LSU Football Does Not Name Starting Quarterback 'For Tactical Advantage' Vs. Florida State, Coach Brian Kelly Says

BATON ROUGE - LSU football coach Brian Kelly opted for mystery at his first game week press conference with the Tigers on Monday.

Kelly will not publicly name a starting quarterback going into his debut as LSU's coach against Florida State (1-0) at 7:30 p.m. eastern Sunday at the Superdome in New Orleans on ABC. The Seminoles defeated Duquesne, 47-7, on Saturday.

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"We've made a decision, but I'm not going to announce it publicly," Kelly said in the question-and-answer session of his press conference in the Lawton Room of Tiger Stadium. "Certainly, everybody here wants to know who the quarterback is. I get that. But I think it's a tactical advantage for us not to announce it. So, I'm going to hold that announcement. Look, Florida State played a game. That's an advantage for them. The advantage we have is we haven't played."

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Kelly did previously narrow the decision to two quarterbacks - junior transfer Jayden Daniels, a three-season starter at Arizona State from 2019-21, and redshirt freshman Garrett Nussmeier, who played briefly last season for the Tigers. The plan is to red-shirt freshman signee Walker Howard, if possible.

"It doesn't help us to give up any of our cards in that sense," Kelly said. "So, we're going to hold onto that card until game day," Kelly said.

Kelly left Notre Dame, where he had been the head coach since 2010, to become LSU's coach following the 2021 season.

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Guilbeau joined OutKick as an SEC columnist in September of 2021 after covering LSU and the Saints for 17 years at USA TODAY Louisiana. He has been a national columnist/feature writer since the summer of 2022, covering college football, basketball and baseball with some NFL, NBA, MLB, TV and Movies and general assignment, including hot dog taste tests. A New Orleans native and Mizzou graduate, he has consistently won Associated Press Sports Editors (APSE) and Football Writers Association of America (FWAA) awards since covering Alabama and Auburn at the Mobile Press-Register (1993-98) and LSU and the Saints at the Baton Rouge Advocate (1998-2004). In 2021, Guilbeau won an FWAA 1st for a game feature, placed in APSE Beat Writing, Breaking News and Explanatory, and won Beat Writer of the Year from the Louisiana Sports Writers Association (LSWA). He won an FWAA columnist 1st in 2017 and was FWAA's top overall winner in 2016 with 1st in game story, 2nd in columns, and features honorable mention. Guilbeau completed a book in 2022 about LSU's five-time national champion coach - "Everything Matters In Baseball: The Skip Bertman Story" - that is available at www.acadianhouse.com, Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble outlets. He lives in Baton Rouge with his wife, the former Michelle Millhollon of Thibodaux who previously covered politics for the Baton Rouge Advocate and is a communications director.