A Tale of Two Nussmeiers

(Too Deep Zone continues it’s quixotic quest to find a viable QB2 in the 2026 NFL Draft.)

My deep-dive tape analysis of Garrett Nussmeier’s film began with a rewatch of LSU’s 2025 loss to Ole Miss. It was as good a place as any to start: midseason game, tough conference foe. For Nussmeier, however, it wasn’t pretty.

Air-mail throws. Underthrows. Hospital balls. YOLO passes into heavy traffic, including a bad interception. Stare-downs. Late throws. An inability to scramble away from danger. Some skittishness when the game started going sideways.

Nussmeier got little help from his receivers against Ole Miss: one ugly drop, an 0-for-Saturday performance on contested catches. But it was still a poor effort for a veteran quarterback. Nussmeier spent the fourth quarter floating prayers up the sidelines, ending the game with an ugly sack.

From there, I backtracked two weeks to the Florida game. By the end of the first quarter, I wanted to claw my eyes out. Two batted passes. One overthrow. A scramble on third-and-18 that ended with a nasty collision about 14 yards from a first down. And two more drops on short passes, which did not help. Maybe the receiver let up when he should have kept running on the overthrow, which occurred on a corner route. Whatever.

Nussmeier settled down later in the Florida game, but it’s still not great. There’s an alarming sequence of throws, spanning the second and third quarters, which are either broken up by defenders or end up bouncing several yards away from their targets. His misfire rate on passes of 10-20 yards, between the hashmarks, was downright alarming. But Nussmeier did fire a touchdown strike, and LSU won by virtue of a pick-6 and the fact that the Gators stunk last year.

I was watching a quarterback play through an oblique injury, of course, though the extent of that injury was unknown then and remains nebulous now. So I backtracked again to 2024 to watch the USC game. Nussmeier became a whole different quarterback: sharper, more accurate, more zing on the ball, more confidence. LSU also had a much better line (Will Campbell and company), so Nussmeier got to operate in a whistle-clean pocket. Still, everything about the way he managed the pocket and threw the football looked not just a little better, but fundamentally different.

The 2024 Ole Miss game was more of a mixed bag. Nussmeier fired high into traffic over the middle and into double coverage on the sideline. He sometimes locked onto his first read and sometimes threw too late. But 2024 Nussmeier could deliver passes downfield with velocity and accuracy while on the run. He could step up in the pocket, reset his feet, and fire accurate fastballs. Nussmeier delivered big touchdown throws in the fourth quarter and overtime against an outstanding defense. And when he took off to run on third-and-13, he picked up a first down.

The 2025 version of Nussmeier was undraftable. The 2024 version looked poised to grow into a first-round pick.

So just how injured was Nussmeier in 2025?

“The oblique injury that ruined former LSU quarterback Garrett Nussmeier’s 2025 season has a long and confusing timeline,” wrote Jay Canale for LSU Wire in January, anticipating my question. Canale continued:

It seemed that every time former LSU head coach Brian Kelly spoke about the injury, Nussmeier was feeling better, but his play never reflected it. Nussmeier’s arm didn’t look the same all season, resulting in underthrows and accuracy struggles as he tried to compensate for his inability to put any power behind the ball.

Kelly apparently admitted that Nussmeier had a “torso” injury in September. After the Ole Miss game, he squashed a fan rumor that Nussmeier needed surgery. “That’s misinformation,” Kelly said, clearly projecting a wee bit. “Those (rumors) are not based on any facts. It’s quite silly, actually … Early on, he had an ab strain, not a core injury in terms of a core injury that we deal with. And it’s been slow to heal.”

“He’s on the back side of that, and he’s getting rest this week. He’ll be the Garrett Nussmeier that he needs to be as we get into the very difficult part of our schedule.”

Speaking at the Senior Bowl, Nussmeier claimed that he was “still me” as of the Alabama game in early November, which he left after a third-quarter sack. Nussmeier picks up the story:

Things were going back to normal the next week. And Tuesday, in practice, I tried to rip a throw and re-injured my ab.

At the time, which we still thought was a core injury. We never really fully knocked it out.

We tried week-to-week to try and get me to be able to play. It had gotten to a point where I decided, ‘hey, I can’t do this.’ I was throwing a frontside shallow. If you know ball, that’s an eight-yard throw. Immediately after I threw it, I bent over in pain.

At that point, I knew if I can’t throw a frontside shallow, I’m not effective. I can’t help my team win. And so from there, it wasn’t really a decision I was able to make to not play. It was kind of forced upon me.

The day before the Senior Bowl press conferences, however, Nussmeier told an ESPN radio show that “I couldn’t use my core, so I was throwing the ball without my core.” Nussmeier admitted that he wasn’t able to get any rotation on the ball.

Nussmeier did not appear to be all that hobbled against Alabama prior to the re-injury, though he was limited to a rollout-heavy, dink-and-dunk gameplan. The sack itself found Nussmeier unwisely backpedalling to escape a pass rusher in the red zone as if he thought he was Michael Vick; it came not long after he had his helmet ripped off at the end of a scramble.

It’s likely that Nussmeier’s oblique injury came and went throughout last autumn and responded to the “medication” Kelly’s staff gave him. But the injury made Nussmeier look like a chump and nerfed an LSU offense already plagued by inexperienced offensive linemen and titanium-handed receivers. Kelly’s rosy appraisals of Nussmeier’s health shifted blame for LSU losses to Nussmeier, exposing him to some unfair criticism and impacting draftnik opinions. Everyone knows Kelly is an S-tier asshole, but he helpfully finds new ways to remind us.

Nussmeier participated in Senior Bowl week practices. He played well in the game itself. He received lots of “stock rising” notice. His “stock” probably did “rise,” simply because he demonstrated that he was healthy again.

Nussmeier did not really stand out from a crowd that included prospects like Baylor’s Sawyer Robinson and Illinois’ Luke Altmyer. The “rising” reports quieted quickly. They were probably examples of saying nice things about a famous player during the overture of a draft cycle.

It’s tempting to erase 2025 from Nussmeier’s portfolio due to the oblique injury and evaluate him exclusively off his 2024 performance.

The problem is that Nussmeier carried some deficiencies over from 2024 to 2025 that cannot be explained away by the injury.

Nussmeier threw 12 interceptions in 2024, a high total for a draftable quarterback. Many of them looked like Jameis Winston interceptions: defenders are not real, I can just throw footballs right through them, double coverage is a media hoax. There was one interception against Baylor in 2024 where I swear that Nussmeier saw a yellow helmet and just got confused which team was which.

Nussmeier displayed the same traits in 2025. He threw into traffic. He threw late to the boundaries. His interception total may have dropped a bit because he knew he wasn’t 100% and didn’t want to try anything too zany. He’s not an outstanding processor and decision maker. Given his ordinary size, mobility and so forth, he needs to be.

Winston makes an interesting upside NFL comp for Nussmeier. Winston is a bigger dude, but their arms and mobility aren’t that different, and their college careers would have looked similar if Nussmeier was healthy and the LSU line did not disintegrate in 2025.

Matt Barkley may be a better comp. Barkley was roughly Nussmeier-shaped and interception-prone. He appeared to be rising toward first-round status at USC before a rough senior season. Barkley became a priority NFL backup for years. He was known for making things happen when he entered the game, for better or for worse.

Nussmeier, of course, is the son of the Saints offensive coordinator. He’ll get extra chances from the NFL coaching fraternity. His grew-up-around-the-game status will help him quickly adapt to NFL culture and thrive in the backup quarterback ecosystem of film rooms and minicamps. He could end up kicking around the NFL for over a decade. He’ll probably do fine in spot starts. I would draft Nussmeier in the fourth or fifth round to quietly back up some young superstar.

In this draft class, that’s a ringing endorsement.

A BRIEF CODA: I wrote this feature not just to discuss Nussmeier but the difficulties of teasing out something as simple as injury information in the college football landscape. It’s getting harder to get straight answers and accurate details about even the famous prospects. It’s frustrating. It makes my job harder. And while it may make life easier for some archduke-like NCAA coaches, it does no favors to the players.