Only a handful of the players on this season’s LSU football team experienced the Tigers’ third and most recent national championship in 2007.
Senior offensive lineman Will Blackwell, honored this week as the Southeastern Conference’s Offensive Lineman of the Week, was one of those Tigers. He said he still uses that season as inspiration.
Blackwell redshirted in his first season at LSU and witnessed the Tigers’ run at the national championship, which he noted as his favorite LSU memory to date.
“Just being around those guys and being on that team and seeing how they handled success, it really motivated me to be one of those people,” Blackwell said.
The West Monroe native played in all but one game with no starts during his redshirt freshman and sophomore seasons, primarily contributing on special teams and at times on the offensive line.
Blackwell earned the starting job at right guard before his junior season, but he suffered a broken ankle on LSU’s first play from scrimmage in the season opener against North Carolina. He missed nine games before returning for the Ole Miss game and got his second career start in the Cotton Bowl against Texas A&M.
Blackwell was once again named the starter at guard before this season, in which he has impacted a deep LSU offensive line with a team-leading 650 snaps played and 95.5 knockdowns.
“We’ve finally gotten to a point where we have a lot of depth,” Blackwell said. “We’ve had guys get banged up, and young guys have been able to just set up and players.”
Blackwell deflected praise to the running backs, whom he said have run hard on every play.
“The most important thing about those guys is that they want to get those yards for the rest of the team and they don’t care about the individual awards,” Blackwell said.
The fifth-year Tiger will be honored Friday in LSU’s pregame Senior Day ceremonies but said he won’t reflect much on his college career until after the season.
“It’s bittersweet, and we’ve been through a lot, but we’ve still got a lot of work left to do,” Blackwell said. “It’ll just make this experience so much better if we can finish out these last three games like we want to, and it all starts with a good game against Arkansas on