Even with LSU football’s confidence-restoring win over Vanderbilt, it was impossible to completely silence the drama that’s followed the program over the past few days, especially relating to the decommitment of the No. 1 overall recruit in the 2025 class, Bryce Underwood.
Underwood, a quarterback from Belleville, Michigan, dropped his commitment to the Tigers and flipped to Michigan amidst LSU’s three-game losing streak after months of the Wolverines publicly courting him with hefty NIL packages.
LSU head coach Brian Kelly and players spoke on the situation postgame, saying it didn’t affect the mentality of the team.
“Recruiting doesn’t mean a whole heck of a lot when you’re talking about your football team in the present,” Kelly said. “Yeah, you’re disappointed because you’ve put many, many years into recruiting, but it really didn’t affect the core of what we wanted to accomplish, and that was we wanted to finish this football game.”
When asked about Underwood, current LSU quarterback Garrett Nussmeier smiled before echoing what Kelly had said.
“We’re focused on who we got in the locker room, the guys that want to be here,” Nussmeier said. “At the end of the day, we want people that want to be here, that want to come play for coach Kelly, that want to come play for LSU, want to rep the purple and gold, that actually care about the three letters.”
“Obviously, kids have to make decisions that are best for them at the end of the day and, you know, best for their family and best for where they want to go in their life. And so I don’t think you can fault anybody for making that decision,” Nussmeier added.
Other players acknowledged that it was impossible for LSU to completely avoid the noise, not just about Underwood, but also the general criticism of the direction of the LSU program.
“We noticed it, of course, just like everybody else. It was all over social media,” sixth-year running back and team captain Josh Williams said. “We’d love to have (Underwood), but he has a choice to make his own decisions, and we got to live with that.”
Underwood would’ve been a potentially program-defining recruit for LSU, but the team remains focused on the present after losing out on the talented 17-year-old.