BATON ROUGE — All coaches don't know what to expect from their teams in the season opener.

Teams spent months practicing with players going against teammates with the same colored jersey, going through evaluation periods as well as scheme installs — all in attempts to out the best version of itself out onto the field when it kicks off a season.

For No. 12 LSU football leading up to its 2024 season opener in Las Vegas against No. 23 USC, there are plenty of unknowns about Brian Kelly's group as he enters his third season at the helm for the Tigers.

But Kelly said having junior Garrett Nussmeier taking over the offense as starting quarterback relieves some of the "uneasiness" that he may have about how the offense is going to look and perform.

"Having a quarterback that has been in the system for the last couple of years. that knows what it looks like, what its like to be in an SEC battle, and has played in a game against a pretty darn good defense, those things make you feel a little bit more at ease going into these games," Kelly told reporters Monday during his weekly press conference.

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In the current era of transfer portal and players being quick to leave a school to go elsewhere, Nussmeier has waited his turn to lead the Tigers at quarterback.

Nussmeier has worked with now offensive coordinator Joe Sloan since he's arrived on campus since he's also the quarterbacks coach. The junior signal caller is familiar with Sloan's approach and has a solid foundation of knowledge of LSU's offense.

When last season's Heisman Trophy winning quarterback Jayden Daniels opted out of the ReliaQuest Bowl, Nussmeier earned his first career start and led LSU to a 35-31 win over Wisconsin. He completed 31-of-45 passes for 395 yards with three touchdowns along with one interception.

For his career, Nussmeier has appeared in 18 games for the Tigers, throwing for 1,720 yards, 11 TDs and seven picks.

While LSU's new starting quarterback isn't new to the program, and the other guys in the locker room, there'll be a different level of expectation Kelly and Sloan will have of Nussmeier. His experience and development provides some easy but clarity only fully comes with time on the field.

"Openers are difficult, right? You practice so much — spring practice, preseason practice — then you got to flip it to performance. It's your first performance and you have to execute at a high level in your opener. I think every coach has that uneasiness in the opener because they don't know exactly what they're going to get when they flip that switch," Kelly said. "You hope that it's flawless execution.

"We're expecting much better execution with this group because of the maturity of the lot. With Garrett, he's been in games. He's started games, he's played four quarters. There's a better sense but we've got to play a little bit more football."

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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: How LSU QB Garrett Nussmeier brings ease to Brian Kelly ahead of USC