{"id":212067,"date":"2025-07-16T17:15:13","date_gmt":"2025-07-16T17:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/212067\/"},"modified":"2025-07-16T17:15:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-16T17:15:13","slug":"lsu-lands-at-no-4-in-usa-todays-sec-preseason-rankings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/212067\/","title":{"rendered":"LSU lands at No. 4 in USA Today\u2019s SEC preseason rankings"},"content":{"rendered":"

With training camp just around the corner, the anticipation for the 2025 college football season continues to build \u2014 and expectations remain high in Baton Rouge. USA Today released its preseason SEC rankings this week, and LSU<\/a> checked in at No. 4, behind Texas, Georgia and Alabama.<\/p>\n

For head coach Brian Kelly<\/a>, now in his fourth season at LSU, the goal is clear: get into the College Football Playoff and make a deep run. The Tigers were on the outside looking in last year with a 9-win campaign, and now they return one of the SEC\u2019s most experienced quarterbacks in Garrett Nussmeier<\/a>, who\u2019s poised for a big year after a breakout 2024 season.<\/p>\n

Offensively, Nussmeier leads a group that showed its explosiveness last fall, but LSU\u2019s ceiling in 2025 may be determined by its improvement on the other side of the ball. After struggling with consistency on defense a year ago, Kelly and his staff addressed that unit heavily in the transfer portal, including multiple players expected to make an immediate impact.<\/p>\n

The Tigers open the season with a marquee matchup at Clemson, a game that could shape the national perception of this LSU team early on. Kelly said reminders of the task ahead are everywhere, quite literally.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you go through our weight room, we\u2019ve got a Clemson paw print on the bags that we hit every day. It\u2019s on every monitor in the building to go 1-0,\u201d he said at SEC Media Days<\/a>. \u201cI think it was important to have a tangible, specific goal for us to start the season. And I think it\u2019s important\u2014our kids want that. They can taste it.\u201d<\/p>\n

USA Today tabbed Texas as the preseason No. 1 team in the conference as Arch Manning<\/a> steps into the starting quarterback role, while Georgia and Alabama round out the top three. Florida and Oklahoma followed LSU to close out the top six.<\/p>\n

Here is the full list of USA Today\u2019s 2025 SEC preseason rankings<\/a> in order:<\/p>\n

Texas<\/p>\n

Georgia<\/p>\n

Alabama<\/p>\n

LSU<\/p>\n

Florida<\/p>\n

Oklahoma<\/p>\n

Tennessee<\/p>\n

Ole Miss<\/p>\n

Texas A&M<\/p>\n

Missouri<\/p>\n

South Carolina<\/p>\n

Auburn<\/p>\n

Vanderbilt<\/p>\n

Arkansas<\/p>\n

Kentucky<\/p>\n

Mississippi State<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With training camp just around the corner, the anticipation for the 2025 college football season continues to build…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":212068,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7,7211,49,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-212067","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-lsu-tigers","10":"tag-ncaa","11":"tag-ncaa-football"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114864044412899137","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212067\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}