Despite struggling mightily on Saturday against Tennessee and being pulled for true freshman Treon Harris, Jeff Driskel will get the start against LSU this Saturday night, Will Muschamp confirms.
Part of this is because of the whole Treon Harris mess. But this wasn’t really a surprise to me, nor did the announcement really break any news. We first told you it would have happened regardless yesterday:
Got lots to share today regarding Treon Harris. The first thing is that Jeff Driskel would have started against LSU anyway. So there's that.
— InAllKindsOfWeather.com (@AllKindsWeather) October 7, 2014
Muschamp did say at his press conference that he was a little uncertain about starting Driskel again at first. But a source tells me that he would have eventually given Driskel one last shot due to his experience, and how he dealt with adversity the last time he faced LSU. Note that Muschamp said he was “uncertain”; all that means is that he would have thought twice before starting Driskel… before he would actually start Driskel, regardless of his horrid performance against Tennessee (not to mention Alabama).
But here’s where it gets fun. Without Treon Harris, the backup QB position will be battled out between Skyler Mornhinweg, who was just treated in the hospital for a cut lip as a result of a fight, and Will Grier, who just got cleared to practice after fighting back spasms. My obvious pick to win the backup job is Grier- we all saw Mornhinweg play last year, and it wasn’t pretty- which means that his redshirt may be burned.
Muschamp addressed that last topic directly, saying that “we were probably going to redshirt Grier last year, but now that’s off the table.” That basically means that, even though Grier technically has to beat Mornhinweg out first, Muschamp is planning on playing him should Driskel struggle. And given how much Driskel has struggled in recent weeks, it’s not too much of a stretch to think that he might struggle against LSU, too (even though the Bayou Bengals’ defense is pretty bad).
On the other hand, Les Miles has stated that he will not pick a starting quarterback today for Saturday’s Florida-LSU game. Both Brandon Harris and Anthony Jennings took lots of snaps with the first team.
We have MUCH more coming in the next couple days on all of this, so stay tuned. We’ll give you updates as they become available.
