Both articles are encouraging. But Jefferson needs to SHOW ME this season that he's a cerebral AND agile QB the way Flynn, Mauck and Rohan were before him. Those are the QB's we won championships with and even though those three are/were marginal NFL QB's talent-wise, they each led us to 3-4 of our greatest seasons at LSU this decade and possibly over the past 3 decades. Having a dual-threat QB is great. Everyone wants that type of QB for some reason. But talent alone isn't good enough at this level if you don't have the wherewithall.
I really wouldn't call JJ a duel threat QB IMO. He can get yeards when pushed out of the pocket but teams are not going to put much emphasis on stopping his scrambles.
To be fair, I don't think LSU's entire OFFENSE looked at home running the option most times last year. And also to be fair, Jefferson made some nice plays out of the option as well. I dunno. I like an offense that can mix it up. But I also like an unpredictable offense. And it just seemed to me that the option failed a lot last year because LSU was so damned predictable. Personnel and formation seemed to me to telegraph the play. Every time Shep was in the backfield it was a 90% chance he was going to run with the ball. He still had like a 7 yard average or something. But only because he broke a couple long ones. And bringing it back to tempo - all those different formations and personnel groups seem to also slow the tempo down. We'll see what changes this year.
Our offense was predictable last year, yes, but I also believe it had something to do with a still "green" QB in JJ. And that's not a hard knock on him--it's the truth. Crowton's offense never had to worry about being operated by such a young QB (and I don't think anyone can argue that RP, dispite his off-field problems was still physically better than JJ and RP had a redshirt season under his belt). This year is the make or break year for JJ. For better or worse. If he's making mistakes this year that are attributed mostly towards young QB's, then he just won't get it.
And I wanna know who classified him as such. He was not a "dual threat" recruit. He was a "pro style".
Jordan Jefferson - Yahoo! Sports See? And if you notice, he's mentioned as similar to Jacory Harris on that page. I know Harris gets all this press, but go look at his horrid stats from last season compared to JJs. Just can't believe that LSU fans can't see that JJ played well for a true sophomore last year. He held on to the ball too long, to be sure, resulting in a lot of sacks, which contributed a death blow to a bunch of drives. But to expect nothing to improve is silly, and otherwise, he had a good year.
