Even the most cynical LSU supporter, roughly one-third of the fan base, has to finally admit their team has the ability to compete with and beat anyone on the schedule.

I ran into my fair share of critics this offseason when I echoed that sentiment on numerous articles and radio appearances. The crux of my argument centered on the opinion that LSU not only is top to bottom the most talented team in a conference full of them, but also separates itself by being able to control both lines of scrimmage with players we’ll be rooting for on Sundays very soon.

But despite my preaching of how the Tigers had the league’s most talented offensive line, or how “Defensive Back University” has the premier safety duo, a great many still thought the Tigers were in a race for last place in the SEC West.

Less talented teams like Arkansas were placed in high regard despite losing several significant impact players along the line of scrimmage. But while I expected most media wouldn’t understand what the Tigers had, as surface knowledge seems to be what most draw from, it was the Purple & Gold faithful who seemed to be the least convinced — especially when I wrote that potential starting quarterback Brandon Harris could lead the most explosive offense in the SEC.

But not anymore.

The Tigers are rolling behind that ferocious line, and Harris is leading the most explosive offense in the conference, but there’s still room to grow for one of the league’s youngest squads.

But anyone who operated under the pretense that “LSU has no QB” should remain as quiet as a church on Tuesday because Harris is doing work.

Offensive coordinator Cam Cameron deserves the lion’s share of the praise as he slowly integrated Harris into the offense while scheming concepts to build his confidence. Obviously it doesn’t hurt that LSU’s ground game is the very best in the business, but we’ve seen plenty of QBs forced into uncomfortable situations even with the crutch of a potent rushing attack.

The one-two receiver punch of Malachi Dupre and Travin Dural have been feeding corners a steady dose of Slants, Digs, Overs, Outs and Corners while proving it will take a Herculean effort to remotely slow them down. But it’s been Harris’ accuracy, mostly inside the pocket, that has ensured the rhythm-and-timing portion of the scheme stays on schedule.

HarrisLevels

Here’s Harris executing one of my favorite passing concepts: Levels.

When you want to take a great deal of the guesswork out of QB reads, it’s best to take a more formulaic approach. The Levels concept provides multiple reads in the same area that are at different positions of the formation, making it easy as one, two, three.

Here we see Harris, with an extremely clean pocket against one of the best lines in the conference, reading Regular to Lucy and finding the third read in his progression, a Square-In by Dural, in the void of the combo coverage.

HarristoDuralCrosser

Cameron has also done a great job of integrating man-coverage destroyers in form of Crossers, which works really well with the type of athletes the Tigers have at receiver — as seen in the above sequence.

Harris has steadily improved his mechanics, which has helped his accuracy in the quick and mid-range passing game. We already knew he could toss deep with the best of them, but now he’s starting to show us the entire package.

Everything appears to be peaking at the right time with the Bengal Tigers.