, to knot Ole Miss at 16-16. Rusty Jackson hit the extra point for the win.
“It never gets old,” Jones told Tiger Rag last month for one more feature on that game.
Nussmeier has many more miles to play before he sleeps or sings “Glory Days,” but Oct. 12, 2024, will live in his head as long as it will in Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin’s, which will be “forever,” in his own words.
Nussmeier, a gunslinger quarterback in every sense of the term, skipped the first down on that 4th-and-5 and threw a 23-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Aaron Anderson to get the Tigers within 23-22 with 27 seconds left. Damian Ramos kicked the extra point for the tie. Ole Miss couldn’t get past midfield as LSU sacked quarterback Jaxson Dart for a season-high sixth time to bring on overtime.
Ole Miss went backwards to start the OT and settled for a 57-yard field goal by Caden Davis for a 26-23 lead.
On the next play, Nussmeier threw an anticipatory, back-shoulder pass to the end zone for wide receiver Kyren Lacy before Lacy had turned around. When he did, he caught a 25-yard touchdown pass. Lacy flipped the ball to the referee, and it was over.
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“I will sit here and say I probably had one of the worst games of my career tonight,” Nussmeier, a fourth-year junior from Lake Charles via Flower Mound, Texas, said of the seventh start of his career. “I want to say that.”
Really? Two days later, he was named the Southeastern Conference offensive player of the week after completing 22 of 51 passes for 337 yards and three touchdowns around those two interceptions.
“The best thing about that is I can learn from it,” he said. “And we got a win.”
A critical win against a ninth-ranked team that sets now-No. 8 LSU (5-1, 2-0 SEC) up for a return to the College Football Playoff after a four-year absence. The Tigers play at Arkansas (4-2, 2-1 SEC) at 6 p.m. Saturday on ESPN. Then it’s a trip to No. 14 Texas A&M (5-1, 3-0 SEC).
“It’s huge. This league’s wide open,” Nussmeier said. “We took a huge step tonight. This is a mindset for us. This is who we are now. This is who we wanted to be. I think we’re real. Tigers are real. We proved that tonight. There were struggles, and there were mistakes, but we found a way to win. We’re going to do whatever it takes.”
Nussmeier obviously sees a lot of room for improvement. He did just have his worst statistical game, completing only 43 percent of his passes.
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“I’m excited to get in the film room and face those things and correct the mistakes,” he said. “And hopefully, this will be a huge growth moment for me in taking my game to the next level. We still haven’t played our best ball on offense yet. That’s going to come soon.”
Nussmeier overcame a poor start and nearly a poor ending for his legendary game. In the first quarter, he was 3-of-10 passing for 34 yards with an interception. He opened the fourth quarter with another interception and missed on his first two passes on his next drive and faced a 4th-and-6 at the LSU 29-yard line with less than three minutes to go while trailing 23-16.
But Nussmeier benefitted from a lack of memory.
“You’ve got to have a short memory at quarterback, also in general on offense,” he said. “Things went bad tonight, but I thought we stayed focused.”
Then he found tight end Mason Taylor for 14 yards to keep LSU alive. But he threw two straight incompletions after that to face a 3rd-and-10 at LSU’s 43-yard line with 1:49 to go. And he went all Brett Favre, or more recently Joe Burrow in 2019. He scrambled this way, then that, and then with an Ole Miss defender right on his heels, threw across his body to Taylor again for 19 yards to the Ole Miss 38.
Another three incompletions came out of four attempts before Nussmeier hit Anderson for the game-tying touchdown. Over his game-tying drive, he was only 4 of 11 for a .363 completion percentage, but for 66 yards and the touchdown. That includes two fourth-down conversions, which do not count toward completion percentage.
“It doesn’t matter what happened before,” Nussmeier said. “I mean, yeah, I played bad, but we had a chance to win the ballgame. And I had to focus on that. It’s letting all the bad stuff go and just focus on the snap that was about to happen. It was do or die. It was a tough situation. We were backed up. Had to go win the game. Having to make some plays down there with your back against the wall and game on the line, those are huge growth moments for me.”
After he threw the game-winner to Lacy, Nussmeier may as well have been “Jack And The Beanstalk” to LSU coach Brian Kelly.
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“I thought he grew more tonight than at any time that he’s been here,” he said. “That was a growth game for him. You may see it differently, but as a coach, the growth that he was able to exhibit through that game and at the end is going to serve him well.”
And Ole Miss’ defense knew what was coming.
“Being in predictable passing situations with seven- and eight-man drops into coverage requires a great deal of patience and mobility,” Kelly said. “You have to keep the play alive, and he did that later in the game much better than just trying to throw it down the field.”
Then the precision of the game-tying pass to Anderson.
“And then certainly, the back-shoulder throw to Lacy that we’ve been working a lot on, which hadn’t been shown,” Kelly said. “Really growth that is going to skyrocket him in terms of the next level.”
And that was “one of the worst games of my career,” Nussmeier said?
Hold on.
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