By KACE KIEISCHNICK, Tiger Rag Staff Reporter
Lane Kiffin welcomed a trio of new transfer quarterbacks to Baton Rouge this off-season.
Redshirt junior Sam Leavitt leads the group as the No.1 ranked transfer prize in the Portal King’s class of 41 from the portal. Redshirt freshman USC transfer Husan Longstreet is a young, athletic talent with a high ceiling and an investment in the future. Redshirt sophomore Landen Clark of Elon rounds out the multi-faceted QB Room with dual-threat playmaking ability.
Sam Leavitt
Leavitt (6-foot-2, 215 pounds) is no stranger to a change in scenery.
The four-star high school signee’s prep career was split between three schools. In 2020, after attending Westview High in Portland, Oregon, his freshman season, Leavitt’s family moved to Pleasant Grove, Utah, where he played 11 games as a sophomore. The 16-year-old journeyman returned to Westview in 2021 and made his final stop at West Linn High School, 40 miles away from Westview.
The common theme throughout the tangled career path — progression. At each stop along the way, Leavitt’s experience, performance and win total improved.
He won just six games and threw for 1,672 yards and 17 touchdowns as a sophomore. His junior campaign, his record rose to 9-2 with 2,033 passing yards and 26 touchdowns, but his Westview team was eliminated in the second round of the Class 6A Oregon state playoffs.
Leavitt led West Linn to a 12-1 record and Class 6A state championship his senior season. Passing for 3,184 yards and 36 touchdowns and racking up 693 yards and 8 TDs on the ground, Leavitt was named MaxPreps Oregon High School Player of the Year and Gatorade Oregon Football Player of the Year.
“He has a super powerful arm and is extremely confident,” Leavitt’s West Linn coach Jon Eagle told Tiger Rag last spring. “What he’s really good at, too, is deciphering a lot of information in half a second, which is important for a quarterback looking at the field.”
Leavitt committed to Michigan State as On3.com’s top Oregon prospect and No. 76 recruit nationwide for the 2023 season. His collegiate path has resembled his high school travels.
After appearing in just four games and redshirtting as a freshman for the Spartans, Leavitt transferred for the 2024 season to an Arizona State program that started three quarterbacks in 2023.
Again, a new team welcomed an improved Leavitt in 2024. The redshirt freshman led the Sun Devils to an 11-3 campaign, Big 12 title and the school’s first College Football Playoff appearance. In 13 starts, he completed 61.7 percent of his passes for 2,885 yards, 24 touchdowns and 6 interceptions and was named Big 12 Freshman of the Year and second-team All-Big 12. In the Big 12 championship, Leavitt completed 12 of 17 passes for 219 yards and three TDs and ran for another touchdown in a 45-19 win over Iowa State.
“Sam’s good. Sam’s really good. I keep saying it,” Arizona State coach Kenny Dillingham said late in the 2024 season. “Sam’s really good, and we should be really happy that we have Sam, and we have him for two to three more years. I mean, Sam’s going to play on Sundays. There’s zero doubt in my mind Sam’s an NFL player.”
Leavitt dealt with a ligament injury in his right foot last season, which limited him to only seven starts. The Sun Devils went 5-2 in those games as Leavitt completed 145 of 239 passes for 1,628 yards, 10 TDs and 3 interceptions. The dual-threat added 306 yards and five TDs on the ground.
He had “Lisfranc” surgery on bones in his right midfoot last November. The surgery, which was named after 1800s French surgeon Jacques Lisfranc de St. Martin, realigns displaced or torn meatatarsal bones in the center of the foot with stabilizing screws, plates or pins. Leavitt had those screws removed early last April and missed most of spring practice.
When Leavitt signed with LSU last January after a long, travel heavy and involved recruiting effort by Kiffin, he was the No. 1 player and quarterback in the portal.
Now, he arrives at LSU, again poised to improve.
He enters a Lane Kiffin-Charlie Weis Jr. offense that has produced a 3,000-yard passer in each of the last three seasons at Ole Miss. The duo developed USC transfer quarterback Jaxson Dart into a first round NFL Draft pick and transformed current Rebels signal caller Trinidad Chambliss from a Division II quarterback at Ferris State to one of the best in the game in 2025 and into a preseason contender for a Heisman Trophy in ’26.
Leavitt was heavily limited throughout spring practice as he recovered from the “Lisfranc” surgery. He has now been fully cleared to prepare the Tigers for the 2026 campaign.
“He’s doing well,” Kiffin said on former LSU great Tyrann Mathieu’s “In The Bayou” podcast. “He’s been out there and pretty much full strength now. Really good arm, really smart. I mean, he’s in there just grinding all the time on stuff. He’s an NFL-mindset quarterback from a preparation standpoint.”
Leavitt will look to become the next great transfer quarterback under Kiffin and at LSU. The last two week one starting signal callers to arrive to Baton Rouge via the portal are, of course, Ohio State transfer Joe Burrow in 2018 via then-coach Ed Orgeron and another former Sun Devil, Jayden Daniels in 2022, via then-coach Brian Kelly. Burrow led the Tigers to the 2019 national championship at 15-0 with the best offense in school history and one of the best in NCAA history, and he won LSU’s first Heisman Trophy since Billy Cannon in 1959. Daniels became one of the best dual-threat quarterbacks in NCAA history in 2023 and also won the Heisman.
While Leavitt does not need to replicate their historic Heisman-winning seasons to have success, he will have the opportunity to do something neither of them could– make that jump in year one as a Tiger.
And if there’s anyone who can find success in his first year with a new program, it’s Sam Leavitt under Kiffin and Weis, who only had the summer to get Chambliss ready last season.
Husan Longstreet
Longstreet’s path to LSU was much less convoluted than Leavitt’s, but he brings similar potential.
Longstreet (6-1, 195) was a five-star prospect coming out of Centennial High School in Corona, California, in 2025. He passed for over 8,500 yards in high school, including a sophomore season at Inglewood High in 2022, where he led the Sentinels to an undefeated 10-0 regular season and an appearance in the California Southern Section Division 2 championship.
After leaving the school following his freshman year, Longstreet went to Centennial for his junior season. He completed 199 of 298 passes for 3,013 yards with 24 TDs and added 645 rushing yards and seven TDs on the ground. He was named a 2023 MaxPreps California All-State selection after leading the Huskies to a Southern Section Division 2 championship appearance.
As a senior at Centennial in 2024, Longstreet completed 109 of 165 passes for 1,641 yards with 19 TDs and ran for 494 yards and six touchdowns in nine games. He missed the beginning of that season with a foot injury sustained over the summer, but still earned a MaxPreps All-State First-Team selection.
Longstreet was ranked as the No.3 quarterback in the 2025 class by On3.com and No.4 by 247Sports and ESPN. On3 listed him as the No. 13 overall prospect in the class, and he was ranked No.28 by 247Sports and No. 47 by ESPN. After originally committing to Texas A&M following his junior season, Longstreet decommitted from the Aggies and decided to attend USC in November of his senior year.
Longstreet appeared in just four games behind starting USC quarterback Jayden Maiava last season and redshirted as a Trojan. He threw just 15 passes, completing 13 of them for 103 yards and a touchdown and rushed 11 times for 176 yards and two touchdowns.
All three of his scores came in garbage time of a 73-13 thrashing of Missouri State in week one. Longstreet completed all nine of his passes for 69 yards and a touchdown and added 55 rushing yards and two touchdowns on eight carries against the Bears.
USC head coach Lincoln Riley reviewed the performance on “Trojans Live” that week.
“He was obviously excited to play, and I thought he handled it well,” Riley said. “You see the arm talent. You see, obviously, the athleticism was on display a couple different times.”
Longstreet decided to bring that athleticism elsewhere and entered the transfer portal as the No. 44 overall player and No. 7 quarterback. The four-star portal prospect committed to LSU as a backup with four seasons of eligibility remaining. He took advantage of Leavitt’s absence during spring practice and took reps with the first team offense. Longstreet and the offense struggled early in camp but improved as spring practices went on.
“That’s been really good, because it was concerning,” Kiffin said during spring. “If we have had to play a game, we would’ve had to be a defensive team – protect the ball and try to win with defense. That progression’s been really good. Very pleased with the progression of the offense. It was very concerning early on offensively. It’s been pretty good. We’re moving in the right direction, but there’s still a ton of work to do.”
Landen Clark
Clark (6-foot, 195) brings athleticism and proven playmaking to Baton Rouge.
Clark was a four-year varsity player at Radford High in Radford, Virginia. As a senior, he led the Bobcats to a 15-0 season and the program’s first state championship in 51 years. He completed 207 of 339 passes for 3,307 yards and 40 touchdowns with interceptions and racked up 1,083 yards and 23 touchdowns rushing on 120 carries, averaging nine yards per attempt. He totaled over 3,300 yards and 52 touchdowns during a 10-2 junior campaign and put up more than 800 yards and 12 scores in just three games as a sophomore.
He was named first team all-state as both a quarterback and defensive back and was a second team all-state punter and the Virginia High School League Offensive Player of the Year. He was also a state champion in track and field and state runner-up in basketball as well.
Despite his otherworldly numbers, Clark was a three-star prospect unranked out of high school and committed to Elon of the Coastal Athletic Association in the FCS.
After redshirting his freshman season, Clark led the Phoenix to a 6-6 record as a starter last year. He went 155-for-277 passing and threw for 2,231 yards and 18 touchdowns. He was second on the team in rushing with 614 yards and 11 touchdowns on 189 carries and was named CAA co-offensive rookie of the year.
Clark hit the portal ranked as the No. 75 quarterback and the No. 975 prospect overall by 247Sports.com. He was the first quarterback to commit to Kiffin’s roster overhaul. He also received some first team action in the spring prior to Leavitt’s return to the field. Kiffin said he and Longstreet both showed improvement as they settled into the offense. Clark has three remaining seasons of eligibility.
He has not experienced the same level of competition as the other two heralded prospects in the quarterback room, but he has all the tools to be at least an interesting backup and perhaps more if Kiffin and Weis can inspire similar development in him as they did in Chambliss.
The Tigers’ quarterback room is built to win now and for years to come.
Leavitt has not been the model of consistency. He was the quarterback at Arizona State during a 24-20 loss last season to a Mississippi State team that finished 5-8. He was 10-for-22 passing for 82 yards with two interceptions and a touchdown. But his ceiling is as high as any passer in the country.
Longstreet’s and Clark’s potential remains to be seen as they adapt to the highest level of college football. But if QB guru Kiffin can keep them around beyond this year, he may already have his post-Leavitt starter in the building for 2027, should Leavitt enter the 2027 NFL Draft.
“Three guys that I think are really talented, different styles of players,” Kiffin said. “It says a lot about them to come to the same place. Nowadays, a lot of guys don’t want to do that. Others want to go to where, ‘Okay, I’m guaranteed I’m going to start.’ So, I think it says a lot about their competitiveness.”
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