Sam Leavitt went from a quiet name on the injury list to the biggest mystery of the week. The starting quarterback was first tagged as doubtful, but his sudden return to practice on Thursday changed the whole mood. A big SEC game always brings heavy drama, but nobody expected an injury report to take center stage like this.
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LSU has upgraded Sam Leavitt from doubtful to questionable ahead of Saturday night’s heavyweight meeting with No. 8 Ole Miss, according to ESPN’s Pete Thamel. No. 7 LSU is heading to Oxford for Lane Kiffin’s first game back at his old home. And right now, everybody is watching the injury report almost as closely as the matchup itself.
The first report landed Wednesday night and caught plenty of people off guard. Sam Leavitt had played both LSU games this season and appeared healthy during the Tigers’ 45-14 win over Louisiana Tech. He was not publicly known to be dealing with an injury, and Lane Kiffin did not reveal anything about his QB’s health during his Monday press conference.
Then came the doubtful tag. Reports later indicated that Sam Leavitt was dealing with an upper-body issue and did not throw during Wednesday’s practice. The SEC considers a doubtful player to have roughly a 25% chance of playing.
Shea Dixon was waiting for Lane Kiffin to get the question during his radio show.
“He will certainly be asked about the status of QB Sam Leavitt,” he wrote before the show.
Then Lane Kiffin finished his appearance without saying a word about his QB.
“The QB position wasn’t brought up once,” Dixon followed up. “We now wait to see Sam Leavitt’s injury designation from the SEC later tonight.”
Thursday brought the first real movement. Sam Leavitt returned for a walkthrough, and the SEC subsequently changed his designation to questionable. That does not guarantee he will play. But it is a shift from where LSU stood one night earlier. And this change came after Mississippi State Auditor Shad White jumped into the conversation.
“If Sam Leavitt mysteriously goes from ‘doubtful’ to playing on Saturday, I will audit the entire state of Louisiana,” he wrote on X.
The questions did not stop with White. Fox Sports analyst RJ Young openly suggested that he expects Sam Leavitt to play and connected the situation to Lane Kiffin’s long-established reputation for keeping opponents guessing.
“I think this is Lane Kiffin doing what Lane Kiffin does,” he said. “He loves to play games. He loves to try to manipulate any advantage he can… I don’t trust Lane Kiffin. I don’t trust Lane Kiffin to tell me the truth. I don’t trust Lane Kiffin to do anything other than try to win a football game.”
Those are RJ Young’s speculations, not evidence that LSU is manipulating the report. The SEC rules prohibit teams from deliberately hiding a player’s true availability for competitive reasons. So the final determination will ultimately depend on whether the reported injury really aligns with Sam Leavitt’s condition.
Pete Thamel had already reported that the expectation was for Sam Leavitt to recover and start Saturday. On The Pat McAfee Show, he went as far as calling the situation “chicanery,” pointing to Lane Kiffin’s history with injury reports.
“I recall two times I believe that Lane Kiffin listed 26 different players on the injury report for a Kentucky game and I believe a Georgia game while he was at Ole Miss,” he said.
And now Sam Leavitt is questionable instead of doubtful. That leaves LSU with one more question to answer before kickoff. Is its starting QB actually heading back onto the field, or will this injury story take another turn before Saturday night?