PALMER: Johnson’s move to quarterback doesn’t help LSU

By Hunt Palmer

Ju’Juan Johnson finished his prep career as the most productive quarterback in the history of the state of Louisiana.

And he shouldn’t play quarterback for LSU.

The school’s official website now lists Johnson, who spent his first collegiate season as a safety and then at running back, as a quarterback.

It should feel natural for the Lafayette Christian product. He finished his high school career with 14,451 total yards and 171 touchdowns, both state records. He quarterbacked the Knights to four straight state title game appearances and won Mr. Football for his efforts in 2023.

Johnson is a tremendous athlete who proved as much when he moved from safety to running back and that same week made three catches for 16 yards and a touchdown against Nicholls.

Switching positions is one thing. Switching sides of the ball as a freshman and contributing is quite another. Johnson’s seamless transition was impressive.

But if moving from safety to running back is like moving from Baton Rouge to New York City, moving from anywhere to quarterback is like moving from Opelousas to Shanghai.

That’s why Johnson shouldn’t be making the move.

LSU’s numbers at quarterback dwindled when Colin Hurley was injured in a single car accident in January. While Hurley is away from the program, Garrett Nussmeier and Michael Van Buren are the only scholarship quarterbacks on the roster.

An NFL team would sign a third off the practice squad or the street. That’s an impossibility in college, so you have to add from within the roster. That means a walk on or a position move.

As far as natural talents go, Johnson makes the most sense. But it’s not that simple.

LSU has playoff aspirations. That much is clear.

Does Johnson help LSU reach those goals by playing safety/running back or by entering a game at quarterback in an emergency?

I’d struggle to find any team capable of making a championship run with a third team quarterback. The days of JaMarcus Russell, Matt Flynn and Ryan Perilloux sharing a locker room are over. Commonly teams have a projected starter and a younger player content to wait in the wings. That’s about it.

Third team quarterbacks don’t help.

Well, they do, but it’s on the scout team or out of an emergency that never ends well.

Jontre Kirklin threw for 7,500 yards in high school. He had a month to prepare to play quarterback in a bowl game and, until the last play of a 42-14 game, he had completed 6-of-10 passes for 57 yards. Now, that’s not apples-to-apples. LSU was playing with less than half the roster that night, but the point remains.

There are plenty of four and five-star Elite 11 quarterbacks who fail in college and plenty of dynamic athletes who quarterback high school teams and make a positional move at the next level. That list is years long at LSU—Early Doucet, Corey Webster, Reuben Randle, Kendell Beckwith, Spencer Ware, Russell Gage, and on and on.

None of those guys set the Louisiana high school yardage record, but their profiles mirror Johnson’s, and they were awesome in helping LSU win games at another position.

If Johnson runs the scout team and holds a clip board for 12 games, he’s being wasted for the off chance that LSU gets two quarterbacks hurt after another was involved in a car accident.

LSU has championship aspirations. Those go away when three quarterbacks leave the fold. And everyone understands that. You can play your Cardale Jones card (a guy that was always going to play quarterback in college), and I’ll play a century of other situations that looked far more like Kirklin or Anquon Boldin in the 2003 Sugar Bowl or Kendall Hinton quarterbacking the COVID-riddled Broncos against the Saints.

Plugging in an elite athlete as a roster placeholder hurts LSU’s chances of playing for championships. It doesn’t help.

Now, if Johnson is working at running back 80 percent of the time and taking a few snaps in some sort of package that involves his athleticism, I’m all in. Or if the staff has determined the safety and running back depth is significantly better than Johnson’s potential contributions, fine.

He just can’t waste a year standing on the sideline waiting on the worst-case scenario.