LSU Tigers head football coach Lane Kiffin has his quarterback for the 2026 college football season, with former Arizona State Sun Devils QB Sam Leavitt expected to sign with LSU, ESPN’s Pete Thamel reported on Jan. 12.
Kiffin is trying to get the Tigers back into the national title conversation after Brian Kelly’s failed tenure. As a result, to have a quick turnaround, the LSU coach has reportedly landed a signal-caller with starting and College Football Playoff experience.
Nonetheless, On3’s J.D. PicKell sent a major warning to Leavitt regarding his concerns about the Tigers’ offensive line for next season.
“How that offensive line looked this past year, you’d like to think Lane Kiffin can kind of retool that line via the portal, and the line will be better next [season] than it was this [past season], but I don’t know if it’s a guarantee,” PicKell said in a Jan. 12 video on On3’s YouTube channel reacting to the Leavitt news.
“Like Sam Leavitt, your first year in Baton Rouge, brother, you may need to get a little bit busy back there and make some guys miss and extend plays. We might need someone with a little bit of a giddy-up-and-go. I think it was a big reason why Garrett Nussmeier wasn’t able to have success over the course of this past year.
“I think he wasn’t healthy for a variety of reasons, but I’ll tell you what, getting smacked around with that offensive line didn’t make him more healthy over the course of the season. Sam Leavitt and what he can do off-script is really exciting to me and just his overall athletic ability.”
Sam Leavitt Brings Missing Traits to LSU Tigers
Nonetheless, while PicKell is concerned about how the offensive line will protect Leavitt, he is excited about the traits the quarterback is bringing to the Tigers team.
“I like the personality he brings to LSU, and I said this for a while when I watched LSU this past year; I think LSU has been missing their edge, and you know what I mean,” PicKell added. “You think LSU football at its best, you think mean, you think nasty, you think physical, you think swagger. Now, I don’t know if you can call Sam Leavitt mean [and] nasty, but I do see a lot of swagger when I watch him play football. Watch him get in the end zone and talk his cash, celebrate, get fired up.
“Like, he’s not this massively composed, going to give you a neutral facial expression throughout the good and the bad, not too high, not too low. Like he is going to wear his heart on his sleeve and go to war for his boys, and I love that. And quite frankly, again, I think that marries really well with what LSU needs overall as a football program.”
LSU Tigers Edged Out Other Schools for Sam Leavitt
Leavitt committed to LSU after weighing offers from Kentucky, Tennessee, and Miami, among others, and still has two seasons of eligibility left. The move was viewed as one of the biggest wins of the offseason for Kiffin, with Leavitt widely regarded as one of the top quarterbacks available in the transfer portal.
Moreover, the quarterback position has become LSU’s most pressing question following the departure of fifth-year senior Garrett Nussmeier, who used up his eligibility.
During the 2024 season at Arizona State, Leavitt played a key role in the Sun Devils’ run to a Big 12 championship and a College Football Playoff appearance, which ended in a loss to the Texas Longhorns.
He passed for 2,885 yards with 24 touchdowns and six interceptions, while adding 442 rushing yards and five more scores. A lingering foot injury led to season-ending surgery in November 2025, and Leavitt is expected to continue rehabilitation throughout the spring.
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