2021 NFL Draft: Terrace Marshall Jr., the other LSU wide receiver

Background

Marshall made his name as a top-shelf receiving prospect long before coming to LSU. Coming out of Bossier City, Louisiana, Marshall played at Parkway High School. He graduated in 2018 as the number one recruit out of Louisiana and the third-highest ranked receiver nationwide, according to 247 Sports. Listed at the time of his graduation at 6-foot-3, 209-pounds, it’s easy to see why Marshall had his pick of the litter when it came time to commit to a college.

Besides cutting his athletic teeth on the gridiron, Marshall also played a motley of other sports in high school, trying his hand out at basketball in the winter, football in the fall and track/field in the spring. No matter what sport Marshall was playing during high school, he received accolades doing it, earning himself the Shreveport Times Athlete of the Year award in 2017. He won the district high-jump championship his junior year and made All-City teams for both basketball and football in 2017.

Looking at his football accolades, it isn’t hard to understand why. In his sophomore season, Marshall brought in 53 receptions for 1,348 yards and 13 touchdowns. In basketball, he averaged 19-points a game. You don’t have to be a basketball or track analyst to realize that Marshall was a polymath when it came to sports, a potentially transcendent athlete who can adapt to any position he is playing. Now, remember this point because it’ll be important later.

Despite a gruesome broken leg and dislocated ankle halfway through his senior year, college recruiters had seen enough to know Marshall was a special prospect in the 2018 graduating class. Receiving an astounding 26 football scholarships, Marshall basically could have played anywhere in the country he chose. Despite this, Marshall chose to stay in-state, making the nearly four-hour journey south to Baton Rouge to play for the LSU Tigers.

Those injuries sustained in high school would end up throwing some cold water on his first season at LSU, limiting him during spring practices and the 2018 regular season. He would end up playing in nine games but he only finished the season with 12 receptions for 192 yards. But there was an understanding that this was not all Marshall could do and his sophomore season would show the world what he was capable of.

It just so happened that Marshall’s sophomore season was in 2019. This would be the year that a little-known quarterback named Joe Burrow and a talented offensive cast took LSU on a historical run, culminating in a College Football National Championship trophy to bookend an undefeated season for the ages.