{"id":799509,"date":"2026-08-02T15:37:18","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T15:37:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/799509\/"},"modified":"2026-08-02T15:37:18","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T15:37:18","slug":"why-qb-sam-leavitt-can-lead-lsu-through-a-noisy-season-lsu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/799509\/","title":{"rendered":"Why QB Sam Leavitt can lead LSU through a noisy season | LSU"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tania Leavitt remembers when her son Sam<\/a> said, \u201cThis is the place.\u201d<\/p>\n

The current LSU quarterback thought his football home would be Michigan State. Tania, a retired fitness trainer, and Jared Leavitt, a former BYU linebacker who worked for Oracle, moved to East Lansing to be by their son\u2019s side for a year. They loved it there.<\/p>\n

Then there was a coaching change. Oregon State coach\u00a0Jonathan Smith<\/a>, who didn\u2019t recruit the Oregon native Leavitt out of high school, was Michigan State\u2019s hire and he was bringing his quarterback, Aidan Chiles, with him. The writing was on the wall.<\/p>\n

Leavitt traveled to Tempe, Arizona, and talked ball with Arizona State coach Kenny Dillingham and offensive coordinator Marcus Arroyo. Leavitt grew up studying X’s and O’s with a brother 10 years his elder, NFL safety Dallin Leavitt. By fourth grade, Sam was contesting his father\u2019s play calls during games.<\/p>\n

\u201cDad, they are running blah, blah, blah. Like, why are we doing that? That\u2019s not gonna work,\u201d Jared recalled Sam saying. \u201cHe was definitely looking at the game and trying to figure out what was our angle to win, how were we gonna score and the why.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lifelong film junkie clicked with Dillingham and Arroyo.<\/p>\n

Arizona State became his football home.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd it was phenomenal,\u201d Tania said. \u201cIt was, like, the best Cinderella story ever.\u201d<\/p>\n

The stands in Tempe filled as the Sun Devils flipped from 3-9 to 11-3 with a College Football Playoff run in 2024. It was a \u201cmagical\u201d two years, Tania said, even if the story ended with an injury-shortened 2025 campaign and consternation over Sam\u2019s absence from a team banquet before he entered the transfer portal.<\/p>\n

As LSU coach Lane Kiffin tried to explain after his exit from Ole Miss, two things can be true at once: A person can love one job, then decide another job is better.<\/p>\n

The quarterback he chose out of the transfer portal made a similar decision.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody gets down on these kids. They didn\u2019t create the system,\u201d said Tania, who tried her best not to doom-scroll social media after her son left Arizona State for LSU.<\/p>\n

In this unwieldy portal era, a highly ambitious athlete made another choice that satisfied his competitive instinct. Leavitt sees LSU as a place where he can train like a pro. He\u2019s been chasing the NFL longer than some considered reasonable.<\/p>\n

Ryan Paul, who trained both Leavitt brothers, remembers his first game of catch with sixth grader Sam, who spun the football with enough juice that it wasn\u2019t boring. He was a natural \u201cmover,\u201d blessed with more agility than his run-through-a-wall older brother.<\/p>\n

Supremely confident, Sam believed he was a future pro, just like his brother.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was like, ‘OK, you’re delusional,’ \u201d Paul said. \u201cBut the way things are looking, he’s not too delusional.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leavitt has always pushed himself. He grew up with a whiteboard in his room with the words, \u201cHow great do you want to be?\u201d He had alarm that would go off at 7 p.m. every day, reminding him to stretch and complete shoulder mobility exercises.<\/p>\n

He asked Paul, constantly, if he was working as hard as his older brother. It took a few years for him to get there, mostly because Paul had to remind the younger Leavitt that working hard didn\u2019t mean wildly \u201ccrashing out\u201d in every workout.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can be intense,\u201d Paul said, \u201cwithout going to a level where you’re gonna pop an aneurysm.\u201d<\/p>\n

His brain was worth preserving. Leavitt\u2019s coach at West Linn High School, Jon Eagle, admired his quarterback\u2019s unshakable confidence. He could follow frustrating interceptions with 80-yard touchdown drives.<\/p>\n

He lacked fear. Leavitt once rocketed a football 35 yards from one hash to the other, its flight path a steady 6 feet above the ground. No one was surprised when he completed it because Leavitt, a 70-percent passer, did this all the time.<\/p>\n

What sticks with Eagle most is how quickly Leavitt could count down from 100, subtracting seven every time: 100, 93, 86, 79, 72, 65, 58, 51, 44, 37, 30, 23, 16, 9, 2.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe can get that thing in under 10 seconds,\u201d said Eagle, who has long believed the quickest thinkers are the best quarterbacks.<\/p>\n

Leavitt absorbed Eagle\u2019s playbook with ease.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of kids need several reps of doing something before they get it. You could sit down in a meeting room 30 minutes before practice, and by the time we got out there, he would do it,\u201d said Eagle, who believes he was luckier to coach Leavitt than the other way around.<\/p>\n

He became a state champion before his prep career ended, but Leavitt had to bounce between states to claim it. He played his first season as a varsity starter in Utah because Oregon shuttered sports during the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n

He was sacked a handful of times in one game by Lone Peak edge rusher John Henry Daley, who has transferred from BYU to Utah to Michigan.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had good players,\u201d Jared said of his son\u2019s 6-5 Pleasant Grove squad, \u201cbut it was tough to go out there and get hit in the mouth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leavitt returned to Westview High School as a junior, fully understanding how hard it is to win. He wanted to grow as much as possible, so he inevitably transferred to West Linn as a senior to play for former NFL quarterback Chris Miller.<\/p>\n

But Miller took a pro coaching job before Leavitt arrived. Eagle swooped in, synched up with Leavitt and even convinced the aggressive playmaker to not run the ball in the regular season to preserve his body.<\/p>\n

When Leavitt was cut loose, West Linn went on a run and Eagle won his fourth state title.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s an SEC quarterback,\u201d Eagle said. \u201cHe might be an NFL quarterback.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eagle won\u2019t disparage Oregon State for not realizing this because sometimes \u201cyou\u2019re just not someone\u2019s flavor of ice cream.\u201d And sometimes you are before circumstances change.<\/p>\n

Leavitt thought he found a suitor in Washington State offensive coordinator Eric Morris. Then, just after Leavitt\u2019s visit to the Cougars, Morris took a head coaching job at North Texas. Morris is now at Oklahoma State.<\/p>\n

Leavitt landed at Michigan State and loved it. Then Oregon State\u2019s staff moved in.<\/p>\n

\u201cSam’s been through the wringer, man,\u201d Eagle said. \u201cPeople say all this stuff about kids moving. But look, coaches do it. Why can’t players do the same thing? They’re just trying to make the situation for themselves better. I don’t know how you can find fault in that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leavitt tried to explain as much during a recent LSU football women\u2019s clinic, calling Arizona State a \u201ccomfortable situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

He just wanted to \u201cdo something a little bit different.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou talk about being a pro, trying to become the best version of yourself,\u201d Leavitt said of LSU. \u201cThere\u2019s no other place to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

That touched off another round of bitter replies on social media, as anonymous accounts accused him of chasing money. Tania would remind them her son donated earnings from the sale of his Arizona State jersey back to the school\u2019s NIL collective.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe adults are the people who started this mess,\u201d Dillingham told local media after Leavitt\u2019s departure, referring to the transfer environment more broadly. \u201cThis is an adults problem, not a kids problem. I have nothing but love for Sam. I wanna see him succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The quarterback who will guide LSU through what\u2019s bound to be a noisy season, considering Lane Kiffin\u2019s exit from and looming return to Ole Miss, offered his mother sage advice on handling online criticism.<\/p>\n

He asked her to picture them walking down the road, with Tania slightly behind him.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou’re hearing everything people are saying about me. By the time we get to the end, you’re ready to fight. You’re angry,\u201d he said. \u201cYou know what? I got AirPods in. I got my Beats on. I don\u2019t hear a word. I don\u2019t care. So don\u2019t listen.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Kiffin can turn Leavitt into a dual-threat star like he did with transfers Jaxson Dart and Trinidad Chambliss at Ole Miss, the chatter should quiet.<\/p>\n

If LSU\u2019s investment in the No. 1 transfer class in America correlates to a playoff run, Leavitt\u2019s decision shouldn\u2019t be that hard to understand.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was an integral piece of getting Arizona State back to relevancy, and he could have stayed and they probably would have been just as competitive,\u201d Paul said, \u201cbut it wouldn’t be the same as this roster at LSU. There’s no way. They don\u2019t have the money.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leavitt made a choice, and he found a new football home.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a welcoming place. He\u2019s been deep sea fishing and duck hunting with LSU linebacker Whit Weeks. A local farmer has been providing Leavitt with fresh produce. He lives just around the corner from his offensive coordinator, Charlie Weis Jr.<\/p>\n

In offseason workouts, Leavitt has relished an opportunity to compete against preseason All-SEC talents such as Weeks and safety Ty Benefield, because he believes it\u2019s making him a better quarterback. Each and every day.<\/p>\n

LSU is just a little different, and it could be everything he wants and needs.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe wants to win,\u201d Tania said. \u201cHe just wants to be the best that he can be, for real.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tania Leavitt remembers when her son Sam said, \u201cThis is the place.\u201d The current LSU quarterback thought his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":799510,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,8803,398,396,397,99],"class_list":["post-799509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-football","tag-hardwall","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=799509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/799510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=799509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=799509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=799509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}