LSU football plans to play both Garrett Nussmeier, Michael Van Buren at QB vs Arkansas
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BATON ROUGE — LSU football will continue to use a two-quarterback system, at least for now.
Interim head football coach Frank Wilson told reporters during his weekly press conference Monday that both senior Garrett Nussmeier and sophomore Michael Van Buren will play against Arkansas inside Tiger Stadium on Saturday (11:45 a.m. CT, SEC Network).
Both played in the Tigers’ 20-9 loss at Alabama last weekend.
WHY GARRETT NUSSMEIER WAS BENCHED, MICHAEL VAN BUREN PLAYED VS ALABAMA
“As of now, nothing has drastically changed in our we have flowed,” Wilson said. “Like last week, I will say to you, we’re going to use everything that we have and both of those guys will play in this game moving forward.”
The moving forward suggests that Wilson, offensive playcaller Alex Atkins and interim quarterbacks coach Tim Rattay could be considering utilizing a two-quarterback system for the foreseeable future.
“We’re not out on anything. They both brought something to the table that helps this team, they both have things they need to continue to work on as well,” Wilson said. “I don’t think it’s a clear separation where one is beyond the other. We’ll need both of them.”
As far as who starts, the staff hasn’t settled on who that’ll be according to Wilson. He told reporters Monday that Nussmeier will enter this week as the quarterback to get reps with the first-team at practice Tuesday. It’s unclear on when coaches will decide who takes the first snap against Arkansas Saturday.
Against Alabama, Nussmeier started the game and finished an efficient 18 for 21 for 121 yards. But, at times, missed open receivers and made some mistakes in scrambling and offensive operation.
Van Buren relieved Nussmeier with less than 7:00 left in the third quarter and went 5 of 11 for 52 yards and had six rushes for 1 yard. Neither quarterback led a touchdown-scoring drive and execution inside the red zone was poor from both quarterbacks.
“I thought of both of them did some good things, I thought both of those guys did things that need to be improved upon,” Wilson said on both signal callers’ performances against the Crimson Tide. “I thought Garrett at times was spectacular. He started off red-hot and did some really good things for us. I felt at the back end we needed a spark and something to get us going and add another dimension to our game. I thought Michael stepped in and gave those things to us.”
Cory Diaz covers the LSU Tigers for The Daily Advertiser as part of the USA TODAY Network. Follow his Tigers coverage on Twitter: @ByCoryDiaz. Got questions regarding LSU athletics? Send them to Cory Diaz at bdiaz@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Lafayette Daily Advertiser: LSU to play both Garrett Nussmeier, Michael Van Buren vs Arkansas
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