On July 9, 2022, LSU picked up a commitment from a linebacker out of Oconee County High in Watkinsville, Georgia.

At the time, while not a scrub by any means as a highly rated four-star, still, it was not the sort of recruiting headline that rattled Mike’s cage. Whit Weeks was not an obvious future star whose commitment immediately shot LSU ten spots up the rankings. He was a tough Georgia linebacker from a football family, the younger brother of LSU linebacker West Weeks, and the son of David Weeks, a former Georgia offensive lineman. LSU wanted him, he wanted LSU, and that was that.

Four years later, that July 9 commitment is looking as different as Weeks does in that uniform, especially when he committed to The Boot once again this past offseason, forgoing the NFL Draft and more, the portal.

Hard to believe this is what he once looked like:

Weeks is now one of the faces of LSU football, maybe the face, roaming the middle as leader of the defense, and the quintessential example of something Lane Kiffin’s new LSU machine still needs even in the age of NIL, the transfer portal, front office staffs, and yearly roster reconstruction. LSU’s own bio describes him as one of the nation’s top linebackers and a “coach” on the field. It also notes that LSU is 17-5 with him in the starting lineup, and that in 2025, West, Whit, and Zach Weeks made LSU history by becoming the first three brothers to appear on the field together during a defensive series.

It indeed was a wonder that he wasn’t on the PFF Top 50 player list we explored last week.

Weeks “In the Bayou”

Weeks appeared recently on Tyrann Mathieu’s “In the Bayou” podcast, and the conversation served as a useful reminder of why LSU fans took to him so quickly, and why it is truly a shame that fans don’t get to enjoy players like this for four years anymore. Mathieu opened by pointing to what everyone sees in Weeks: intensity, passion, and a football family background. Weeks traced it all back to his home.

“I think my dad instilled it in me from a young age,” Weeks said. “He was always our coach growing up, me and all my brothers. He was always way harder on us than anybody else.  If we weren’t hustling or if we weren’t giving as much effort as we possibly could, he was always gonna make us do twenty up-downs on the spot.

From there, Weeks reiterated that his father “kinda just instilled hard work in us” and “showed us that effort goes a long way.”

There are worse foundations for an eventual LSU linebacker. That is also why Weeks sounds less like a rented star from the portal and more like a player who genuinely feels that LSU is home. Asked why he fell in love with Louisiana, he said many of the same things you’ll hear others say, including Coach Lane Kiffin.

“For me, I always tell people it was the people, the place, and the football.” He remembered seeing Tiger Stadium for the first time while coming from the airport into Baton Rouge. “I mean, it just blew my mind. And I immediately was like, ‘That’s where I’m going.’”

“The culture down here, the food, the support we get from our fan base, from everybody in the building.” Weeks called LSU “second to none” and “a special place” with “a special feeling.”

It’s just different apparently, as the saying now goes.

In another era, that would all sound perfectly normal. A hard-working player commits, grows, plays, leads, and becomes identified with the school colors. Once upon a time it was an oddity to see that player, now moved on, decked out in the gear of his new NFL team.

In this era, what Weeks is doing is the anomaly. Mathieu asked him whether he had ever thought about entering the transfer portal, and Weeks’ answer was immediate.

“Nah, never once,” he said.

Mathieu pressed it again, and Weeks repeated it.

“Never once.”

Then came the key line: “I knew when I signed the papers to come here out of high school this was where I was gonna be.”

Weeks knows how that might sound in today’s day and age. Mathieu asked him about leading in a time when every year can feel like a new team. Weeks did not dodge it, saying, “Nowadays with the transfer portal, that’s kinda what you have to expect every single year. Every single year that I’ve been in college, it’s been a brand new team.  And I got a brand new group of friends every single year, because we’re bringing in 25, 30 guys a year in the portal.”

That is modern college football in one sentence—a lot of nameplates to change out in the locker room every spring.

Weeks is not naive to the necessity of the portal in modern college football. He knows NIL is here to stay, and knows LSU is going to add players from everywhere, every year, because that is the sport now. But when Mathieu asked about NIL and how players balance money with football, Weeks made the issue sound simple enough.

“I think it ultimately just comes down to your mindset and really your ‘why’ of why you play football. If you don’t really love it, once you get that money, you’ll show up to a summer workout when it’s 100 degrees out here and you’re running on the turf, and in the back of your mind you’re like, ‘I don’t wanna do this. I got the check, I don’t have to.’”

But Weeks said the right goal changes that, a goal he has one more year to achieve.

“I wanna be great at LSU, win the national championship, and then move on to the next level. If that’s really your goal and that’s what you have in your mind, then you’re not gonna let the money and everything else affect that.”

If those words are genuine, and we have no reason to believe they aren’t given how the man plays football, Weeks is truly a throwback to an era come and gone.

Still, despite the old school mentality, Weeks also sounded very much like a player willing to locate the chemistry hidden inside the roster turnover every year.

“I think the chemistry that Lane’s came in here and instilled, everybody picked up on it like that.”

That Kiffin-Weeks connection is one of the more interesting subplots around LSU now, partly because it runs through football, and partly because it runs through real life. Weeks is dating Kiffin’s daughter, Landry, which turned the coaching change into something a little more awkward and a little more funny than the usual.

Mathieu asked about it directly, and Weeks laughed into the weirdness of it all.

“Whenever me and Landry started dating, we would’ve never thought in a million years her dad would ever be my coach. Never, never in a million years. Then when BK got fired, I was like, ‘Holy smokes, like, Lane really could be the guy. Oh, my gosh, it’s probably gonna be Lane.’”

So what did he and Landry do?

“All right,” he said. “Whatever. Let’s go. Let’s roll with it.”

There may be no more modern college football sentence than that. You have to… just roll with it. You don’t have a choice.

Still, Weeks does not sound distracted by it. If anything, his view of Kiffin appears to be football-first.

“He’s focused on every little detail. He doesn’t cut any corner at all.” That includes what Kiffin expects from the players, but Weeks said the biggest thing that stood out was “the work that he expects out of his coaches and out of his staff.”

Weeks said LSU’s defense is already getting the benefit of practicing against the fastest-paced offense in the country, which should help prepare the Tigers for several fast-paced opponents on the schedule. But the bigger question on defense is whether LSU can become whole again, as ferocious as it was for many years under Saban and Miles, and to a lesser degree Orgeron.

That is where Weeks’ answer became maybe the heart of the entire interview.

Asked about his goals for the season, he did not give the usual pile of safe phrases. He went straight to the identity of the program.

“I wanna bring back that nasty defensive mentality down to the Bayou.”

He mentioned growing up watching Mathieu, Devin White, and Patrick Queen, and said teams used to fear those LSU defenses.

“That’s what I wanna bring back to this place. Teams turn on the film and they’re like, ‘Oh, shoot, we gotta go play these dudes on Saturday.’”

That is the quote.

That is the article.

And it very well may be a season worth remembering if the words in an interview can translate to the field.

The fix, Weeks said, is being “consistent in your work every single day,” especially “right now, in the summertime when the days are hot and long.”

That is the part of the season most fans forget. It is right now that the national championship in January is being won. Somewhere out there, champions are being forged in the fire of summer.

It also helps explain why Mathieu, whose Tigers lost in the 2011 title game in a rematch with Alabama, and one of the best defensive players LSU has ever produced, seems so drawn to who Weeks is. Mathieu told him plainly that he sees LSU football in the way Weeks plays, with passion, intensity, the want-to, the will.

Weeks does not bring much interest in style points either. He talked about one of LSU’s “get real” meetings, where players discuss life instead of football, and someone joked that Weeks had the worst drip on the team. His answer fit the whole interview.

“I’m not a guy that’s gonna put the drip on,” he said. “I don’t need that swag. My swag’s how I play football, not how I look while I’m playing football.”

Weeks seems to understand not just what LSU football and Louisiana mean, but what college football is supposed to mean when it is still rooted in a place. And the fact that he stayed in Baton Rouge shows that his commitment to The Boot went well beyond the recruiting graphic from July 9, 2022, where a fresh-faced No. 4 looked like a good prospect, but not yet like the wild-man, mustached captain who would one day roam the middle of LSU’s defense.

2022 was the promise.

2026 was the proof.

Weeks now gets one final season in Baton Rouge, one final run through the hot summer work, and one final collection of Saturdays in Death Valley he knows he only has a few more chances to cherish.

But more than that, he gets one final chance to make good on the line that should follow him into the season.

I wanna bring back that nasty defensive mentality down to the Bayou.

July 9, 2022. LSU did not just land a linebacker that day, not just another four-star recruit who didn’t pan out for this reason or that.

It landed a player who stayed long enough to become exactly what LSU needs now—a Tiger who understands the madness.