LSU Football: How Max Johnson has displayed unreal confidence since high school

LSU football sophomore quarterback Max Johnson has unreal confidence.

We’ve seen it recently with the way he gets his teammates fired up.

We’ve also seen it in the way Johnson talks about playing ping pong.

Tigers offensive lineman Ed Ingram talked earlier this month about the ping pong tournaments that Johnson regularly holds. According to Ingram, Johnson isn’t afraid to challenge anyone on the LSU roster — he’s that confident in his ability to win (that reminds us of a Joe Burrow story — another Tigers quarterback with unreal confidence).

Max Johnson has always been an extremely confident person

Johnson didn’t just suddenly become a confident person when he arrived in Baton Rouge. He’s always been this way.

The Athletic’s Brody Miller recently took a deep dive into what makes Johnson tick. And he retold an incredible story about Johnson telling his high school football coach that the team was going to win a state championship.

This is notable because, at the time, Johnson’s high school football team wasn’t expected to be very good. The program had lost some key players and the focus wasn’t on winning a state championship.

According to Miller, Johnson’s high school started the season 13-1 and made a miraculous run to the state championship. They lost in the state championship. But that doesn’t really matter — they came closer to winning it than anyone thought they would.

Except for Johnson, of course. He believed. And that belief is what propelled his team to nearly pull off a miracle.

That’s the type of confidence a head coach loves to have on the field. There’s a reason Johnson is the starter this season, and it’s not just because of Myles Brennan’s arm injury — it’s because Johnson is elite in nearly every way.