With LSU’s trip to Ole Miss hanging over a questionable quarterback situation, the Tigers suddenly find themselves leaning on the kind of depth most programs would love to have. Sam Leavitt was listed as doubtful in Wednesday night’s SEC availability report, and if he can’t go for Saturday night’s top-10 matchup, LSU’s answer sits one layer deeper on the depth chart.
Leavitt’s status has been clouded by what 247Sports described as “soreness” and “spasms.” Under SEC terminology, doubtful means a player is “unlikely to play due to significant concerns,” which translates to roughly a 25 percent chance of suiting up. That leaves LSU in position to turn to one of two transfers who entered the program with very different resumes but both carry real upside.
The first name up is Landen Clark, the junior from Elon who spent the offseason battling Husan Longstreet for the backup job. Clark may have come in with the least buzz of LSU’s three quarterback additions, but he’s already shown enough to make the staff comfortable.
An unranked high school recruit who landed at the FCS level, Clark put together a strong season at Elon, completing 56.0% of his passes for 2,321 yards, 18 touchdowns and eight interceptions. He also ran for 614 yards and 11 scores, then earned the 2025 CAA Co-Offensive Rookie of the Year after helping Elon finish 6-6 overall and 4-4 in conference play.
“He was young and playing on that level, but what you saw was explosiveness as a playmaker,” one Group of Six general manager told 247Sports' Chris Hummer. “Not only with his feet, but in the pass game, too.
He's super twitched up, can make all the throws. It's natural.
Strong arm.”
Clark entered Week 1 as the third-stringer, but when the Clemson game got out of hand, he checked in before Longstreet and handled himself well. He completed five of seven passes for 72 yards and a touchdown, and that performance appears to have earned him the first look if Leavitt is unavailable against Ole Miss.
Then there’s Longstreet, the sophomore with the bigger name and, arguably, the bigger ceiling. A former five-star recruit and the No. 4 quarterback in the 2025 signing class, per 247Sports, Longstreet transferred from USC to LSU in the offseason to develop under Kiffin and has been viewed as the future of the position in Baton Rouge.
It was a little surprising that Longstreet stayed on the sideline when Leavitt left the Clemson game, though he eventually got a brief chance once Clark was pulled. He completed his lone pass for 33 yards in Week 1 and did not play in LSU’s 45-14 win over Louisiana Tech in Week 2.
Longstreet brings dual-threat ability and a high-end talent level that has drawn serious praise. Coming out of high school, 247Sports Director of Scouting Andrew Ivins projected him as a potential first-round pick in the NFL Draft and compared him to former South Carolina quarterback Spencer Rattler.
So if LSU does have to dip all the way to its third-string quarterback in Oxford, the Tigers may still feel better than most teams would in that spot.
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