Garrett Nussmeier’s Drop In Draft “Damn Sure Wasn’t Because Of Playing Ability” … Senior Bowl Director

By GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor

Senior Bowl director Drew Fabianich, who has as many NFL personnel executive contacts as a veteran NFL general manager, was still smarting about it three nights later.

Fabianich is old friends with Doug Nussmeier, a former NFL quarterback who was a Dallas Cowboys assistant coach from 2018-22 when Fabianich was a scout with the Cowboys.

Don’t sleep on Nussmeier!

A true football guy who can actually run the line of scrimmage. He was banged up this past year, and was looked at as a potential top draft pick the year before. I can’t forget what I saw! The tape is there that shows the type of QB Garrett can be.… pic.twitter.com/RWzOx3lTDo

— Drew Fabianich (@DfabeSB) April 21, 2026

Nussmeier’s son is former LSU quarterback Garrett Nussmeier, who fell from a first round projection in 2024 for the 2025 NFL Draft to the 33rd pick of the seventh and final round of the 2026 NFL Draft on Saturday and the 249th selection overall. That’s eight picks from being Mr. Irrelevant, an honorary nickname for the last pick of an NFL Draft.

Let's get to work, @Garrettnuss13 🤝 pic.twitter.com/lqI6ntMpg2

— Kansas City Chiefs (@Chiefs) April 26, 2026

Had Nussmeier entered the draft in 2025 as a junior, he may have been a first round pick. For midway through his 2024 season with the Tigers, he was being projected as a top 10 pick. The slinging, strong-armed quarterback finished No. 5 in the nation in passing yards that year with 4,052, and his 29 touchdown passes was second in the SEC and 10th in the nation.

Then last August, he suffered a painful abdominal tear injury and played through the often shooting pain through his core that significantly impacted his throwing motion and passing totals for the season. He started nine games before aggravating the injury even more and called it a season. He got a more accurate diagnosis from a new medical team outside of LSU, which has a recent history of diagnosis mistakes.

LSU’s Garrett Nussmeier Steals The Show, Takes MVP At Senior Bowl In 17-9 American Win

Then he tore up the week of practice and the game at the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Alabama, last January and also did well at the NFL Scouting Combine in February. And he was projected to be the the third quarterback taken in the draft (after Indiana’s Fernando Mendoza at No. 1 and Alabama’s Ty Simpson at 13) as high as the second round and no later than the fourth or fifth.

But the week of the draft, a story leaked out from NFL sources (or agents of other quarterbacks) that the exhaustive medical tests from the previous February at the Combine that Nussmeier’s abdominal injury stemmed from a cyst on his spine. And that may still require surgery and a two-to-three week recovery period.

LSU Football: Garrett Nussmeier Abdomen Injury Originated From Spine, NFL Combine Tests Reveal

And Nussmeier became the 10th quarterback taken instead.

Sleeper of 2026 NFL Draft …@andrechampagnee https://t.co/fXqtupA7kR

— Glenn Guilbeau (@SportBeatTweet) April 25, 2026

There have been reports that the fall happened perhaps because Nussmeier didn’t interview well before the draft, which was part of the reason why Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders fell from projections in the first round to the fifth round in 2025. Others said Nussmeier’s distaste for running hurt his stock, even though he threw the ball well on the run amid traffic in 2024. See Ole Miss game from that season and ask the Rebels’ coach at the time – quarterback guru Lane Kiffin, now coaching LSU.

Lane Kiffin: LSU Loss ‘Will Be Around Forever,’ As Ole Miss ‘Should Have Won That Game’

“There was a medical concern that dropped him that far, because it damn sure wasn’t playing ability,” Fabianich said on Louisiana statewide Tiger Rag Radio Tuesday night. “He had to go through the whole recheck gamut at the Combine and everything else, and they find that (cyst). And it makes people panic.”

NFL draft executives tend to lean heavy toward caution.

“You always have to gauge the risk and reward on the medical,” Fabianich said. “Because you don’t want to take someone who’s only going to last two years. Maybe the medical came back as a risk that a lot of people didn’t want to take. But there’s no reason that he should’ve went in the seventh at all.”

Sometimes, agents of other draftable quarterbacks get involved and procure the panic so that their client goes higher.

“It was probably the injury,” Fabianich said. “It was probably the cyst on his spinal chord and that he needed another surgery. Because there’s no reason on God’s green earth that Garrett Nussmeier should’ve been drafted in the seventh round. He should’ve been the third quarterback taken in my opinion. And I would say that regardless of whether I knew him or not, whether I know his dad and worked with his dad. That’s how I had him stacked.”

Instead, every other quarterback drafted was stacked on top of him.

Now, the question is does Nussmeier have the surgery before training camp, after the season or not have it?

“The Chiefs’ physicians may say we need to get this down now, or this can wait,” Fabianich said. “But if it flares up again and causes another issue, then maybe his put on IR (injured reserve). And that may be okay, because he’ll get like a redshirt year.”

In the meantime, Fabianich can’t get 2024 out of his mind.

“I mean, he did throw for 4,000 yards and 29 touchdowns,” he said. “Didn’t he?”

At any rate, at least Nussmeier was drafted, and he may be in a good place to develop behind Patrick Mahomes and Justin Fields.

Garrett Nussmeier to Kansas City!!

Go show the world what you’re made of! pic.twitter.com/UXd9U0OCtu

— Jon Gruden (@BarstoolGruden) April 25, 2026

A year off may be just what the doctor ordered, or perhaps should have ordered last August.