By GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
LSU quarterback Sam Leavitt was asked yet another question about his mid-right foot injury suffered last season at Arizona State that required surgery and ended his 2025 season midway through and kept him sidelined through most of LSU’s spring drills.
“Are you that kind of quarterback again after coming off the foot injury with that same speed and ability to run? And are you more selective now?”
“Haven’t played a game yet, so we’ll see,” Leavitt said with a big smile.
And everyone sure did five nights later.
Leavitt, the redshirt junior transfer from Arizona State, ran like a mad man all night Saturday. He rushed for 113 yards with touchdown runs of eight and 13 yards on 12 rushes as he often twisted, turned, cut on a dime and planted hard on that right foot and the left one as the No. 11 Tigers trampled over No. 23 Clemson, 51-10, in front of 102,321 at Tiger Stadium.
He also completed 16 of 28 passes for 230 yards with a touchdown and an interception.
“I feel 100 percent,” Leavitt said for about the 100th time on Tuesday. “I’m ready to just be a great player for this team and do everything that they need to win games. So, yeah, I feel like I’m going to be the same player physically, and then every aspect mentally, I’ve just gotten better.”
And it was obvious.
“It’s great when your quarterback can move around,” said LSU coach Lane Kiffin, who moved quickly himself to fly to Knoxville, Tennessee, last January to intercept Leavitt on a visit to Tennessee and convince him to sign at LSU as the No. 1 player in the portal.
“The game’s played out of rhythm a lot,” Kiffin said. “The game is not in rhythm all the time as a quarterback, and one of the biggest things with quarterbacks is how do you play when it’s out of rhythm? Because you don’t block everybody right? And receivers get covered. Sam plays really well, and if you look at his analytics, he’s done really well out of rhythm, gets outside of the pocket moving around. And he showed that tonight.”
Leavitt running as much as he did was not necessarily part of the game plan. It came to him.
“When running lanes open up, and it’s the best play at hand, I’m going to take it and take care of my body,” Leavitt said. “I never really come into the game with that expectation, whether I’m going to run more or not. Kind of just what happens.”
Leavitt’s most spectacular run was his 8-yard twisting, turning jaunt for a touchdown and 24-3 lead midway in the second quarter. As he ran toward the sideline and inside the 5-yard line, it looked like he would go out of bounds. But he made a savage cut on his previously injured right foot as Walter Payton would have, turned up field and scored.
DIVING IN FOR SIX @S_leav10 pic.twitter.com/qF4OI8zHSd
— LSU Football (@LSUfootball) September 6, 2026
“It’s all situational. What angle are they going to hit me? I saw an opening,” Leavitt said.
“Sam’s got kind of like a defensive mindset when he runs the ball, like Jaxson Dart (former Ole Miss QB whom Kiffin coached) had,” Kiffin said. “Sometimes we got to coach them out of it. But that guy wasn’t going to slide tonight. I felt like we were going to need things just to get going. The last thing we wanted to do was start slow.”
And Leavitt in no way took it slow with his formerly injured right foot. Key word – formerly.
“It wasn’t a thought process,” Leavitt said after ESPN’s Holly Rowe asked how he was able to let it go. “That was off-season work. Everybody kept asking me about it, and I kept saying it’s not an issue. It’s not even a thought process, and it showed on the field.”
LSU running back Dilin Jones, who gained 113 yards himself on 23 carries with two touchdowns, was asked what Leavitt running looks like.
“Lamar Jackson,” he said immediately, comparing Leavitt to the Baltimore Ravens superstar quarterback, who is a two-time NFL MVP, the league’s all-time career leading rushing quarterback with 6,522 yards and set the season rushing record for a QB in 2019 with 1,206.
“I don’t know if I’m on Lamar’s level,” Leavitt said. “He’s a little bit shiftier and faster.”
After watching former quarterback Garrett Nussmeier turn down open running lanes time and time again the last two seasons, LSU fans will settle for Leavitt being Leavitt.
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