4. Danny Etling’s continued improvement
It seems as if Danny Etling has been in the college football ranks for about a decade, but it’s only been five years. In fact, he started his career in 2013 with Purdue, playing 13 total games with the Boilermakers in two seasons, passing for 2,490 yards, 16 touchdowns and 12 interceptions.
Moreover, his completion rate of about 55 percent wasn’t cutting it and he was potentially going to be out of a job. He decided to take his talents to Baton Rouge, hoping to have better luck with the SEC’s Tigers.
Etling sat out, per NCAA rules, in 2015 and then took over as the starter in 2016, playing 11 games and passing for 2,123 yards and 11 touchdowns with five picks. Here’s the kicker: he improved his completion rate by almost five whole percentage points. He improved just about every area of his game in just two years at LSU.
Now that Orgeron has officially named the senior quarterback the team’s starter for 2017, he can focus on improving yet again and bringing LSU’s passing offense back into the top-half of the nation. If he can throw for 250-plus yards per game, the Tigers will be tough to beat.