LSU fans can finally exhale. After a long offseason of uncertainty around Sam Leavitt’s foot, head coach Lane Kiffin has confirmed his new starting quarterback is fully cleared for fall camp, closing out a recovery storyline that’s been building since the spring.

According to Zack Nagy of Geaux247, Leavitt is officially back at full strength, with no restrictions heading into camp.

“He’s in really good shape,” Kiffin said.  “He’s really been grinding in there.”

That confirmation caps a recovery arc that started with real concern. Leavitt suffered a Lisfranc fracture in his right foot in October 2025 following a 24-16 loss to Houston, an injury that limited him to just seven starts that season for Arizona State despite 15 touchdowns across those games. He tried to play through it for several weeks before the Sun Devils ultimately shut him down for surgery in November. A second procedure followed in April, this one to remove the pins and hardware left over from the first operation.

That second surgery is what kept him sidelined through most of LSU’s spring practice, limited to crutches and unable to take part in full team drills. With running and leg work off the table entirely, Leavitt and LSU’s training staff shifted focus to upper-body conditioning and nutrition instead, a plan that’s added steady muscle to his frame over the spring and summer without the benefit of any leg training at all.

Kiffin made clear this wasn’t a gamble he stumbled into blindly.

“When we decided to take Sam, part of that was having to realize he was not going to be there for the spring, and that would have a certain feeling during spring,” Kiffin said.

The bigger worry, whether the injury had cost Leavitt his mobility, has already been put to rest too. At SEC Media Days, Kiffin joked that Leavitt is back to throwing down windmill dunks on the basketball court, and said his own focus has shifted entirely away from health concerns and onto something more ordinary: getting a new quarterback comfortable inside LSU’s offense.

“I’m not worried about the health, I’m just concerned, like I would be with any first-time quarterback, about his transition with us and getting used to us,” Kiffin told ESPN. “Game day with the guy, experience matters.”

There was some noise recently about Leavitt not being selected to represent LSU at SEC Media Days, but that decision traced back to his own choice to stay in Baton Rouge and run player-led practices with his teammates instead.

Leavitt’s snub from Media Days is apparently part of Kiffin’s long-term plan

That extra time in Baton Rouge is already paying off in how his new teammates talk about him. Linebacker Whit Weeks didn’t hold back when comparing Leavitt to LSU’s past quarterbacks.

“I’ve seen a lot of great quarterbacks in my time,” Weeks told ESPN. “My freshman year, Jayden [Daniels] was our quarterback, and Sam’s up there with all of them. I mean that, dude, and I haven’t even seen him really take off yet. I’ve just seen him be throwing the football, and that dude can spin it. He’s putting the ball in the tightest windows.”

Leavitt arrives with real production behind that praise. As a redshirt freshman at Arizona State in 2024, he threw for 2,885 yards and 24 touchdowns against just six interceptions, added 433 rushing yards and five scores on the ground, and set the program’s freshman total-offense record with 3,328 combined yards, leading the Sun Devils to a Big 12 title and their first College Football Playoff appearance.

With his health no longer the question, the bigger challenge in front of him is mental rather than physical. Because he missed live 11-on-11 reps all spring, Leavitt has to use this month of fall camp to catch up on Kiffin’s fast-tempo playbook in a compressed timeline most new starters don’t have to manage.

There isn’t much room to ease into it. LSU opens its season against Clemson on September 5, giving Leavitt roughly a month to turn a fully healed foot and a full training camp into readiness for a Playoff-caliber opener.