Winston Watkins Jr. didn’t just show up in LSU’s opener and light the place up. He arrived with months of work behind him, and that was the real story behind his breakout night.
The sophomore transfer from Ole Miss led LSU with seven catches for 110 yards and a touchdown in the Tigers’ 51-10 win over Clemson on Saturday. He also chipped in a 14-yard rush, hauled in gains of 20 and 22 yards, and found the end zone on a 32-yard score while averaging 15.7 yards per reception.
It was the kind of debut that grabs headlines fast. Watkins, though, made it clear the performance was built long before kickoff.
“Going into the game, I was very confident in our guys,” Watkins said after practice on Tuesday. “I felt like everybody out there was going to do their job and we were going to handle what we had to handle. And then we showcased that.”
LSU’s opener came with plenty of moving parts. Sam Leavitt stepped in as the quarterback after missing months of offseason work while recovering from foot surgery.
Dilin Jones, an upstart transfer running back, moved ahead of two returning rushers. In the receiver room, Watkins was part of a new-look group that also included Florida transfer Eugene Wilson III and Illinois transfer Malik Elzy.
Up front, Jordan Seaton and Aliou Bah settled in at left tackle and right guard, while Bo Bordelon made his second career start at left guard.
For a roster rebuilt under a first-year head coach and carrying national championship expectations, there was no shortage of reasons for the night to wobble. A lightning delay only added to the tension, and Leavitt’s interception on the opening drive seemed to give the doubters an early boost. Instead, LSU ripped off 51 unanswered points in one of the most memorable season openers in Tiger Stadium history.
Watkins said that kind of response comes from the way Kiffin and his staff prepare the team.
“When we go into the game, he makes sure that we know every answer to every question on the test, so when we get into the game time, now it’s time to have fun because we already prepared all these weeks and all this time and all these walkthroughs and all these meetings to go out there and have our fun and showcase our talents,” Watkins said. “Now we get to play basketball.
Now we get to do the fire extinguisher thing, and now it looks good. But we’re putting it all together with our preparation.”
That preparation mattered even more given everything swirling around the program before Kiffin’s LSU debut. Lawsuits and court rulings dominated the week’s headlines, leaving outsiders to wonder how the team would handle the noise. Watkins said distractions don’t get much traction with him.
“I don’t pay attention to it cause I love football that much,” he said. “I want to be able to leave an impact in football and show that I’m one of the best that’s ever done it.”
He also pointed to the work LSU gets every day in practice. Having faced Georgia, Oklahoma and Miami last season at Ole Miss, Watkins said he knows what elite defenses look like, and he believes LSU’s unit fits that description.
“We got guys all over the place on defense that’s going to help us go wherever we need to go at the end of the season,” Watkins said. “If we struggled to practice in fall camp, I really didn’t take it as struggling. I took it as we’re competing with one of the best defenses.”
That assessment held up on Saturday. LSU’s defense, the “Bayou Bandits,” held Clemson to 145 yards and eight first downs.
Clemson didn’t cross the 50-yard line until its final drive, when it also produced its only touchdown against mostly LSU backups. It was the only Clemson possession of the 13 that lasted longer than five plays, and the Tigers went 1-of-13 on third down.
While the defense smothered Clemson, LSU’s offense rolled to 644 yards and a program-record 38 first downs. The Tigers threw for 335 yards and ran for 309, with Leavitt finishing 16 of 28 for 230 yards, one touchdown and one interception. Watkins said the passing game is only scratching the surface.
“We just got to keep jelling together and getting the timing together and keep working with Sam because at the end of the day when you have that relationship with your quarterback to the receivers, it’s always going to keep getting better and better,” he said. “That was our first game.
We played a really good game, but at the end of the day, we had so much more room to grow. We left a lot of meat on the bone out there.”
LSU now turns to an in-state matchup with Louisiana Tech, a Sun Belt Conference team that sits between Clemson and a return trip to Ole Miss for Kiffin, Watkins and the former Rebels now in Baton Rouge. Watkins said there’s no looking ahead.
“We’re not even worried about Ole Miss right now,” he said. “We’re only focused on Louisiana Tech right now.
We take every day one step at a time and just go 1-0 every day. We had a very good practice today.
I feel like everybody’s locked in, focused.”
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