Week 1 Reaction and Top 25 2023

Since the last blog…

Sometimes long weekends are the worst scenario.  It was basically Wednesday by the time I was able to review some of the things that went wrong during the LSU game. If I had waited to review all of them, I might have never written another blog.  Obviously I’m not a beat reporter in Baton Rouge, so I rely on public statements and coverage from the people who are based around the program.  That process was delayed by a day or more given that the game took place on Sunday night.  I did have Friday the 1st off, but nothing had happened yet.  I had decided to go out of town to a baseball game on Saturday, so I couldn’t write live reactions about the teams who played on Saturday. 

On Sunday, I barely made it back in time for the game, and then Mondays are workdays for me whether I go into work or not.  My bosses check to make sure I’ve made enough progress on Tuesday mornings, and I have the type of job where I always have to spend time preparing for the next day the night before anyway.  Unfortunately, I don’t just clock in and clock out without having to think about it until I clock in again.

LSU-Florida St. Reaction and Historical Comparisons

Anyway, I do feel a little good right now that at least I didn’t pick LSU to win the SEC West or make the playoff.  I’m not throwing in the towel though.  There have been teams with rough starts who ended up doing well in the SEC, but it’s pretty rare to be one of the top teams nationally.  Ohio St. got run out of their own stadium against Virginia Tech in the first week of September 2014 before winning the first College Football Playoff, but that’s kind of the exception that proves the rule.  

Also, the Buckeyes had two months before they had to play a major-conference opponent who would finish with 9 wins or more.  That was a long time to fix the issues in the Virginia Tech game, and there was even a close call against a Penn St. team (which would finish 7-6) in the interim.  I think LSU has a lot less time.  Mississippi St., LSU’s opponent a week from today, will win 9 games or more.

In Columbia on October 6, 2012, Marcus Lattimore gained as many yards on the ground (109) as Georgia QB Aaron Murray gained in the air. LSU handed South Carolina its first loss the following week. The Bulldogs would win the SEC East over the Gamecocks and the Gators.

A couple of years before that, Georgia got blown out by South Carolina, 35-7. in early October but came just a couple of yards short of beating Alabama to win the SEC and make the BCS championship game (which they most likely would have won given how easily the Tide handled Notre Dame).  I think that’s a more realistic example for LSU to hope to follow (possibly making the SEC title game and playing better than last year).  Georgia of course had to overcome that game to win the East whereas LSU’s loss to Florida St. does not count in the SEC standings.  Unlike the Ohio St. example, the Bulldogs’ next big game (in hindsight and at the time) was just a couple of games later against Florida, who would finish 11-2.  The only bad thing about following that Georgia example would be having to wait another 10 years to actually win a national championship. 

I’ll update the Florida St. rivalry blog another time, but it’s just crazy how cursed LSU seems to be in the series.  Of course, I still think LSU would have done quite well if they had played the Seminoles annually from about 2001 to 2019 (minus a couple of losses to Jameis, I suppose).

Thoughts on Brian Kelly

I said I’m not throwing in the towel on this season.  I’m also not throwing in the towel on Brian Kelly.  This was Kelly’s 15^th game.  Ed Orgeron lost to Troy in his 13^th game in charge (two weeks after a 30-point loss at Mississippi St. that I still argue was worse).  Les Miles lost his 12^th game by 20 to a Georgia team that finished 10-3.  Say what you will about Miles and Orgeron after the respective national championships, but no one was whining about it taking too long to get there at the end of 2007 (Miles’ third year) or 2019 (Orgeron’s third full year) seasons.  By the way, 2014 was Urban Meyer’s third year at Ohio St., and Nick Saban didn’t win his first at Alabama until his third year (he had taken four years to win one at LSU).  So even if it’s safe to assume a national championship is off the table already, I never thought it was a highly realistic goal for this year anyway.

LSU Head Coach Brian Kelly went on a bit of a rant at the end of his press conference on Tuesday.

Kelly can be a smooth talker, so I don’t always hold too much stock in his press conferences and whatnot, but I liked his rant at the end of his week-opening press conference.  I disagree somewhat with faulting the enthusiasm gap, but I think it was a good message to put out there, and it showed he took onboard many of the issues fans and media pointed out.

“I could go through a number of different situations.  We don’t get to the chains on third and 5… We’ve got a drop on third and 6 trying to get upfield… We’re 4^th and 1 and we’re trying to make a play instead of reading what the defender is giving you.  I could elaborate on defense.  We’re spinning down a safety[, and] he’s watching the quarterback.  We could have been more creative with play-calling.  We could have been better defensively and [made fewer] spy calls and [brought] more pressure.  I could attack the whole thing.  The bottom line is I’ve got to get our football team thinking the right way and play[ing] with a competitive edge.” 

I tried to clean up some of the grammar.  He usually speaks better than that, but I’ll forgive it.  I’ll accept some grammatical hiccups in exchange for his not sounding like a politician sometimes.

Other Results and Reactions

At least Kelly has been overshadowed somewhat by the hysterics about Dabo after Clemson’s loss to Duke.  My prediction of those Tigers being the team to beat in the ACC isn’t looking too good right now.  But that 2014 Virginia Tech team was in the ACC and ended up losing 6 games, 5 of them in conference, so we shouldn’t rush to any conclusions about that conference either.  Even if Clemson continues to disappoint, I might still be right that the ACC champion will have a good shot at the Playoff though.

If I were a betting man (sports betting is still illegal where I live anyway), I would have taken Colorado +20.5.  Although I did leave TCU ranked, I wasn’t very convinced they were going to be a competitive team this year.  Deion performed better than many more experienced coaches in getting a bunch of transfers and other new players to support each other and have the needed enthusiasm.  Whatever happens this season, he definitely did something right in preparing for Week 1.

Colorado head coach Deion Sanders confers with his son, S Shiloh Sanders, on Saturday in Ft. Worth. Sanders’ other son, Shadeur, threw for 510 yards in the upset win.

I don’t believe in making drastic changes after one week unless necessary, so I’m not dropping LSU and Clemson from the top 25.  TCU was low enough that they will drop out though.  I don’t really have the time and energy to re-work the whole thing even if I wanted to.  I don’t really have a long list of teams that were just outside of the top 25 either. 

I also wanted to put some of the conference talk into perspective.  South Carolina has a much lower status in the SEC than North Carolina has in the ACC.  The Tar Heels were the ACC runners-up in 2015 and 2022 and represented the conference in the post-2020 Orange Bowl.  They would have been #2 in the conference had Notre Dame not temporarily joined.  The Gamecocks have only made one SEC championship game, and that was back in 2010.  They have only won 8 games or more twice since the 2013 season.

Florida is obviously a more successful program in the big picture than Utah is, but the Gators lost 5 SEC games (and two other games) last season and 6 the season before, going 6-7 overall both seasons.  Utah went 10-4 in each of the last two seasons, winning the Pac-12 both years.  I know Florida beat Utah anyway last year, but you can’t expect the SEC to win every game like that.

LSU-Florida St. was the only game of the three that was an apples-to-apples comparison. 

It is interesting that the Pac-12 is disintegrating at the same the conference had the most successful Week 1; but other than Colorado, nothing is too impressive based on recent seasons.

I considered ranking Purdue in preseason, and Fresno St. beat the Boilermakers on the road. I thought it was good to make sure one team from outside of the major conferences (and Notre Dame) was included. I also considered Wyoming, which beat Texas Tech; but the Cowboys rarely sustain their early-season successes whereas Fresno St. is often one of the top teams in the Mountain West. I also take overtime wins with more of a grain of salt.

Top 25

Rank	Team	Last
1	Ohio St.	1
2	Georgia	2
3	Michigan	3
4	Alabama	4
5	Florida St.	11
6	Southern CA	7
7	Penn St.	8
8	Utah	9
9	Texas	10
10	Tennessee	12
11	Notre Dame	13
12	Ole Miss	14
13	Oregon	15
14	Duke	—
15	LSU	5
16	Clemson	6
17	Kansas St.	18
18	Washington	21
19	UCLA	16
20	N Carolina	—
21	Oregon St.	20
22	Mississippi St.	23
23	Pittsburgh	24
24	Fresno St.	—
25	Colorado	—

Out of Top 25: (17) TCU, (19) S. Carolina, (22) Boise St., (25) Texas Tech

Final Thoughts on Brian Kelly Going to LSU

Before I begin, I wanted to note I’ve updated my ratings in light of the Army-Navy game and recent FCS results.

I have gone into detail about how I understand the Brian Kelly hiring came about and why Notre Dame isn’t some horribly aggrieved party, but I haven’t really gone into what I think of the hire.

A lot of LSU fans were dismayed that we didn’t hire a 30-something offensive-minded coach who throws the ball around.  Everyone wants the next Sean McVay even though he’s only won three NFL playoff games in his life, and one was the controversial NFC championship game against the Saints.  Hunt Palmer, one of the LSU commentators I actually respect and listen to, said he’s “infatuated” with young coaches like that.  You can imagine what the people I hold in less esteem have been saying.  Basically, they think if you have a modern passing game, it doesn’t matter what kind of defense or line or player development or organization you have.

Are Dabo Swinney and Nick Saban really similar to McVay? Dabo was a young offensive-minded coach when he started, but he joined Clemson’s staff when McVay was 16 and became Clemson’s head coach when McVay was 22.  He was not some cutting-edge offensive wizard teaching all the old fogeys the error of their ways.  He was hired by Tommy Bowden after all.  Even if you still think Dabo is along the same lines as McVay, why aren’t Saban and Belichick, two older defensive coaches, better examples to follow?  Kelly was a defensive coach before was an offensive coach, by the way.  I’m not an NFL expert, but I’d also argue there are some possible analogies between Kelly and Andy Reid, who hadn’t won a Super Bowl as head coach before going to Kansas City.

For reasons I don’t quite understand, Los Angeles Rams head coach Sean McVay has been seen as the prototype hire in both college and professional football since being hired shortly before his 31st birthday in 2017.

I do accept that a national championship is an item missing from Kelly’s resume (McVay doesn’t have a Super Bowl title either), but let’s look at the other national championship coaches of the last 20 years and see if they’re better.  Larry Coker (2001) kept U. Miami going strong for two years but ran it into the ground after that.  Jim Tressel (2002) has been out of coaching since 2010 and won on another controversial interference call.  You know who Nick Saban (2003, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2017, and 2020) and Pete Carroll (2004) are, but they’re obviously not available, not to mention both being over 70.  Mack Brown (2005) has had mediocre results (and a six-year hiatus) since losing the BCS national championship to Alabama in 2009. 

As mentioned, I think being 30-40 is overrated, but that doesn’t mean we should hire someone over 70.  Urban Meyer (2006, 2008, and 2014) is coaching in Jacksonville and didn’t seem interested in any college job.  We gave Les Miles (2007) enough chances to try to bring back the magic of 2007 and 2011.  Not too unlike Brown, Chizik (2010), Fisher (2013), and Orgeron (2019) became mediocre fairly quickly after their respective championships, costing Chizik and Orgeron (respectively) their jobs within two years.  Fisher made a lateral move to Texas A&M, where, except for the COVID-shortened year, the mediocrity has continued.  More on Fisher in a moment.

Dabo (2016 and 2018) would have been the best choice among prior champions in my opinion, but he wasn’t coming either.  Obviously he’s still second to Saban among active college coaches, but I think rebuilding a program and seeing it through is the task of someone younger. 

That brings up another issue.  Some LSU fans apparently think we can just apply a couple of band-aids and 2019 will just emerge again.  You can’t win recruits over Alabama and Texas A&M and other regional rivals when you go .500 and can’t find a coordinator on either side.  Dave Aranda came to coach for Les Miles in 2016, but Orgeron showed no ability to find someone similar on either side of the ball (the defensive coordinator he hired in the offseason showed some promise in November but was either unready or over-supervised before).  Steve Ensminger did a good job with a field full of talent (and with the help of analyst Joe Brady in 2019); but again, he came from Miles’s staff, and there was no indication Orgeron could find someone similar.  Ensminger demoted himself to analyst going into this season.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, it was fortunate that Orgeron took over when he did and that as many Miles holdovers and Miles recruits stayed on as they did.  If it weren’t for the recruits that came after 2018 and 2019, there would be very little of value to hold onto.  It would be a rebuild similar to Saban’s rebuild of LSU in 2000.  Maybe someone like Mel Tucker would have been the next Saban (LSU hired Saban from the same school where Tucker works), but that would have been a gamble.  Tucker was paid very well to stay anyway.  It seems Notre Dame had no intention of paying Kelly anything similar to what the top coaches make now.

New LSU head coach Brian Kelly acknowledges the crowd at his welcoming festivities on November 30 in Baton Rouge.

I just really don’t see how LSU could have done any better.  I mentioned how I feel about Jimbo.  While I covered how I feel about coaches of similar background, I didn’t mention Lincoln Riley specifically.  Riley didn’t have to rebuild anything at Oklahoma.  He continued what Bob Stoops was already doing, and he even had Stoops there for support.  Imagine Saban had been at LSU since 2000, retired, and stayed on to help with the next coach.  His advice could have helped someone like Orgeron have a long, successful career with LSU.  Riley might do well at USC, but it’s really uncertain how he can do on his own when inheriting a 4-8 team rather than an 11-2 team as he did at Oklahoma.  He’s part of a series of young offensive-minded Trojan head coaches.  Even if he is successful, it won’t be proof that that’s a great model to follow. 

Riley did make the national semifinals in each of his first three seasons, but the fourth year is when it fully becomes your team.  There are still some players recruited by the previous staff, but at that point the old staff did little to develop those players, and they’re usually a small minority of those who are playing.  The Sooners started 1-2 last year and then went 1-2 against ranked teams this year.  The only reason they got the one win was due to how vastly overrated Texas was, and the Sooners needed a big comeback to even win that game.  They also struggled against Tulane, West Virginia, Kansas St., and Kansas.  Obviously, struggling to a 10-2 record is much better than what LSU has done for the last two years, so I wouldn’t have been upset with a Riley hire; but I would have deeper concerns than I do with Kelly.  Also, given the struggles with teams who were ranked, I don’t even know if Riley would have done better than Orgeron’s 2-5 record against ranked teams this year.  I also don’t know how he would handle facing six ranked teams in a row as LSU did.

Riley’s performance doesn’t compare to Kelly’s taking over a program that went 15-23 over its last 38 games and then winning 74% of his games over 12 seasons as Kelly did.  Even within his time there, Kelly was also on the upswing.  Rather than becoming less competitive, Notre Dame was becoming more competitive.  The Irish finished in top five of the College Football Playoff for the third time in four years and finished with double-digit wins for the fifth year in a row.  By contrast, Kelly had only had double-digit wins twice in his first seven years. 

In the 16 years before Kelly, there were only 2 seasons with double-digit wins (both with exactly 10 wins), by the way.  So I’m not saying we have to wait seven years before LSU is going to be nationally competitive on a regular basis.  In the last 16 years, by contrast, LSU has had 8 seasons with 10 or more wins and 5 seasons with 11 or more wins. 

Another line of thinking that bothered me was Kelly just not being a “good fit” with the “culture”.  That could mean a couple of different things, but neither one checks out.  If I were a USC fan, being consistent with the recent football culture would be a bad thing, and I feel the same way as an LSU fan.  I enjoyed some of the cartoonish aspects of Les Miles and Coach O, but it’s time for something a little more serious.  Kelly does seem a little warmer than Saban or Urban Meyer, but that isn’t saying much.  I think Fisher and Dabo are more likeable from the press conferences, but I don’t know how they compare behind the scenes.  Regardless of personality, I’d rather wins result from an organized plan than be a result of almost haphazard luck that Orgeron and Miles seemed to tap into. 

Let’s not pretend Les Miles or Nick Saban were comparing notes on gumbo and boudin recipes when they arrived at LSU either. Les was from Ohio and had coached college only in the Big Ten, Big 8, and Big XII.  A coastal person might think Saban being from West Virginia places him somewhere close to Louisiana culture, but I can assure you it does not.  Also, Saban (like Kelly) had spent nearly his whole coaching career in the Midwest before going to LSU (even the exceptions of West Virginia and Syracuse are both pretty close to Pennsylvania and Ohio).  Saban had also played college ball in the Midwest.

LSU athletic director Scott Woodward (pictured at his first press conference in April 2019) has not been afraid to make waves in his first 20 months on the job.

Another weird reaction was that based on age he’s not a typical Scott Woodward hire.  Woodward did hire baseball coach Jay Johnson, who is 44; but the first candidate he submitted to the board was Kevin O’Sullivan, who is almost 10 years older.  Another candidate who was widely reported as under consideration was Pat Casey, who is 62.  Men’s basketball coach Will Wade is young, but he was not hired by Woodward.  First-year women’s basketball coach Kim Mulkey is 59.  Mulkey comes off as more intense and less conservative than Kelly, but there is no reason to believe age limits either one.  At Texas A&M, Woodward hired Fisher, who was then 52 (reportedly, 4 years later, Fisher was Woodward’s first choice as LSU head coach). 

I think Woodward is more about extensive championship-level experience than age.  Fisher’s teams only played for one national championship (which the Seminoles won) as head coach, but he coached in the 2003 championship as offensive coordinator at LSU and contributed in both recruiting and development to the Tigers’ championship in 2007, which took place his first year away from Baton Rouge after he had been there seven years.  The Seminoles had also lost in the semifinals in 2014.  O’Sullivan coached in two national championships, winning one; and Casey and Mulkey had multiple national championships.  Woodward ultimately couldn’t get a championship baseball coach, but Johnson was the head coach of the National Runners-up in 2016 and returned to the College World Series last year. 

I do agree with some criticisms that it would be better if Kelly were a bit younger; but when Saban was hired at Alabama, he was only about 4 years younger than Kelly is now.  That was one of the best college football hires anyone has ever made.  I don’t expect Kelly to be one of the best hires ever made if we review the decision in 15 years (Alabama hired Saban after the 2006 season), but expecting anything better on paper is ridiculous.  It was also a good decision when LSU hired Saban 22 years ago, but he was young enough to be tempted into an NFL head coaching job 5 years later.  I think when you hire someone around 60, they’re less likely to go that direction and less likely to leave to embark on another big project before retirement.

Coach O and Week 13 Top 25

Coach O

I haven’t had time to go into much detail with LSU. Now that there won’t be a full slate of games again, I can update the various rivalry blogs and talk about the new coach when there is one.

I want to say a few things about Coach Orgeron. First, I should acknowledge that I did think it was appropriate to go a different direction with the head coach, so don’t read my praises of the good things he did as criticism of the decision. Coach O admitted and seemingly understands that the last couple of seasons were not up to the LSU standard of performance. I don’t think he has had enough personal interest and enthusiasm in maintaining the 2019 success as he had in getting there, but I will always appreciate what he did in getting there.

There were some ups and downs in the first 54 weeks between Les Miles being relieved of his duties and the day LSU went to Gainesville in 2017; but from that point on, there was a clear upward trajectory. The only losses from that point until 2020 were two games against Alabama (one by 14 and one by 29), one game against Florida (by 8 the next season), and two rigged debacles (against Notre Dame and Texas A&M, respectively) that were decided in the final seconds, neither of which ultimately counted for much. There wouldn’t have been much excitement about a second consecutive Citrus Bowl win anyway, and the A&M loss didn’t deter the Fiesta Bowl from selecting the Tigers. Getting to that bowl, not to mention winning it, was the more important byproduct of the success of the 2018 team.

So unlike what some will tell you now, it wasn’t just one fluke year. Coach O did some serious heavy lifting to get from the team he took over in 2016 to the top of the mountain in 2019, but LSU started with a loss in 2020 and never showed that winning edge again. The Tigers didn’t even win consecutive games until December of 2020 (that season was all conference games) and didn’t win consecutive conference games at any point in 2021.

2021 also marked the second consecutive season in which the Tigers opened with a loss. The one time Les Miles did that in 12 seasons, he was gone within a month. LSU didn’t typically open with weak opponents either. Since 2005, LSU has started with 12 Power-Five opponents, 7 of them ranked in the top 25 at the time of the game.

Jimbo Fisher, former LSU offensive coordinator under Nick Saban and Les Miles who has been mentioned in various LSU coaching searches, exchanges pleasantries with outgoing LSU head coach Ed Orgeron in Baton Rouge on Saturday.

The point is we went from consistently starting on solid ground to only doing so a couple of times under Coach O. In hindsight, UCLA was the beginning of the end. The rumor was that Kentucky was a must-win, and I’m not sure that’s true; but it was definitely not acceptable to lose by 21 after letting Auburn sneak out a win (their first in Baton Rouge since 1999) the week before. That’s when I understand the decision was made. In the excitement yesterday, Coach O said the decision was made after Kansas; but it’s another basketball school that mostly wears blue and starts with a K, so I’m pretty sure he meant Kentucky.

Speaking of Kentucky, there are some LSU fans only who seem upset that the Tigers may hire Wildcat coach Mark Stoops, but they could do much worse. There may be a better coach for the amount they’re willing to spend, but it wouldn’t bother me at all. These are probably the same LSU fans who were heartbroken the Tigers didn’t get Tom Herman, who did much worse at Texas than Coach O did at LSU overall.

Playoff Race

That’s enough about a 6-6 team for now. I’ll move on to the top teams.

Some may be surprised that Oklahoma St. is so high, but that’s mostly a function of the Cowboys not being a team the media wants to hype. They’re not going to drive high TV ratings. It might also be partly because no matter how good they are, they typically lose to Oklahoma. Of course that didn’t happen this year; but the media isn’t going to admit they overlooked someone in the playoff conversation until the end of November, so they’ll pretend they’re fifth or sixth.

The media also forgets that this thing called non-conference scheduling exists. Of course the 8 teams Alabama has played in the SEC are better on average than the 9 teams Oklahoma St. has played in the Big XII, but those other teams matter too. Boise St. is very good team, better than U. Miami, but the low-IQ take is the Hurricanes were ranked when Alabama played them so they must have been good!

Whether you think U. Miami was better or not, one should also acknowledge that the Tide also scheduled Southern Miss and New Mexico St. (as well as an FCS opponent, but Oklahoma St. did the same, so I’m no using that against them for the purposes of the comparison). Southern Miss has had good seasons in the past, but they’ve been mediocre on a good day lately; and NMSU has only made one bowl game in 50 years. The two won a combined three games against FBS opponents for the season. Two of those wins were Saturday, over two teams who themselves have a combined one win over other FBS opponents.

Oklahoma St. wide receiver Tay Martin reaches out for the end zone in the win over the Sooners on Saturday in Stillwater. The Cowboys play Baylor for the Big XII Championship next week.

Alabama will be ahead if they beat Georgia, don’t get me wrong; but don’t fall for the idea of Oklahoma St. being undeserving just because Kirk Herbstreit or whoever doesn’t have them in the top four. I’m also not saying the Pokes are a lock against Baylor, especially since rematches are tough. By the way, they also don’t get nearly enough credit for beating the Bears the first time, just because Baylor hadn’t gotten a high ranking yet. Kansas is almost as bad as USM and NMSU, but obviously that’s a conference game.

As for Michigan, the only reason they’re even close is that they didn’t schedule an FCS opponent. Their average FBS opponent is about #60 whereas the average FBS opponent for Alabama or Oklahoma St. is about #52. The Wolverines scheduled a couple of respectable MAC opponents as well as Washington (who unfortunately had a bad year), but there are a number of mediocre teams in the Big Ten that dragged down their average. The best few teams in the Big Ten may be as good as or better than the best teams in the SEC or the Big XII, but more than one or two are clearly part of the bottom half of college football.

I think Michigan will also deserve to play for a national championship with a win. If the Wolverines play as they did Saturday, they will be hard for anyone to stop; but I like to reward the teams who play more of the types of opponents who are likely to beat a top a team.

Speaking of which, Cincinnati and Notre Dame is a split decision as far as weighted and unweighted; but the Bearcats will be ahead in both with a win on Saturday. I don’t have any qualms about them potentially losing out to four one-loss teams though. If Alabama beats Georgia, I would actually be annoyed if Cincinnati made it in ahead of a winning Oklahoma St. team. Terrific that they won their early-season Super Bowl over Notre Dame, but the results simply do not indicate to me that they could play a Big Ten, SEC, or Big XII schedule including the title game and finish with one loss or fewer.

If it’s undefeated Cincinnati versus two-loss Alabama, who was a field goal away from losing to Florida and who went to four overtimes with Auburn, I’d be on the other side of the argument though. I doubt the Bearcats could play Alabama’s schedule with only two losses either, but I’m willing to resolve that doubt in their favor. Also, Notre Dame, who began the season with narrow wins over Florida St. and Toledo, hasn’t played a ranked team (either currently or at the time) since Cincinnati. I would have no problem leaving the Irish out. In short, I’m not close-minded about teams from lesser conferences; but it should only be considered when multiple other options fall short.

Top 25

rank	team	last
1	Georgia	1
2	Oklahoma St.	3
3	Alabama	5
4	Michigan	7
5	Cincinnati	4
6	Notre Dame	2
7	Ohio St.	6
8	Ole Miss	9
9	Baylor	12
10	Iowa	14
11	B. Young	10
12	San Diego St.	20
13	Michigan St.	15
14	Oregon	21
15	Oklahoma	13
16	UL-Lafayette	19
17	App. State	16
18	Wisconsin	8
19	Wake Forest	18
20	TX-San Anton’	11
21	Pittsburgh	—
22	Utah	22
23	Houston	25
24	Boise St.	17
25	Arkansas	—

Out of Top 25: (23) Texas A&M, (24) Purdue

1-130 computer ratings

Unbeaten, Untied, Unrivaled

I know it’s after midnight in most of the country, so I don’t want to write too much.  I just wanted to remind anyone who might come across this where to find my ratings of all the teams. 

LSU finished a very impressive 16^th in strength of schedule.  I don’t subtract out the losses inflicted on other teams, so they may very well have had the best schedule if I did make those subtractions.  Ohio St. was 42^nd, Clemson 54^th, and Oklahoma 61^st in strength of schedule to give you an idea of how hard it is to have a top-20 strength of schedule while having one of the best records, not to mention going undefeated.

I’ve had some minor health issues and have been very tired since I last wrote.  I always have a lot of work right before and right after the holidays.

In January 1959, the LSU Fighting Tigers completed their last undefeated season, beating Clemson 7-0 in New Orleans (all four championships since the start of the Poll Era were won in New Orleans).  Clemson was only #12 and it was only LSU’s second win over a ranked opponent that season though, so it wasn’t quite the same thing.  You also have to win four more games now to go undefeated. 

It’s also nice that we don’t have to wait until next December for one of the players from this team to win the Heisman like the 1958 team did.  Getting the Heisman when you already know you won’t win the national championship has to feel more like a consolation prize even if you won a national championship previously. 

I grew up hearing about that 1958 team, but that seemed more like some kind of ancient legend than anything the likes of which I would see myself.  I classified it in my mind somewhere next to Greek mythology and Jonah being swallowed by the whale.  This is LSU’s third national title in 17 years.  If you had told 10-year-old me (I turned 11 during the season we went 2-9) I would see three in 70 years I would have taken it.

I’m still processing everything, but I do plan to write more about what happened this season. 

One thing of note: the SEC beat the Big Ten in a tiebreaker for the better collection of teams in the top 40.  The SEC had passed up the Big Ten a while back in best average team, but it took an 8-2 postseason record to pass it up in the top-40 list that I include.  The American Conference was a surprise #3 in both measures.  I might have to start including them in the divisional standings next season.  You can see “Conferences & Divisions” and “SoS” in the top left corner of my site for more.

I wish more of my relatives could have seen this LSU season, but I’m glad my parents and most of my aunts and uncles are still here for it.  By the way, early happy birthday to my grandmother, who turns 90 next week.

Week 8 Top 25 and LSU

I think the way I organized the blogs last week worked well, so I’ll talk about LSU and a couple of other big games.  I won’t thoroughly go through the top 25, but it’s listed below. Click here for the computer rating of all teams.

I couldn’t find a quality picture of the record-breaking or record-tying pass, but this reception and score by Racey McMath put Joe Burrow one touchdown pass short of the LSU single-season record, which he went on to break in Starkville Saturday.

I’ve updated the LSU/Mississippi St. rivalry blog.  I did think LSU would be slowed early, and that ultimately held the Tigers below 40 for the first time this season.  It was pretty close to the reverse of the 37-7 Bulldog win in Starkville two years ago.  If LSU doesn’t miss an extra point and allow a last-minute touchdown, it would have been the same final score.

If anyone asked, I’m sure Coach Orgeron would say it’s not about him; but I’m sure he’s satisfied to finally get a win in Starkville. There was a lot that went wrong in his tenure at Ole Miss, but his two games there were the main reason he got fired.  To get blown out there his first game against the Bulldogs at LSU had to feel like a bad case of déjà vu.  

I’ve talked a bit about Auburn in previewing both Mississippi St. and Florida.  I might or might not have more to say later, but LSU/Auburn is always a big game. 

For now I’ll just talk briefly about the recent rivalry. This game is at Tiger Stadium, but we had a couple of ugly losses against them at their place before last year.  I mentioned Coach O’s two losses in Starkville as it related to his firing back in 2007.  Les Miles had a much more successful tenure overall, but two losses in two trips to Auburn immediately preceded his firing at LSU. 

Auburn has some desire for payback too.  Those two losses at Auburn at the end of the Miles era are the only LSU losses in the series since Auburn’s 2010 national championship.  Auburn hasn’t won at LSU in 20 years.  LSU beat a few pretty highly-regarded Auburn teams over the past few years, including the one that was one stop/score away from a national championship in 2013 and the one who went to the SEC Championship Game two years ago.  Auburn didn’t end up having a great year last year, but they were ranked #7 and expected to beat LSU by a couple of scores.  The bayou Tigers won on walk-off field goal.  The point being that Auburn would especially enjoy getting LSU back with an upset in this one.

Speaking of Les and upsets, Kansas almost had a big upset in Austin on Saturday; but if they’d won it would have made LSU’s win there less impressive.  Even if the Jayhawks don’t win another game this season, I think he’s had a positive influence there so far.  I was reminded this weekend that Lou Holtz went winless his first year at South Carolina, but Holtz without question got that program headed in the right direction.

Pooka Williams of Kansas ran for 190 yards on 25 carries in the 50-48 loss in Austin Saturday.

I checked the score late in the Wisconsin game, and I thought they would run out the clock being that they were up 9 and had generally had a dominant defense so far.  So I was a bit surprised when I found out what happened.  That takes some of the luster off of the Ohio St. game, but it doesn’t necessarily mean the Buckeyes have more chance to win than they did a few days ago.

I followed the same basic guidelines as last week. I didn’t move anyone more than 3 spots from the computer ranking.  The only difference is there were no exceptions this week.  I anticipate this will be Clemson’s last week at #1, but maybe not if LSU and Ohio St. both lose next week. I think the computer results are starting to make more sense, so I might not move teams much if at all next week.

rank	team	last
1	Clemson	1
2	Ohio St.	2
3	LSU	3
4	Alabama	4
5	Penn St.	6
6	Oklahoma	9
7	Auburn	7
8	SMU	12
9	Baylor	13
10	Florida	10
11	Minnesota	17
12	Oregon	11
13	Wisconsin	5
14	Cincinnati	20
15	Appalachian	16
16	Boise St.	8
17	Memphis	25
18	Georgia	18
19	Notre Dame	19
20	Wake Forest	24
21	Utah	—
22	Navy	22
23	Michigan	15
24	Iowa	—
25	Texas	—

Out of Top 25: (14) Arizona St., (21) Washington, (23) Hawaii

Defending Coach O and Comments on Rankings

I have a few other notes about LSU, but I mostly covered the ones about Florida Sunday and the ones about Mississippi St. Wednesday. I know I’m publishing this late, but it’s a weekend night; and the kind of people who are awake and ready for football before games start can read it as well.

I heard one bit of trivia I wanted to share. LSU has kept official stats on this since 1978, but Florida is the only documented time I can find in which the Tigers have faced only four third downs in a game.  I looked at relatively high-scoring LSU games going back to the early 1960s (the Tigers did score into the 60s at times in the 1960s and 1970s and even scored 77 against Rice in 1977) and couldn’t find anything close.  There may have been a blowout of an in-state school 100 years ago or something, but it’s probably been several decades at least.

I liked when they asked Orgeron what he would have said if someone told him the offense would average 52.5 points at this point before the season.  He leaned toward the microphone like he was telling a secret and grumbled, “I’ll take it.”

Anyway, you’d think people would be positive about Orgeron and his team after a big win over another well-respected program and head coach, but it seems like Troy all over again.

Defending Orgeron

Finebaum

Also related to LSU, Paul Finebaum will say whatever he needs to say to pretend the best team is Alabama for as long as he can.  Nothing LSU does counts because supposedly he heard the same things about the LSU offense last year.  I don’t know how he would have heard the team who scored 19 against Florida last year had just as good of an offense as the one who scored 42 against Florida this year; but he does talk to the most ignorant people in Alabama, so it’s possible. 

What really annoys me is he said this a couple of weeks after saying he was dropping Clemson because the rankings are only for this season and you don’t factor in anything from last season.  So Alabama goes ahead of Clemson because the 44-16 win in January doesn’t count, but Alabama also goes ahead of LSU because the 29-0 win last November does count. 

John Hayes

To be fair, you could read this as an innocent compliment of the three coaches; but he admitted that wasn’t how he meant it.

Then I saw today someone named John Hayes trying to insult Orgeron (he said the tweet was a “backhanded compliment”, and he admitted he sees Orgeron as a lesser coach) by saying he’s not really the one on the field doing anything.  I think he was trying to say Orgeron isn’t calling the plays, but so what?  When Saban doesn’t call plays, he doesn’t get credit?

Hayes was interviewed by “Off the Bench”.  I mentioned this tendency of his before, but yet again T-Bob got the stat wrong.  He said Dabo Swinney had more wins over top-10 teams since Orgeron became head coach, but that’s not true. The only two better than Orgeron were actually Nick Saban and Urban Meyer. 

Dabo Swinney and Nick Saban

Nick Saban and Dabo Swinney had a friendly chat before the 2018 Sugar Bowl. Alabama has faced Clemson in the Playoff in four consecutive seasons.

Just to be clear, there isn’t anything a coach can do in three seasons (other than win three national championships right away) that really earn a comparison to where Swinney and Saban are right now, but we can look at how they got here and think about other coaches possibly following a similar path.

Dabo was actually part of Hayes’ argument since he has recent wins over Saban, but let’s not forget that Swinney didn’t just start at Clemson.  He became the interim coach 11 years ago, not 3 like Orgeron.  In 2011 (which is the season that corresponds to this one for Orgeron), Clemson went 10-4 and gave up 70 points in a bowl game.  So should he have been written off as a mediocre coach then?  By the way, Dabo was in the middle of five consecutive losses to South Carolina.  It’s just a completely unfair comparison if you only look at where Swinney is now. 

Even Saban lost to LSU in three of his first five tries and was lucky to win that many.  LSU and South Carolina 10 years ago were nothing like Alabama (the two LSU teams Saban beat in that span lost a combined 9 games) now.  Saban won a national title in his third full year, but people weren’t crowning him best coach ever in October 2009.

The main question is why Orgeron should be expected to reach Saban’s or Swinney’s peak faster than they did.  But I think the fact that people like Feinbaum and Hayes see the need to point out the difference between Orgeron now and those guys at their peak (or is it a plateau?) means he’s one of the best coaches right now. 

Hayes said he would be proven right if Alabama beats LSU easily this year, but I completely disagree. If Clemson lost to West Virginia by 37, they wouldn’t have been close to Alabama, which won the championship by 21, in 2011. I don’t know if there is a score Alabama could win by that would be the equivalent of losing to that West Virginia team by 37. 70 maybe?

Lincoln Riley

Oklahoma got revenge for last year’s regular-season loss to the Longhorns (Lincoln Riley’s only loss to the Longhorns in four games) in Dallas last week, 34-27. Above, Sooner LB Kenneth Murray hits Sam Ehlinger after a third-quarter throw.

I don’t hear anyone pointing out how Lincoln Riley at Oklahoma, for instance, hasn’t won the games Swinney and Saban won the last few years to minimize a good win.  He’s started out his career with a great record and is coming off a big rivalry win this week too.   “Hold on, you can’t say he’s a great coach yet” is only necessary to these commentators because people are more tempted to say Orgeron is great.

I did listen to a follow-up interview Hayes did (I had to get a free trial, so sorry if it doesn’t work for you), and to my surprise he said Riley would be his #1 choice for head coach if he were an AD. I’m sorry, that’s silly. It’s just typical offense-obsessed media. Riley had three big games last season (his second full year) and lost two of them (the first game against Texas and the semifinal). He won three of the four big games (out-of-conference game against Ohio St., the two against Big XII #2 TCU, and the national semifinal) his first year, but he also lost to what turned out to be the 4th-best opponent Iowa St.

Like Joe Brady, he’s a good young offensive mind, but he’s not even in the top 10 on my list of best head coaches; and I don’t think we have a real sense of how he can recruit yet. There are probably a dozen coaches who could have won 24 games or more in 2017 and 2018 in Norman.

Kirby Smart

Kirby Smart was on Nick Saban’s LSU staff in 2004 alongside Texas A&M HC Jimbo Fisher and South Carolina HC Will Muschamp (who beat Smart Saturday), who were the two coordinators. Former Tennessee HC Derek Dooley was also on that staff.

On the Off the Bench interview, there was an argument made about Kirby Smart, but Orgeron beat Smart easily in their only meeting last year.  Smart did win the SEC and a semifinal game in 2017, but the Bulldogs lost one of only two regular-season games against the SEC West.  Georgia did win the follow-up over Auburn; but LSU beat Auburn the first and only time.  So Georgia winning the SEC and making that game against Oklahoma was more a result of playing in the East than of Georgia being in better shape than LSU (although as I mentioned in the previous blog LSU didn’t have a great start in Orgeron’s first full season). 

What LSU fan would trade Orgeron for Smart right now?  I think Georgia would take that trade in a heartbeat.  If they’re going to lose to South Carolina in a home game with Fromm, who knows what could happen the first year without?  The Bulldogs are far from guaranteed a win over Florida, which obviously LSU has now.  Smart also had an offseason of recruiting and hiring that Orgeron didn’t have in 2016.

I think Smart is a good coach despite what happened Saturday. You could argue he’s better than Orgeron, but I don’t think there is a good argument that they’re not comparable.

Other Comments

As for the other games, there were a couple of embarrassingly bad calls by referees.  Memphis completed a pass in Temple territory late in the fourth quarter, and somehow it was overturned despite no evidence of the ball hitting the ground.  That easily could have prevented the winning field goal by the Tigers, but the ball went over on downs.  There was a call that went against Penn St. at Iowa.  Penn St. won, so it didn’t really affect the game, but it does cost the Nittany Lions 4 points.  The pylon cam confirmed the call on the field, and yet it was overturned.  Eventually Penn St. settled for a field goal on the drive.  Replays of late seem to be just an extra avenue for home cooking.

Memphis TE Joey Magnifico made this great catch at the Temple 30 in Philadelphia on Saturday. Although no picture could be found of the ball even grazing the turf before or after being secured by Magnifico, the ruling of a catch was overturned.

I went into detail about the schedules of four of my top five on Sunday (Ohio St./Wisconsin and LSU/Alabama could be matchups of unbeatens), but Clemson will continue to play nobody.  MAYBE 1-loss Wake Forest can give them a game on the 16^th, and traveling to Columbia, South Carolina, might be a challenge after all; but I don’t think any potential winner of the Coastal will be much of a test.  Given the North Carolina game, it’s hard to know for sure though.

If Wisconsin can’t do it, the next big test for the Buckeyes is expected to be currently undefeated Penn St. on November 23.  The Nittany Lions have a big game with Michigan tomorrow though.  Of course Ohio St. will have to play them too.  Penn St. had a decent rise in the polls, but not as much as Oklahoma, who finally joined the top 10 after beating Clemson. I know the Sooners hoped that Houston game would mean something, but it really doesn’t.

Auburn being ahead of Florida might raise eyebrows, but I don’t determine better resume by head-to-head.  Both teams are 1-1 against the top 11.  Texas A&M isn’t a great conference win, but it’s better than Kentucky and Tennessee.  Auburn also beat Tulane.  The Green Wave looks better than the Hurricanes (Florida’s best non-conference opponent) so far. 

Florida does play Florida St. later, but so far the only other non-conference games have been against FCS opponents.  Florida will be fine if they win the next few weeks (South Carolina and Georgia with a bye week in between) though.  Unless Auburn beats LSU a week from tomorrow, they don’t have a good chance for meaningful points for about the next month (two byes, Arkansas, and Ole Miss).  I’m not projecting who will look better a month from now though, just looking at who has done what so far.

Baylor’s undefeated resume got a little bit of substance to it with the win over Texas Tech; but there was so little of importance before that, the Bears are still only 13^th.  They almost have as good of a resume as fellow undefeated and former SWC rival SMU.

Minnesota is an undefeated team that’s creeping up even more slowly, but beating Rutgers won’t help much.  Nor would beating Maryland the next week.  The Gophers do have an intimidating November schedule though: Penn St., @ Iowa, @ Northwestern, Wisconsin in consecutive weeks.

To round out the rankings, Washington returned by beating Arizona, who had nearly made the top 25 the previous week.  Wake Forest and Memphis are no longer undefeated, but both held onto the top 25 after narrow losses.  Navy was able to make it into the top 25 (despite having lost to Memphis a few weeks ago) after wins over Air Force and Tulsa in the past two weeks.  Hawaii also stayed in the top 25 after a loss; but it was on the blue field, so the Warriors weren’t hurt that much.

I do think Texas is still a top-25 team, but respectable losses don’t get you far in my system.  They need to find some decent wins.  Oklahoma St., the Longhorns’ best win, is mediocre unless the Cowboys beat Baylor tomorrow.  Texas plays Kansas, so the Horns won’t earn much there.

LSU/Mississippi St.: Recent Games and Coaches

I put a couple of paragraphs at the end about what I expect of this game, but this is not a preview blog.

Coach O and Intro

Ed Orgeron walks off the field for the last time as Ole Miss head coach after losing in the Egg Bowl on November 23, 2007. He is still looking for his first win in Starkville.

You’ll see the relevance below, but I wanted to update Ed Orgeron’s record against the various SEC teams.  Other than Saban, whose first year at Alabama was Orgeron’s last year at Ole Miss (Alabama won, 27-24), none of the coaches he has coached against as the Ole Miss head coach were SEC head coaches whom Orgeron has coached against at LSU.  In fact, Les Miles is the only other active head coach in any conference whom Orgeron coached directly against at Ole Miss.

Winning records (not counting the 1-0 mark against Missouri since they joined the SEC): Ole Miss 3-0, Texas A&M 2-1

.500: Arkansas 3-3, Vanderbilt 2-2, Kentucky 1-1, Tennessee 1-1

1 game under .500: Auburn 2-3, Mississippi St. 2-3, Florida 2-3, Georgia 1-2, Missouri 1-2 (Missouri was not in the SEC when Orgeron coached against the Tigers at Ole Miss)

Worse: LSU 0-3, Alabama 0-6

Mississippi St., Florida, and Alabama are the only SEC programs against whom Orgeron has coached but against whom he does not have a winning record while the coach at LSU.

He didn’t coach against South Carolina at either stop and is still waiting to get revenge on Kentucky for beating his Rebels 31-14 in 2006. On the other hand, the first and one of only three conference wins at Ole Miss was against the Wildcats. The others were against Mississippi St. and Vanderbilt.

Anyway, this mostly isn’t about Coach O and his disappointments with the Rebels. It occurred to me that now was the perfect time to talk about LSU’s history against Dan Mullen, the current Florida and former Mississippi St. head coach.  I’ll explain why, but given that LSU usually plays Florida in early October, it’s very rare that the Tigers play the Gators and Bulldogs back-to-back despite LSU having played both almost every year going back to the 1950s.

Dan Mullen vs. LSU and Rivalry Intro

Last week, Dan Mullen fell to 1-1 against LSU as head coach of the Gators, but he’s still 2-1 overall against Orgeron given his big win in 2017.  LSU has a much more well-established historical series against the Mississippi St. Bulldogs, where Mullen coached from 2009 to 2017. 

If you’re interested, here is the the full LSU/Mississippi St. Rivalry blog.

At State, Mullen didn’t have a good record against LSU (2-7), but he had as many wins as Jackie Sherrill, the all-time State leader in wins (75, which Mullen probably would have beaten by staying one more season) and the only Mississippi St. coach to lead the Bulldogs to the SEC Championship.  Sherrill was there 13 years to Mullen’s 9, and this has been an annual series since 1944 (the Bulldogs didn’t field a team in 1943).

The 2014 State win in Baton Rouge was the first since 1991, Sherrill’s first season.  The 2017 win (Mullen’s last year) was only the second win over LSU in Starkville since 1984.  The only other win was by that Sherrill-coached team that made the SEC championship in 1999.  It was by 1 point, and LSU would finish the season 3-8.

One thing I regret about the changes in schedules is that this was a traditional late-season game for both teams.  Mississippi St. was usually warming up for the Egg Bowl, and LSU usually played State between Alabama and Tulane.  It was played on the second or third Saturday of November (between 11/12 and 11/18) every year from 1947 to 1991.  The first game between the two was actually played on the third Saturday of November 1896.  It moved around the calendar before settling on a particular time consistently, but it was generally in November from then until 1922 and then every year from 1933 to 1940. 

The game was played on the third Saturday of October from 1928 to 1932 and on five other occasions, so I guess there is at least some tradition to draw on this time.  I don’t mind that this season we have a bit of a buffer between Florida and Auburn, although sometimes that is when a team gets tripped up, particularly on the road. Since Ole Miss can’t be Halloween weekend (which is a bye), I would have preferred Ole Miss serve as the buffer, but they didn’t ask me.

Dan Mullen discusses his first Bulldog recruiting class in 2009.

LSU vs. Mississippi St. 2009 to 2017

Mullen nearly scored an upset over the Tigers in Starkville in his first season in 2009.  LSU won with a late goal-line stand by 4 points.  I wonder if Mullen had flashbacks to that on Saturday. LSU didn’t ultimately have a great season at 9-4; but it was only two years after LSU won the BCS Championship, so it would have been a big deal. 

That 2009 season was Mullen’s only season there that the Bulldogs did not qualify for a bowl game, so he probably would have been 9/9 had he figured out a way to gain that one more yard.  The Bulldogs gained one yard on first and goal from the 2 and were stuffed on the next three plays.  Only the third-down play was a pass.  Chad Jones, who also won a national championship as a pitcher on the baseball team, made the two tackles at the line of scrimmage on second and fourth downs and defended the third-down pass.

In the next four years, no matter how good they were, they couldn’t even make it interesting against the Tigers. It helped that LSU went 44-9 over those 4 years.

The Tigers finally had a serious rebuilding job to do in 2014; and Mississippi St. had its best team in decades.  The Tigers would play well at times that season (such as upsetting the #3 team and nearly upsetting the #4 team… more on that here), but that wasn’t until later in the year.  What made it worse was the Tigers could not find a consistent quarterback that season, and the Bulldog quarterback was Louisiana native Dak Prescott, whom the Tigers coaching staff refused to offer a scholarship as a quarterback. 

Dak Prescott stiff-arms DB Jalen Mills in Tiger Stadium in September 2014.

Prescott was not a household name before that game.  LSU was ranked #8 and the Bulldogs were unranked.  The depleted LSU defense led by DC John Chavis was not prepared for that type of spread attack at all.  The defenders were somehow unable to fill gaps or keep the play in front of them, and they weren’t able to make key tackles.  Prescott threw for 268 yards and rushed for 118 (not counting the sack yardage).

The only reason LSU was able to make the final score respectable was that three different Tigers were able to throw for a combined 341 yards, but they didn’t even try to do that until they got well behind in the game.  QB Brandon Harris threw two touchdown passes in less than 30 seconds late in the fourth quarter.  The Tigers attempted an onsides kick with 1:27 left that would have given them a real chance to win, but when the Bulldogs recovered it, they were able to run over a minute off of the clock.  LSU then had 20 seconds to go 80 yards, and you can guess how that went.  Harris did have 34 all-purpose yards on that drive before throwing an interception on the final play, but it needed to be at least 34 yards in one play.

It was 34-10 in the opening minutes of the fourth quarter, so the 34-29 final score doesn’t convey how dominant the Bulldogs were for most of the game.

The next year in Starkville it was the Tigers who led early in the fourth quarter, 21-6 in that case.  Kevin Steele, the new defensive coordinator (now the defensive coordinator at Auburn), and Ed Orgeron, the Tigers’ new defensive line coach, seemed to have instilled the right schemes and techniques in the offseason.  Cracks were already developing late in the third quarter though.  The Bulldogs had just gotten into the red zone when the fourth quarter began and shortly afterward Prescott took the ball into the end zone himself.

When LSU got the ball, the Tigers called three rushing plays for a combined -1 yards.  Mississippi St. would drive again, but the drive stalled behind the LSU 30.  Prescott was sacked by Lewis Neal on third down to prevent a long field goal try (the kicker Devon Bell had previously made it from 43 and it would have been about 49 before the sack).

The Tigers went back to their conservative ways on offense again, but it actually worked for a couple of first downs before the drive stalled at midfield, giving the ball back to Dak at the Mississippi St. 18 after a punt.

Prescott threw completions on 6 consecutive plays to lead the Bulldogs to a touchdown, but he could not score from three yards out on the conversion attempt, so LSU still led by 2, 21-19.

The Tigers still refused to throw the ball; and Mississippi St. got the ball again, this time at the 11. Only 1:32 remained though, so it wasn’t the dual-threat situation that the Bulldogs excelled in.  LSU jumped offsides on the first play, and Prescott then threw completions in four of the next five plays.  This gave the Bulldogs the ball at the LSU 39.  The Tiger defense, knowing time was running out, knew the Bulldogs were going to throw, probably toward the sidelines.  All three passes from that spot were unsuccessful, leading to a fourth down with 3 seconds left.  Fifty+ was probably not in Bell’s comfort zone, and he missed from 52 as time expired.

The next year, Dak had been replaced by Nick Fitzgerald (with assistance from Damian Williams… Mullen likes having a second QB to throw into games apparently), and LSU had settled on Purdue transfer Danny Etling as the starting quarterback in another early-season game. The Tigers started strong again, this time with a 20-0 lead midway through the second quarter.  After and exchange of field goals, it was 23-3 at the half.  The Bulldogs got another field goal in the third quarter, but it seemed like LSU was going to run out the clock with no major drama. 

However, the momentum shifted when LSU failed to convert a fourth down from the Mississippi St. 34.  Rather than trying for a field goal to go back up by 20, LSU decided to go for the first down instead.  Fournette was stuffed.  He actually fumbled on the play, but by rule a fourth-down fumble recovered by the offense (which it was) essentially means the play was dead.

Nick Fitzgerald looks for the sideline after a first-down run as LSU safety John Battle closes in in Starkville two years ago.

Fitzgerald and Williams responded with a 9-play, 66-yard touchdown drive to bring the score to 23-13.  State recovered the ensuing onsides kick, and Williams led the Bulldogs to another score, this time taking only two plays.  It was now 23-20 with 3:30 to play.  You can guess what LSU did (or didn’t do) on offense, and the Bulldogs would start the next drive on their own 33 with 1:35 remaining. 

The Bulldogs could only come up with a two-yard rush, two incompletions, and a sack, so LSU would be able to run out the clock after tense final minutes for the third consecutive game in the series.  It was Les Miles’ 114^th win as LSU head coach and would be his last.  It was his 10^th win against the Bulldogs in 12 seasons.

In 2017, both offenses were ineffective early (0-0 after the first quarter) and then more methodical (10-7 in favor of the home Bulldogs with 5 minutes left in the half).  The wind was taken out of LSU’s sails when Mississippi St. had a 10-play, 54-yard touchdown drive to end the first half and a 7-play, 48-yard drive that ended in a field goal to begin the second half.

Now down 20-7, LSU tried to mix run and pass on the ensuing drive, but Etling went 1/3 for 6 yards on the drive.  So Mississippi St. got the ball back. The shorthanded LSU defense was already getting worn out, and then two players were ejected for targeting.  The Bulldogs were forced into two third-and-1 situations, but they ran for a first down on one of them and fooled the defense on the second one for a 45-yard touchdown pass.  In hindsight, the game was essentially over at that point even though 5 minutes remained in the third quarter. 

The final score was Mississippi St. 37, LSU 7.  The Tigers did have a couple of decent long drives on offense, but when you’re three possessions or more behind, you usually don’t try to settle for long field goals even if they were likely to go in.  The field-goal kicking that year was not very reliable anyway.

The Tigers would lose to Troy two weeks later before going 6-1 to close out the regular season.  I’d rather not talk about the bowl game.

At Mississippi St., Mullen only had double-digit wins that one year of 2014, but the 2017 team was tied for second-best of his tenure at 9-4.  It was tied with the 2015 season in which they lost to LSU, 21-19.

Mullen goes to Florida

So 2017 was the first Orgeron-Mullen meeting.  I still wish LSU had last year’s Florida game back, but Orgeron has had a pretty decent improvement in two seasons, especially considering that Mullen took over a better program.  I look forward to more games between the two.

Mullen didn’t even replace a bad coach, just one who lost a few games in a row the year after winning the SEC East the prior year.  As I mentioned last week, I’m not a Jim McElwain fan; but from what I saw he could at least do a respectable job of recruiting, hiring assistants, and managing the game (at least unless they got behind a few scores).  The point of bringing him up is, although Mullen had to recover from a bad year and did well to win 10 games last season, I don’t think McElwain did anything that made it more difficult to win games at Florida than it had been at Mississippi St. in any long-term sense.

Not really apropos of anything, but McElwain is 4-3 as the Central Michigan head coach this season despite games against Wisconsin and U. of Miami.  I was just curious where he ended up and didn’t find out until I looked him up while preparing the Florida preview, so I thought I’d share.

2019 Preview and Joe Moorhead

Anyway, since I’m done talking about Dan Mullen for now, I’ll mention the upcoming game against his successor Joe Moorhead, who actually served on the Penn St. staff with LSU passing game coordinator Joe Brady.  Ed Orgeron said Moorhead called after the hire to add his endorsement.

I would say Moorhead had a respectable showing last season, going 8-5. He had close losses to Florida and Iowa (in the bowl game). He beat four teams who went to bowl games: UL-Lafayette, Auburn, Texas A&M, and Louisiana Tech. Apart from Iowa, all the losses were to teams who would win 10 games or more.

Things aren’t going quite as well this year. State started 3-1, which looked decent given the win over Kentucky (which had beaten the Bulldogs 28-7 last year); but the Bulldogs have been outscored 76-33 in the last two games. That included Moorhead’s first loss to a mediocre to bad team Tennessee.

LSU K Cole Tracy was responsible for 13 of the game’s 22 points – and for all of the points after the first quarter – in Baton Rouge last year. LSU had one touchdown drive that started at the Bulldog 3, and State only scored on one field goal.

Since Mississippi St. could only hold Tennessee to 20, I don’t think we will see a replay of last year’s 19-3 score in favor of LSU.  The Bulldogs had three defensive players drafted from last year’s team, not to mention LSU’s changes on offense. 

State has another decent mobile quarterback Garrett Shrader, but he won’t have the kind of talent around him that Nick Fitzgerald had in the big Bulldog win in September 2017 (and didn’t have last season).  They have another quarterback Tommy Stevens who may come off the bench, but he’s statistically not as good at running or passing. Both have had injuries, which is the main reason LSU doesn’t want Burrow to show off his running abilities more.

Yet again I think the prior opponent most comparable to LSU is Auburn, who won 56-23.  Shrader did average 5.6 yards per rush and 9.1 yards per pass in that game though.  That was at Auburn and not following a top-10 opponent, so don’t be too disappointed if LSU doesn’t beat that margin of victory. 

I will be very interested to see how the LSU defense deals with Shrader early though.  Like Florida, the Bulldogs are capable of long, methodical drives; but unlike Florida they showed that ability against Auburn.  They just couldn’t keep up with the Auburn offense, which had great field position on its first three drives to take a 21-0 lead.  But if by contrast LSU struggles early offensively (which happened against Northwestern St. and Utah St.), maybe it will be a game for a while.

Week 7 SEC Big Games and Top 25

The SEC didn’t go exactly how I expected this week, but I do feel vindicated on a few counts.  I will try to write about the other games and my rankings (below) later in the week.

South Carolina Upsets Georgia

I didn’t pick South Carolina to beat Georgia specifically, but when I picked South Carolina in my preseason top 25, I anticipated they would beat some good team during the course of the year.  It could have been Florida, Clemson, Texas A&M (who, as I thought, isn’t as good as was projected anyway), I wasn’t sure.  They still might beat one (or more) of those three, by the way.  Also, I feel more justified in not giving the Bulldogs a higher rank going into the week. 

Rodrigo Blankenship (98), aka Hot Rod, one of the best-known kickers in college football recently, had not missed a field goal or extra point until Saturday. In the background, Gamecocks rush the field after Blankenship missed a field goal to end the game.

LSU Somehow Beats the Spread

First of all, I’ve updated the LSU/Florida history blog. Most importantly, the series is tied in Baton Rouge. LSU has not had the lead in its home stadium in the series as long as I remember. I may write something about the LSU/Dan Mullen series later in the week.

I didn’t pick LSU to beat the spread, but I said if they did it would be the result of a late score.  It was.  Florida was within a couple of yards of scoring a late touchdown in response.  It was for the most-part a one-score game.  I was right that Florida couldn’t do a 4-man rush and drop 7 effectively.  Burrow completed 15 of his first 16 passes (eventually going 21/24 for 293 yards), and even when Florida got good pressure he was able to at least get a couple of positive yards on the ground.  Florida ended up with 18 more passing yards; but it took 20 more attempts, and it would be almost dead even if sack yards went against passing yards in college.

LSU’s Joe Burrow made up for a pivotal “Pick Six” in last year’s game by throwing for 293 yards in 24 attempts (21 completed). LSU gave up no sacks and no turnovers.

I was also right in the number of points Florida would score, 28. Arguably both offenses should have had more though (and I also underestimated LSU’s points), so maybe I did give too much credit to the defenses.

LSU DC Dave Aranda apparently thought the same way I and some of the prognosticators did: if LSU could keep Florida from scoring quickly the Gators wouldn’t be able to sustain drives.  That was incorrect, but I (and I imagine Aranda) correctly anticipated LSU’s ability to avoid those long plays whether they pressured or not.  I could be giving him too much credit, but I suspect Dan Mullen intentionally had a very different game plan against Auburn even though I don’t think the defenses are drastically different. I also think, like LSU, they’re good at diagnosing problems and correcting them. Florida and LSU both have good arguments for second-best coaching in the conference right now. As Matt Baker of the Tampa Bay Times said, not bad for a couple of backup plans.

I also thought in general LSU would do better in pass coverage especially early.  The Tigers gave up yards after the opening drive in the second half, but they were just better when it counted during the 21-0 LSU run to end the game.

The turning point in LSU/Florida games is often how a team responds to a lead or to giving up a lead.  In the last three games of the series, the winning team had a narrow lead (< 3 points) late; and the defense just barely held on.  When LSU went down by 7 in this one (after Florida received the second half kickoff), it was the (momentarily) trailing team that seemed invigorated. The Tigers gave up a ton of yards after that but no points.

The offense let its foot off the gas a little bit at times (a couple of first-down runs where a pass might have been a better option, a couple of snaps late into the play clock) in the second half; but LSU scored 21 in both halves, so it didn’t hurt scoring. Being more methodical, which LSU rightly emphasized against Utah St., may have allowed the defense to have just enough of a reserve to close the deal in those fourth-quarter drives.

LSU did better penetrating into the backfield in the second half.  It was also partly the defensive backs making interceptions (one of which was wrongly called back) instead of tipping the ball and Florida completing it.  There was also a crucial (incorrect) interference call against the Tigers that helped Florida to score at the end of the first half.  Late in the second half there was some good coverage by the Tigers that did not result in flags though. 

If the linebackers or even blitzing backs left someone open during some of those plays where LSU sent pressure, the Florida quarterbacks didn’t have time to get it to them.  The only blitz I noticed that really backfired in the second half was a screen pass on third and 16 during Florida’s last drive.  I think the better strategy would have been to force the quarterback to throw short or try to scramble. LSU got only two sacks, but there were a lot more hurries and there were five tackles for a loss as well as several for very short gains.

LSU definitely needs better defense on third and medium-to-long overall though.  I got so frustrated at one point I turned on Iowa/Penn St. to see some defense when the Gators had the ball.  When you’re a couple of yards away though, they make it very difficult to score a touchdown.  It reminded me of the two goal-line stands against Texas that I think ultimately won the game. There was a similar defensive showing against Utah St. after a turnover at the 7. Even on the third and goal from the two that the Gators scored on (the only score of the second half), it was lucky for the Gators the ball wasn’t intercepted. 

One area that pleasantly surprised me was running the ball.  I knew we had better backs than people said, but I didn’t expect over 200 yards against a good defense.  I don’t think many predicted LSU would have 70 more rushing yards (on 16 fewer carries) than Florida and fewer passing yards.  LSU had the same exact number of throwing plays as running plays.

Clyde Edwards-Helaire, who ran for 134 yards on 13 carries, scores a 57-yard touchdown in the first half. The Tigers gained 218 rushing yards for the game.

I hesitated to predict that this would be the highest-scoring LSU/Florida game ever, and it just barely fell short.  If LSU had hit the field goal in the first quarter or if Florida had scored when they were a few yards away either time in the fourth quarter, this game would have set the record.  The 51-21 2008 runaway (also known as running up the score) with Tebow in Gainesville is still in first. 

In 1996, Florida won 56-13 on the way to an earlier national championship (Spurrier also tried to score 50 every game regardless of the other team), so this game beat that one by one point.  LSU doesn’t have that kind of margin of victory of course, but maybe winning a high-scoring game like this is a good omen. This is the highest-scoring game that LSU won.  The Tigers had won 35-28 in 2015.  LSU did score more (48) in a victory in 1971, but the Tigers held a winless Florida team to only 7.

Since Ed Orgeron took over at LSU, the Tigers have seven wins over the AP top 10.  Only Nick Saban and Urban Meyer (with nine apiece) have more over that time span.  Clemson’s Dabo Swinner has six.

Who’s #1 (and Who’s Going To Be #1)?

I still want to see what happens with Ohio St. and Wisconsin before I make either team #1.  There is a very good chance the winner will be #1 regardless, but I don’t want to promise that.  Sometimes there can be a combination of good results by prior opponents of one team and bad results by prior opponents of another team, and it yields unexpected results.

Mike Maskalunas and the Wisconsin defense shut out Michigan St. 38-0 Saturday, the Badgers’ fourth shutout of the season and first against a Big Ten opponent.

I’m only moving Clemson two extra spots to accomplish this, so it’s not anything crazy.  The orange-and-purple Tigers are third in the weighted system behind LSU and Oklahoma, so at least they’re ahead of Ohio St. by some objective measure to introduce ambiguity.

On November 2, Ohio St., Wisconsin, Alabama, and LSU have byes and Clemson plays Wofford.  So given that, I think it’s appropriate that after the games of October 26, I go with the computer unless there is something really close or what I consider a scheduling quirk. 

This is what I consider a scheduling quirk.  Let’s say I make Ohio St. #1, and after Ohio St. beats Rutgers on 11/16, they fall only slightly behind Clemson.  I would keep Ohio St. #1 because they would have Penn St. next and Clemson would have a bye.  I don’t like switching up #1 in my personal list without a loss (the computer formula does what it does and I don’t interfere).  I will at some point, but I don’t consider a team with a good schedule no longer number one because they play a couple of weak teams in a row before they play two pretty good teams in a row (in Ohio St.’s case, Penn St. and Michigan).

If it turns out Ohio St. is the best team, what would be optimal from my perspective is Clemson stays #1 until Ohio St. takes over, and then there are no further changes. Alabama has a terrible schedule the next two weeks (Tennessee and Arkansas), so even if they beat LSU on November 9, it might not be enough. I don’t want to give Clemson a boost for that long anyway.

It’s fairly likely that whoever is #1 October 27 will stay that way on November 3.  The only big game in the interim is Florida/Georgia (which is obviously less big on the national stage since both have a loss now), and I hopefully won’t have to agonize over anything. 

If LSU goes undefeated through November 9, maybe the Tigers would have a chance at that point. Then the next week, Oklahoma might have a chance if Baylor keeps winning until they meet the Sooners.

Anyway, I don’t like to do a back-and-forth horse race at #1 for the reasons explained, but I almost never make any changes to the rest of the rankings after October for my personal rankings.  I put what I think is most important into my system, and once we’ve played 2/3 of the season or more, I let that guide me.  The reason I made a computer system in the first place is it’s too hard to look at 30+ schedules late in the season and consistently give pluses and minuses for every win and loss.  It’s easier to do for 2 or 3 teams who have arguments for #1.

How the Sausage is Made

I’m not going to say anything else about the results last week or upcoming games until later this week, but I do have a bit to say about my rankings today and going forward.  I think some people call this “inside baseball,” so feel free to skip to the rankings below if you don’t want the gory details (or click here if you only want the purely objective ratings).

Seven weeks into the season, I think we can start giving extra credit for quality opponents.  If you played someone above zero, which is a team in the top 68 right now that’s the first bonus tier.  The next one is 0.15, which is the top 39 right now.  The highest tier is 0.3, which is the highest 19 teams right now.  There are a couple of higher tiers, but those only come into play later in the season. Those decimal numbers are from the “traditional” unweighted system.  So the unweighted system is the base, and the bonus tiers go on top of that to create the weighted system.  So if you beat someone who’s 15^th in the weighted system, it’s possible that they’re not in the top 19 in the unweighted system.

I think the best result is to average the weighted and unweighted systems.  This is a little tricky because the numbers are so different, but the range from #1 to #130 in the unweighted system is almost exactly 1/50 the range in the weighted system.  So I zero out the worst teams and then I average weighted score with unweighted score times 50.

I’m still giving myself leeway to move the teams three spots this week.    The only exceptions are the top spot, which I treat a little differently, and Notre Dame, whom I wanted to move behind Georgia (Georgia is only two spots higher than the computer rank).  Georgia lost to one USC and Notre Dame beat the other, but they both looked bad. So I thought the Bulldogs should remain ahead of the Irish team they beat.

Top 25

rank	team	last
1	Clemson	1
2	Ohio St.	2
3	LSU	3
4	Alabama	4
5	Wisconsin	7
6	Penn St.	11
7	Auburn	6
8	Boise St.	10
9	Oklahoma	17
10	Florida	5
11	Oregon	14
12	SMU	8
13	Baylor	19
14	Arizona St.	15
15	Michigan	20
16	Appalachian	22
17	Minnesota	23
18	Georgia	9
19	Notre Dame	16
20	Cincinnati	24
21	Washington	—
22	Navy	—
23	Hawaii	21
24	Wake Forest	12
25	Memphis	13

Out of Top 25: (18) Texas, (25) Michigan St.

LSU/Florida Series Recap and Preview

Utah St.

It was below the radar for most, but I think it’s worth mentioning a couple of developments from the Utah St. game that may feed into the Florida game and have affected the emphasis in practice.

I was pleased with some aspects of the LSU game.  The passing game didn’t look as great as it had previously, but the defense and running game looked a lot better.  We were able to control the clock more, which I think made the defense more comfortable despite the heat.  We had 3 running backs with at least 8 carries, and the worst one averaged 4.8 yards per carry. Burrow was almost as good with 4.2 yards per carry, and in college that number includes sacks.  He had about 6.5 yards per carry without those.

Utah St. couldn’t run at all. The Aggies had 1 yard rushing in the first half and 18 in the second. I think this showed that the tackling drills during the week that Orgeron talked about paid off. Hopefully the practice drills to correct fumbles will bear similar fruit.

I really don’t like that Burrow threw another interception deep in the LSU end of the field (although it arguably should have been caught by LSU); but like when that happened inside the 10 against Texas, the defense kept the other team from scoring a touchdown.  The defense only gave up one other scoring drive, and that one required a 35-yard pass (with a one-handed reception) and a 47-yard field goal.  There was a similar long pass on the next drive for Utah St., but the LSU defense came up with a turnover before any more damage could be done. 

Although I thought the passing game took a step back from previous games, there were some very nice touchdown passes (this one to Justin Jefferson). Burrow was involved in all 6 touchdowns, running for one of them.

There were a couple of penalties that shouldn’t have happened.  There were actually three fumbles, although LSU recovered two of them.  Utah St. is not a bad team, but if we have two turnovers against them, that gives me some concerns for some of the better SEC teams coming up.  I also mentioned sacks, so it wasn’t the best pass blocking.

Florida Preview

I won’t go into elaborate detail about players to watch for etc.; but I have consumed some media discussing the game, so I’ll give my take. 

I wasn’t that impressed with the model used by College Football Nerds and resulting predictions, but they did an all right job talking about the various units.  I think Florida’s main problem, other than Tiger Stadium at night, is the fact that they’re coming off a tough game against Auburn.   It’s just hard to improve along with the competition two weeks in a row. 

If you didn’t see the game, Florida had a little bit of luck at key moments too.  Auburn was poised to take the lead and threw an interception in the end zone after an 80-yard drive to end the third quarter.  Auburn was driving again to at least get within 1 with a field goal, and Nix was dropped for a 22-yard sack (which he made much worse than it could have been).  Then the first play after the punt the Florida running back Perine was able to get to the outside and no one was home, so he scored 88 yards later.  I’m not minimizing the Gators’ skills, but it’s a little misleading that they finished with almost twice as many points as Auburn.

There were four turnovers by each team in the Florida-Auburn game, and I think winning the turnover battle is definitely a possible avenue to victory for the Gators.  LSU can force turnovers; but defenders have to have good hands and be ready to fall on fumbles.  On the other hand, Tiger turnovers deep in LSU territory (which have happened at least four times) that didn’t really affect the outcome in previous games could make the difference here. 

Auburn has a good defense that Florida got through for a few long plays (no Florida touchdown drive was more than 2 plays), although the Gators are not the best at sustaining drives.  So basically I’m really confident if the LSU offense doesn’t make huge mistakes and the defense keeps the play in front of them and forces mistakes.  Those are big ifs though.

Florida WR Freddie Swain slips a tackle on the way to the opening score in Gainesville Saturday. Auburn allowed just enough of a seam for Swain to run 64 yards.

I’ll elaborate more below and I’ve covered this in previous discussions of the rivalry history, but I’m really skeptical of LSU winning this game by multiple touchdowns (they’re favored by 13 1/2 last I saw).  If they do, I think it will still be late plays that allow that to happen. 

Since the Miles-Meyer era began, 2011 LSU (the one that lost the national championship to Alabama) and 2008 Florida (which won the national championship) were the only two teams to win by 14 more..  All were against opponents who lost at least 5 games on the year.  The only other Florida wins by more than one possession (2006 and 2009) were by eventual 13-1 teams.  The 2006 LSU team only lost two games, but the 2009 edition lost four.  LSU won by 11 in 2013, but Florida would lose eight games to LSU’s three.

So if LSU is a Playoff team, I can see them winning by 10 or 13; but any more than that would probably mean Florida isn’t nearly as good as their rank.

Also, as sort of a transition, I wanted to mention that there is a good chance the game could come close to a high score in the series. Here are the games with the most combined points. It also shows how consistent the time of year in which the game is played has been.

Date	Location	LSU	Florida	Total
10/11/2008	Florida	21	51	72
10/12/1996	Florida	13	56	69
10/17/2015	LSU	35	28	63
10/9/2010	Florida	33	29	62
10/9/1993	LSU	3	58	61
10/8/1994	Florida	18	42	60
10/6/2001	LSU	15	44	59
10/11/2014	Florida	30	27	57
10/7/1978	Florida	34	21	55
10/9/1971	LSU	48	7	55

LSU/FLORIDA SERIES

See my series blog for the full details, but LSU/Florida has been a weird series.  Prior to the addition of Arkansas and South Carolina in time for the 1992 season, LSU was the farthest West SEC school, and Florida was the farthest East.  On the other hand, they are the two southernmost SEC schools and almost as far south as one another (Gainesville is slightly south being that it’s below the panhandle, and Baton Rouge is basically a straight line from the panhandle).

The third game in the series wasn’t played until 1953, but LSU has played Florida nearly every year since then (apart from a three-season gap between 1968 and 1970). 

I’m glad the game against Florida is at night.  I think that’s as important as location if not moreso.  LSU is 6-2 in night games against the Gators this century compared to 5-4 at home (the Tigers have the same mark in Gainesville since 2001). 

I’m not sure it mattered where or when the games in 2008 and 2009 were played.  LSU was in a rebuilding cycle those two years (The Tigers lost 9 games between the 2007 BCS championship and the 24-2 stretch that encompassed the 2010 and 2011 calendar years) while Florida experienced a 22-game winning streak that included both LSU games.  Tebow’s last game against LSU was in 2009, which corresponded with the Tigers doing a bit better, so that’s why I included the record since 2010 at the bottom. 

Florida’s only win at Tiger Stadium since that 2009 game was a noon kickoff in a rescheduled game in 2016.  Florida’s late goal-line stand in that game nearly cost Ed Orgeron the permanent job as head coach. 

LSU’s one-point win at Florida in 2017 (by the same score the Tigers would have won by in 2016) got the ball rolling for Jim McElwain’s departure.  This development was also enjoyable for LSU fans given his reaction to the win.  The Tigers entered with two losses to unranked teams.  Florida had a loss, but it was to a fairly decent Michigan team to open the season (at least the Wolverines were fairly decent in their 8-2 start), so that loss stung.  The Gators would have another close home loss the next week before getting blown out by Georgia in Jacksonville, in what turned out to be McElwain’s last game. 

Chart of recent games

2005 was the first Les Miles vs. Urban Meyer game, so I thought that was a good place for the chart to begin although ig doesn’t encompass all the night wins.  The coaches won three games apiece against one another, but the LSU wins were close (all by exactly four points) and dramatic.

There was also a close (night) game in Gainesville in 2004 that LSU won after benching JaMarcus Russell; but LSU suffered two losses in the previous three games that season, and Florida would lose five games overall.   Both teams played like it (when the winning team throws three interceptions and misses two field goals it usually isn’t a well-played game), so it just didn’t have the same feel as the next few years, so I didn’t include it.  LSU’s win in 2002, the Tigers’ first in Gainesville since 1986, was also at night; but it was a blowout.

Year	location	kickoff	result
2018	Florida	3:30	Florida 27, LSU 19
2017	Florida	3:30	LSU 17, Florida 16
2016	LSU	12:00	Florida 16, LSU 10
2015	LSU	6:00	LSU 35, Florida 28
2014	Florida	7:30	LSU 30, Florida 27
2013	LSU	2:30	LSU 17, Florida 6
2012	Florida	3:30	Florida 14, LSU 6
2011	LSU	2:30	LSU 41, Florida 11
2010	Florida	7:30	LSU 33, Florida 29
2009	LSU	7:00	Florida 13, LSU 3
2008	Florida	8:00	Florida 51, LSU 21
2007	LSU	7:30	LSU 28, Florida 24
2006	Florida	3:30	Florida 23, LSU 10
2005	LSU	2:30	LSU 21, Florida 17

In 2005, LSU scored the go-ahead touchdown with 12 minutes left and held the Gators to 17 total yards over the next four drives to hold onto the win.  In 2007, LSU went 5 for 5 on fourth downs (one of them a fake field goal) and also added 8 third-down conversions to dominate time of possession.  The Tigers scored the winning touchdown with 1:09 left after a drive of over 8 minutes.  In 2010, in his last game against LSU, Meyer nearly had a meltdown after an over-the-shoulder pitch to the kicker on a fake field goal was ruled a lateral rather than an incomplete pass.  The Tigers scored the winning touchdown in that one with only 6 seconds left.

Jacob Hester scores the winning touchdown in Baton Rouge in 2007. Hester had converted two fourth downs earlier in the drive. The Tigers entered the fourth quarter down by 10 but possessed the ball for more than 10 minutes in the quarter and won by 4.

The Florida wins in the Miles-Meyer era were relatively comfortable.  Meyer’s three wins were the only Florida wins by more than one possession since 2003. LSU has only beaten Florida by more than one possession once since 2002. 

Additional Background

This isn’t really key information, but I think it helps explain why this series is probably second to Alabama when it comes to motivating the LSU fans and also a little bit more about why I’m doubtful LSU will win big.

I’ll finish with years before the Miles-Meyer era and then fill in the gap between that era and 2016.

Going into the 2002 game, Florida had beaten LSU easily four games in a row and 8 games of 9.  LSU only had two close games against Spurrier-coached Florida teams, both 28-21 final scores.  The Tigers lost in Gainesville in 1992 and won in Baton Rouge in 1997.  In the 2002 game, the first season without Spurrier, LSU won 36-7, its first win in Gainesville since 1986 and its first win over Florida by more than 11 since 1980.  LSU has won by more than 11 only once since then, in 2011.  Florida would 5 games in 2002 and 6 in 2011, so that’s why I’m skeptical of a big LSU win in this one.  I’ve been wrong about LSU lines before, but I would lean toward taking Florida and the points.

The 1997 LSU win (the Gators’ first loss since winning the national championship in the previous season) was the Tigers’ only over the Gators from 1988 to 2001  Spurrier was hired before the 1990 season and left after the 2001 season.  That was when LSU’s fortunes in the series began to change, not when Nick Saban arrived.

Saban went only 2-3 against the Gators as LSU head coach and also went 2-3 against Spurrier for his career (0-2 at LSU, 1-0 at Michigan St., and 1-1 at Alabama; of course the Alabama games were against South Carolina, not Florida).  2001 to 2004 was also a weird stretch because road teams won every game, none of the games were between top-15 teams, and the game was decided by one possession only once.

Anyway, I mentioned that in 2011 (the first game after Meyer left) LSU won easily.  Florida won a close defensive struggle in 2012 when somehow former LSU coordinator Will Muschamp would lead the Gators to the Sugar Bowl.  LSU would win the next three games before Les Miles was fired. The 2014 game was a rollercoaster; but it turned out to be two mediocre teams, so I won’t go into detail again.

Week 1 Top 25 and LSU/Texas Series and Preview

TOP 25

rank/team/last

1	Clemson	1
2	Alabama	2
3	Georgia	3
4	LSU	4
5	Ohio St.	6
6	Michigan	5
7	Notre Dame	7
8	Auburn	9
9	Florida	8
10	Wash. St.	10
11	Oklahoma	11
12	Texas A&M	12
13	Utah	13
14	Washington	14
15	Texas	15
16	C. Florida	17
17	Michigan St.	18
18	Syracuse	20
19	Penn St.	21
20	Appy St.	23
21	Cincinnati	24
22	Boise St.	—
23	Oregon	16
24	Iowa St.	19
25	Stanford	—

Out of top 25: (22) Florida St., (25) South Carolina

Top 25 Comments

I know it’s late for many of you, so I only used one picture. I usually try to avoid walls of text, but it couldn’t be helped.

I covered most of what I had to say about the games over the weekend on Sunday. 

I thought Michigan struggled too much to stay ahead of Ohio St., who dominated.

I think Auburn barely beat a much better team than Florida barely beat, so I switched the two.

I dropped Oregon close to the bottom just because they’re 0-1, but they can bounce back pretty quickly. 

Boise St. was a late cut from my list of potentials, so it was easy to put them in.

As for the other new team, I’m not in love with Stanford being that they only scored 17 points and will probably rely on the backup quarterback in the next game, but sometimes that helps teams.

Florida St. and South Carolina deserved to fall out for obvious reasons.  It may be a while before I consider South Carolina again, but Florida St. showed some good things.

If you need three overtimes to beat a FCS team like Iowa St. did (although it’s worth noting Northern Iowa has had a lot of success in recent history), that’s almost like a loss to a top-10 team.  A win is a win for the most-part (giving credit for strength of schedule of course); but with only one game to consider, you have to look at how easily the win came. 

Oklahoma and Notre Dame, who played since my last blog, took care of business.  

Notre Dame probably let Louisville hang around too long, but the Irish don’t typically have an offense that leaves the opposition in the dust right away anyway 

Oklahoma let Houston score a couple of touchdowns to get within two possessions late, but I don’t hold it against them.  I’m still skeptical about how the Sooners will do against Power 5 competition though.  It could be that the Big XII will make them look good even if they aren’t.  Texas looked all right, but nobody looked great. Speaking of the Longhorns…

LSU @ Texas

Texas QB Sam Ehlinger looks to throw against TCU last season. LSU HC Ed Orgeron said preparing for Ehlinger was similar to preparing for Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow.

All-time series: Texas leads, 9-8-1 (updated after the game)

The first game of the series was way back in 1896, LSU’s 11^th official game as a program (and 10^th intercollegiate game), but 10 of the 17 games in the series were clustered between 1935 and 1954, the last regular-season matchup (Texas won 20-6 in Austin).

The (January) 2003 Cotton Bowl (Texas 35, LSU 20) was the only matchup since 1963 (also the Cotton Bowl, which LSU won 13-0), so LSU fans shouldn’t despair too much about these facts.  The more-recent Cotton Bowl was the highest-scoring game of the series, beating out the 35-14 Texas win in 1952.  In the 2003 game, Texas entered at 10-2, and LSU entered at 8-4.  LSU would win the BCS national championship in the following January though.

The third-largest point total and largest margin of victory is also owned by Texas, 34-0 in 1941.  Other than the tie in 1936, the closest game was the 5-0 LSU win in San Antonio in 1902.

Texas leads the series in Austin, 7-2-1, the other LSU win coming in 1938. (updated after the game).

The Tigers lead 2-1 at “neutral” sites (two in Dallas, one in San Antonio) and 4-1 at home. 

Added after the game: Both teams scored more in 2019 (45 to 38 final in favor of LSU) than either had in this series before. LSU more than doubled its previous high of 20 (in the loss in Jan. 2003 and in wins in 1938 and 1953).

After Saturday, the next game is scheduled for Tiger Stadium on September 12 of next season with no future plans thereafter; although LSU plans to return to Big XII country (if the Big XII is still a thing) in 2027 to face Oklahoma.

Preview

Speaking of the Longhorns, there was a debate on the College Football Nerds YouTube channel (formerly known as SEC Fans) about whether Texas will beat LSU.

They absolutely can…  I’m not going to suggest for a moment it’s going to be as easy to stop Texas’s mobile quarterback as it was to stop the Georgia Southern quarterbacks.  I’m not a big fan of the Texas defense even before the loss of all but two or three starters, but I’m reasonably sure LSU will go scoreless on more than one drive with the first-team offense in the game. I also don’t discount the degree of difficulty in playing in Austin.  I don’t know if it’s the same as the best SEC stadiums, but we’ve had some of our best teams lose at home (like in the 2003 season) or lose at less-intimidating SEC places like Commonwealth Stadium (the sponsor isn’t paying me) in Lexington (like in the 2007 season).

.. But I don’t think they will.  LSU has a clear advantage in returning starters; but even if they didn’t, I think last year’s LSU team would have beaten last year’s Texas team even in Austin.  Oklahoma played terribly on defense and only lost by a field goal, and that was Texas’s best game.  The Longhorns only won the Sugar because Georgia was going to be the team that blew the lead to Alabama in the SECCG whether they beat Texas or not.  A month of relatively little motivation can make a big difference.  LSU in their worst game wouldn’t have lost to Maryland like Texas did.

Anyway, in the video, I don’t know if the guy arguing for Texas was advancing weak arguments on purpose or he was just trying hard to sell the only arguments he could come up with; but they weren’t very persuasive.  One was “we’ve heard it before that the offense is different.”  There were changes when Cameron was fired, there were changes when Canada came in, and there were changes last year; but there weren’t wholesale changes like this.  Neither Etling in 2015 and 2016 nor Burrow last year were ready for anything crazy anyway. 

Shea Dixon had some good stats on differences from last year.  In all of last season 14 players caught passes, four of them running backs.  On Saturday, 14 players caught passes, 5 of them running backs.  He also included a special teams stat: LSU had 52 yards in punt returns Saturday compared with 99 in all of last season.

Another one is “Texas doesn’t rebuilt, they reload.”  Charlie Strong (who still recruited a lot of the players) would be surprised to know that.  They’re not Alabama or Clemson all of a sudden because of one year with double-digit wins (which with 14 games isn’t what it used to be).  LSU has done a bit of reloading over the years as well.  It’s still an advantage to have more players back, especially from a successful year.  Speaking of Alabama and Clemson, they both had successful years in 2017; but Clemson had a lot more players back in 2018.  I think that helped the Tigers win the championship as easily as they did.  Even if Texas “reloads” an exact replica of last season on defense (though I’m not sure Louisiana Tech gets 340 passing yards last year), that’s probably a good sign for the LSU offense.  To be fair, the La. Tech scoring was all in the fourth quarter, but they had several earlier opportunities.  In short, I’m not convinced.

Another point I’m not buying is that Texas can handle the SEC based on the Georgia game.  If LSU played Georgia and that was LSU’s only SEC game last year, that wouldn’t mean LSU would beat every SEC team this year with.  LSU played a Georgia team that still had a potential national championship run in front of it too.  Also, bowl games are a lot different.  You don’t get the same players.  LSU had a patchwork team in the bowl game last season and looked pretty good, which is part of the reason I rank them so highly now; but I don’t know how different the Texas-Georgia game would have been if it had been a playoff game.

There was another point that might have been good had Texas had its defense back from last year, and that was that LSU’s new offense is more similar to what Big XII teams run.  Being used to scrimmaging against the Texas offense isn’t the same thing as a season of Big XII opponents.  When you’re up 42-3 at the half and take most of your starters out shortly thereafter, you’re not going to show everything anyway.  So we can’t be sure this would be so easy for an experienced Big XII defense anyway.  Also, let’s not forget even in the best team game for the Longhorns they allowed 45 points.  Do I think LSU will score 45?  No.  Do I think they’ll allow 48 like Oklahoma did?  That’s not even a serious question in my mind.

My final thoughts: I don’t want to discount the fact that Texas has a chance to win at home. It just seems less likely.  Maybe 60-40 odds in LSU’s favor.  If you point a gun to my head and make me bet, I’d take Texas and the points (5.5 according to ESPN), but it’s a close call. If someone wins the turnover battle 4-0 (as was the case when LSU beat Georgia last year), that team could win by 20+ though. I don’t think feel like I know enough about either team under pressure to even venture a guess as to over/under.

Last topic, speaking of turnovers, both teams were +2 in turnovers in the first game, but stats from last year indicate LSU might do better.  LSU was tied for 7^th in turnover margin last year (with an advantage of 0.8 per game).  Georgia Southern’s turnover margin was more than twice as much though (1.7, 1^st), so that makes the first game more impressive for the Tigers.  Texas was close behind LSU last year (0.6, tied for 18^th), but Louisiana Tech was barely positive (0.2, tied for 43^rd).