BATON ROUGE — LSU football quarterback Garrett Nussmeier ranks tied for second in college football in passing touchdowns through the first five official weeks of the regular season.

The junior has surpassed 300 yards passing in three of the Tigers' first four games, including a season-high 352 yards in No. 13 LSU's 34-17 victory over UCLA Saturday inside Tiger Stadium. He's thrown for 1,247 yards and has completed more than 70% of his passes while only being sacked twice.

He was named the SEC's Offensive Player of the Week following his performance versus the Bruins. And while LSU coach Brian Kelly hasn't been surprised at Nussmeier's level of performance nor consistency, there has been one thing that has surprised him in the midst of his quarterback's impressive run.

"It's been a lot more pressure fronts than we expected," Kelly told reporters Monday during his weekly press conference. "We thought we'd get teams backing off by this time but they haven't seemed to have done that. Which has worked out pretty well for us, too."

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Despite how Nussmeier has been playing, defenses have continued to load the box more than than not during games, leaving receivers like Aaron Anderson, Kyren Lacy and C.J. Daniels contending with man coverage with a single-high safety.

That's been where LSU's passing game has thrived thus far this game. Nussmeier has lived in the intermediate pass game, throwing the ball just underneath zone coverages when LSU's offense gets it as well as the Tiger receivers winning their matchups on those particular plays.

Kelly said the scout team has "gotten with the realm of giving Garrett what to expect" during practice to prep him for opponents. But the coach also said that LSU is still having to spend a period of practice focusing on the running backs and run game contending with pressure fronts.

"From our perspective, it's even changed our thought process on preparation in that we have to take another segment in practice and have our run game focused on more pressures. If teams are going to continue to do that, we get our run game with even more hats handling that."

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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: Why Brian Kelly is surprised by defenses Garrett Nussmeier has seen