A mystery, and perhaps a not-to-secret one, was solved Thursday when LSU officially announced that quarterback Anthony Jennings has been granted a release.
The rumblings have been there for a while and the move makes sense, considering that the man Jennings lost the starting job to is still on campus, potentially for another two seasons as the starter.
Jennings was the starter in 2014, when the Tigers finished 8-5 and the passing offense began a troubling two-year downward spiral. He played in only two games last season once Brandon Harris grabbed the starting job and was conspicuously missing from the first few days of spring practice.
Now a once-promising career of another LSU quarterback has abruptly taken a detour, with Jennings set to graduate and finish up somewhere else.
“Anthony did a lot of really good things for our program,” Tigers coach Les Miles said in the requisite pat-on-the-back statement released by the school. “This is an opportunity for Anthony to put himself in a position to help another team have success. We wish him nothing but good fortune in the future and we appreciate all that he did while he was part of our program.”
In other words, it was abundantly clear to the top decision-maker that Jennings’ chance to help LSU win had left the harbor.
Is there somebody at obvious fault for that? Probably a shared responsibility between player and coaches, but it’s also partly because Jennings probably never was going to be a much different or better quarterback than he was as a sophomore.
That’s not meant to demean him in any way. Jennings is talented and athletics. In some systems and probably at a different level, Jennings may well have been a long-term solution. For what LSU needs now, though, Harris makes the most sense.
If first impressions had mattered as much as they normally do, Jennings might not be on his way out of Baton Rouge. His time at LSU began with an impressive bang, but one that turned out to be more flash-in-the-pan than steady progress.
Jennings – an Atlanta-area native who shined at prestigious Elite 11 camps and was recruited by several prominent programs – saw spot duty in several games as a true freshman in 2013, none bigger than the regular-season finale against Arkansas.
Starter Zach Mettenberger, the trigger man for one of the best offensive seasons in LSU history that fall, was knocked out with a knee injury in the fourth quarter, and when Jennings took the controls, the Tigers trailed 27-21.
LSU kicked a field goal on Jennings’ first series, then got the ball back at its 1 with 3:04 left in the game. Not exactly the stuff where you expect a freshman to become a legend.
Except Jennings did.
With Jennings hitting passes and using his legs effectively, the Tigers started marching downfield looking for a chance for a game-tying field goal. His 21-yard scamper flipped the field and got LSU into Arkansas territory, but the drive stalled and the Tigers faced third-and-10. Unfazed, Jennings diagnosed the Hogs’ defense beautifully and zipped a 49-yard pass to Travin Dural for a go-ahead touchdown instead of the field goal.
A star was born, it seemed. But the star lost its luster quickly and never really came close to that brightness again.
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