Pre-Bowl Top 25 and LSU 2024 Schedule

LSU’s 2024 Schedule : Historical and Competitive Ramifications

I’ve sat down to this blog a few times, and each time some other news item comes out.  The most recent event was the release of LSU’s schedule with the actual dates. 

I decided to just cover that and the top 25 for now.  Interesting bowl games (to me anyway) are still about two weeks away, so the rest can wait.

We’ve known all the teams on LSU’s 2024 schedule for a while but not who LSU was playing on what date.  The one constant going back as long as I remember is Alabama after a bye week and between about November 3 and 12, this time on the 9th. Alabama seems to keep roughly the same order from year to year, but no one else does that I’ve noticed. 

Given the addition of the second bye, I like that it was added before Ole Miss.  That’s been a tough contest lately.  LSU has a three-game losing streak in College Station, but I’m still less worried about that game than about Ole Miss.

Texas A&M was scheduled on the traditional late October date for Ole Miss though. LSU will play the Rebels two weeks earlier, with Arkansas sandwiched in between. 

LSU WR Chris Hilton and the Tigers came up short in the final seconds in Oxford in September. LSU won four “Magnolia Bowls” in a row from 2016 to 2019, but since then the winner has always been the home team.

Florida was traditionally around the date the Ole Miss game is scheduled, but this might be the last year of what has been an annual series since 1971 anyway.  It was also after Alabama this year, so it was easy to leave it where it was.  At least they weren’t both road games in either year.

LSU doesn’t have a long ongoing annual tradition with anyone else on the 2024 schedule. 

They had only played Texas A&M once (in a bowl) between 1995 and 2012, the year the Aggies joined the SEC. LSU had previously played the Aggies in early September, but it’s different when it’s not a conference game.  

I wouldn’t be opposed to making it an early game in the future though, especially since LSU won’t play Auburn annually anymore. Mississippi St. was a typical September fixture for a while also, although on the traditional schedule they were after Alabama. I’m still annoyed LSU plays neither Auburn nor Mississippi St. next year.

Since the annual series with Tulane ended in 1994, LSU has played whatever somewhat proximate SEC is left without a good end-of-year rival. Arkansas was not particularly close to and had no longstanding recent rivalry with anyone in the SEC when it entered, so that was fine for about 20 years. Then after Missouri and Texas A&M joined (and two “transitional” years elapsed), it made sense to split that up when it became clear that the Aggies weren’t playing Texas anytime soon.

Now that the Thanksgiving/rivalry-week Longhorns-Aggies series is rekindled and Bedlam is on hiatus, it wasn’t a huge shock that LSU finishes with Oklahoma in Baton Rouge. We are used to playing a team with a reddish color from a neighboring conference to the west.

The SEC could have mixed things up in some other ways in 2024, but it was easier not to, especially since next year is just a one-off and not part of any dedicated rotation. Just as a neutral fan of college football and historical rivalries, my hope is that Oklahoma either can manage to schedule Oklahoma St. again or that they play Missouri on rivalry week. I would be OK with LSU going back to Arkansas or having some type of rotation (perhaps switching between Oklahoma and Arkansas or between Vanderbilt and Kentucky). There was some history with Kentucky. LSU played the Wildcats 51 years in a row at one point (ending with the 2002 season).

Ollie Gordon II rushes for one of two touchdowns in the 27-24 win in Stillwater, OK, on November 4. Although Bedlam has typically been a close game in recent years, Oklahoma had beaten Oklahoma St. eight of nine seasons going into 2021.  The Cowboys ended on a high note though, winning two of the last three.

As far as I’m concerned, LSU could even go back to playing Tulane if the two sides could come anywhere close to a mutually agreeable deal; but since that hasn’t happened in nearly 30 years, I’m not optimistic. There was a home-and-home in 2006 and 2007, but LSU felt like they gave up revenue from a potential home game to enrich Tulane. Since then, LSU has played every other Louisiana Division I program, all of whom seem content with being paid money to travel to Tiger Stadium occasionally rather than expecting a home-and-home exchange.

Anyway, putting tradition aside, I like that there aren’t brutal back-to-back weeks. Going to Florida after hosting Alabama isn’t ideal, but there is only one instance of LSU playing 2023 bowl teams two weeks in a row, and that’s UCLA and South Alabama (both were barely eligible and both will be home games).

USC and UCLA are separated by Nicholls St. and South Carolina. The Bruins or Gamecocks could have a good year, but I doubt both will. I don’t see much risk of looking past an SEC road game or coming down from an emotional high for the first home game that is against a Power 5 opponent.

There were years when I’ve been glad LSU got an apparently tough opponent from what we used to call the SEC East, but we didn’t need one given the out-of-conference slate. Also, I’m not even sure if you need a good non-annual schedule, especially if the SEC eventually adds a ninth game, in the playoff system. I guess we will see how lines get drawn between 4 and 5, 8 and 9, and 12 and 13 in playoff selection

Top 25

Other than their effects upon the Playoff resumes as mentioned in the previous blog, I didn’t have much to say about the conference championship games because they weren’t very surprising.  I don’t know why Oregon was favored by so much; but as I kept telling everyone, they didn’t deserve it.  I wasn’t a big believer in Georgia since the only SEC West teams they faced were Auburn and Ole Miss and they didn’t do anything out of conference until beating an average Georgia Tech team a couple of weeks ago.  Very good Alabama teams have struggled with Auburn before, so I didn’t attach much importance to that.  In lieu of Georgia, I admittedly picked the “wrong” Big Ten team as #1, but it wasn’t my fault Ohio St. had a better schedule than Michigan.  As expected, the Wolverines had no problem with Iowa. 

I’m listing my top 25 teams below, but I think they all fairly logically proceed from the results of those games and what I had written about the Playoff teams last week.

Rank	Team	Last
1	Washington	1
2	Michigan	2
3	Alabama	5
4	Texas	4
5	Florida St.	6
6	Georgia	3
7	Ohio St.	7
8	Oklahoma	11
9	Oregon	8
10	Penn St.	9
11	Ole Miss	10
12	Missouri	13
13	Liberty	17
14	LSU	15
15	Iowa	12
16	James Madison	14
17	Troy	22
18	Louisville	16
19	Notre Dame	21
20	N Carolina St.	18
21	So. Methodist	—
22	Tulane	19
23	Toledo	20
24	Arizona	24
25	Miami U.	—

Out of Top 25: (23) Oklahoma St., (25) Oregon St.

Honorable mention: Kansas St., Oklahoma St., Oregon St., Clemson, Memphis

LSU/Alabama Clarifications and Preview

I’m not going to tell you who’s going to win the LSU-Alabama game or whether Alabama is likely to beat the spread.  There are plenty of people to do that.  However, there are some things some of those supposed experts have been getting wrong that I’d like to correct.

LSU did suffer injuries, but…

LSU is only down one member of the secondary who has played in the last month or so, Zy Alexander.  Some people are saying it’s four or five players.  It is that many cumulative going back to the offseason, but the Tigers struggled more when some of those players were playing than they are now.  So the idea that LSU is already terrible and now they’re likely getting a lot worse due to a slew of injuries that some people who are picking Alabama keep promulgating isn’t quite accurate. 

The Tigers will also miss lineman Mekhi Wingo, but that absence is the result of surgery for a nagging injury that had kept him from playing at full strength all season, and LSU’s front seven has been pretty decent (with some depth) since they settled on the 4-3 formation. Jordan Jefferson (see the next section if you’re confused) has been the standout this season, not Wingo.

Alabama is the healthier team, so if people just make that point and leave it at that, they’re not misleading you.

No College Starting QB Has Beaten Saban 2 in a Row Since…

There was report, I think circulated by ESPN, that last starting college quarterback to beat Nick Saban two years in a row was Drew Brees.  Brees even shared it on Twitter.  That would be a cute factoid, if it were true, especially given that Saban passed on a chance to bring Brees to Miami.  It was actually Rex Grossman, who easily beat the Tigers in both 2000 and 2001 as the Florida QB.  Brees might have been the last one who played the full game, but letting a backup play at some point doesn’t change who the starter was.  At any rate, it’s been over 20 years, so it would still be quite an accomplishment for Jayden Daniels.

Fun fact: This is not Rex Grossman.

Some LSU fans have mentioned Jordan Jefferson, the former LSU quarterback from 10-15 years ago (and older brother of Justin Jefferson), not the current defensive lineman. Jefferson didn’t start in 2011, so he doesn’t count; although he did help win the game… to the extent anyone on the offense deserves credit when only six points are scored in regulation.

Homefield Advantage?

There are a couple of interesting notes about the 2019 LSU team.  No SEC team has won in Tuscaloosa since then.  Obviously, I had to add the *SEC* qualifier because Texas won there this season.  I also wanted to mention that Alabama was favored by more points in that game than there are in this game.  I believe this is the fifteenth straight game in which Alabama has been favored against LSU, and this might be the smallest point spread over that time.  Also, the 2021 LSU team (our last trip there) was a relatively rare team who made it close in Tuscaloosa despite it being the first LSU team with a losing final record since 1999. 

I haven’t done anything with updating my rivalry blogs this year, but it has been a weird pattern over the years that LSU has typically done better at Alabama than they do against the Tide at home.  Neither record is great of course.  However, before 2019, LSU had lost three in a row in Tuscaloosa by at least 14 points in each game.  So it seemed like we were even losing that silver lining.

Joe Burrow takes off for a 19-yard run in Tuscaloosa on November 9, 2019. In the last two LSU wins over Alabama, Tiger QBs accounted for 734 combined yards. The 2019 win was LSU’s first over the Tide in 8 years. The 2022 win was LSU’s first home win over the Tide in 12 years.

A third consecutive strong showing in Tuscaloosa (and a fourth strong showing in five years overall against Alabama) would be a good sign even if it’s a loss.  I’m not looking for moral victories in advance (of course I was very happy about the actual victories in 2019 and 2022), but obviously you have a better chance to win games against a given team or in a given location if you have a habit of at least keeping such games close.  I think there is a psychological impact when you have a series of disappointing results in a given situation.  Even though there weren’t too many players in common, I think that 2019 team had something to do with the confidence with which LSU played last year (as well as 2021), and obviously I hope that continues. It’s also good to look for signs of an improving program (at least relative to Alabama, in this case) in the bigger picture.

Will the team who scored 10 points in 59 minutes against South Florida outscore the team who averages 44 points per game?

The fact that my answer is “quite possibly” means I’m not blowing off all criticisms of LSU’s defense or ignoring the quality of Alabama’s. It’s a little tongue in cheek because no one is actually asking this question, but similar silly questions are being asked to suggest LSU will lose. (By the way, the 44-point average does not count the Grambling game.)

Like I said earlier, I’m not going to tell you where to put your money if you’re into gambling, but I do want to go over some things to look for whether it’s out of financial interest or not. 

To pick up where I left off about the injuries, there are certainly some question marks on the LSU defense, don’t get me wrong; but the same is true of the Alabama offense especially.  I don’t understand how it’s OK to pretend all their ills are solved because their last half of football went well, but LSU’s defense is still what it was against Ole Miss (or worse), and LSU’s offense is still what it was against Florida St.  LSU was not playing a terrific Army team, but you can’t do better than a shutout as far as points are concerned.  They looked significantly better than they did against Grambling, and Army would probably blow out Grambling.

Anyway, in response to the Alabama predicters and supporters picking on the Florida St. and Ole Miss games, we could just as easily pretend Alabama’s offense is just as bad as it was against South Florida (who gave up more points to Florida A&M than they did to the Tide) and Alabama’s defense is just as bad as it was against Texas.  Another thing I realized was before the final drive that ended in a touchdown with 33 seconds left against the Bulls, Alabama had had more possessions (11) than points (10).

I don’t think any Alabama fan would have taken you seriously if you told him that Daniels would account for 277 yards in last year’s game after he only accounted for 139 against Auburn the month before, so I don’t think this fan habit of trying to cherry-pick stats from an earlier game to tell you what to expect in the next game is very reliable.  But to the extent it is, it can go both ways.

It’s true that LSU can’t rely on the defense to show up strong, especially not in the secondary.  LSU doesn’t have to have a terrific secondary for there to be some stops though.  Even though the Ole Miss game was historically bad defensively, LSU still got stops when there were long-yardage situations on second and third down.  Alabama has had a problem throughout the season in putting themselves in bad down-and-distance situations through sacks and penalties.

The Tide has succeeded on some deep shots, but I don’t think they’ve faced an offense (other than possibly Texas) that really penalized them for low-scoring halves like I think LSU can.  Bama does keep teams to relatively low scores, but LSU has been scoring in the upper 40s even in conference games.  Alabama has typically been allowing scores in the low 20s. 

I think LSU will likely score somewhere in the 30s, but that could mean LSU wins 38-24 or scores 31 and loses.  I’m not sure what Alabama’s upper limit is; but they did get up to 40 against Mississippi St., and I’m sure they weren’t desperate to score on every drive after they led 31-10 at the half.

If Alabama finds that kind of offense again and doesn’t let up, LSU could also conceivably lose by a couple of touchdowns.  I think LSU winning by a couple of touchdowns is slightly more likely, especially if they’re able to get up into the 40s and it doesn’t make strategic sense for Alabama to try to get points from their kicker.  LSU has a capable but less consistent kicker; so, if it’s a closer game, that could be an advantage for the Tide.

The Steele Curtain

Some Alabama fans have brought this up, and it’s legitimate enough to address it.  By far the best game plan against Joe Burrow was implemented by Kevin Steele when he was the coach of Auburn in 2019 and held LSU to 23 points, but there isn’t some magic that takes place just because the uniforms are the same.  Obviously, he can’t make his defenses consistently play that well, because this year’s Tennessee, Arkansas, and Texas A&M aren’t anywhere near the 2019 LSU team and all of them also scored in the low 20s against a Kevin Steele defense.  I think that’s a bit more relevant. 

Kevin Steele and Ed Orgeron at their introductory press conference before the 2015 season. 2015 was one of only two seasons since 2011 that Steele coached somewhere other than Auburn or Alabama.

Steele might be a genius in stopping what Coach O called “da Joe Brady offense,” but that’s not what Mike Denbrock runs.  This is much more of a ball-control offense than LSU was in 2019.  Even Saban has compared it to the triple option (2/3 of which involve a back taking the ball downfield).  Burrow could run when needed (see the picture above), but he didn’t run with the same ease as Daniels.  Clyde Edwards-Hellaire came through in the Auburn game I mentioned, but he had only averaged 78 yards per game before that even though LSU was often trying to run out the clock on large leads.  Logan Diggs has averaged 107 yards per game over the last four SEC games, so I don’t think it’s as tempting to see what LSU can do with runs and short passes.

Daniels doesn’t check down as much to the tight end Mason Taylor as last year (for obvious reasons), but he’s still there if Steele focuses on stopping long passes as he did in 2019.  TE Thad Moss had 7 receptions in 2019.  If Daniels throws it to Taylor that many times, he may go for 100 yards.  Also, Steele obviously doesn’t control the offense.  The boom-and-bust offense that Alabama runs now isn’t likely to minimize the LSU possessions as the Bo Nix Auburn offense did in 2019.

That’s all I have to say really about things to look for as far as X’s and O’s, but I did come across some other items worth addressing.

Common Opponent and Why Alabama is Favored

I’m sorry if what I’ve covered is not too illuminating about who’s going to win, but we could have made similar competing arguments last year (although the teams were more balanced), and the game went to overtime.  The reason the line is closer this time is that there wasn’t a recent common opponent that made Alabama look a lot better.  Last year, Alabama had lost to Tennessee by 3 on the road, and LSU had lost to Tennessee by 27 at home.  Both games were within the previous month.

There is a common opponent this season that Bama fans have brought up, and that’s Ole Miss.  One difference is both teams played the Rebels in September rather than October.  Alabama only beat them by 14, and LSU-Ole Miss came down to the final play (similarly to how Alabama-Tennessee ended last season, even though Ole Miss won by a couple more points).  It is a good point total if you add the two margins of victory together, but we aren’t talking about a close game versus a blowout.  Also, rather than homefield advantage magnifying the difference between Alabama and LSU vis-à-vis the common opponent, it’s a mitigating factor this year.  If they were focused on the common opponent, the gamblers this year would have Alabama favored by a lot more than 3 points, which is essentially just the home advantage (although maybe that’s only part of it in this case).  They’re basically telling us that what they’ve seen from these two teams is close to dead even in the aggregate. 

Another reason one might lean toward Alabama is they are the more proven team even if there weren’t one fewer loss.  They’ve played three teams that were in the top 20 at the time they played them and have won the last two (2-1 overall).  In between those two, they won a game in College Station (where LSU has lost three games in a row, by the way). LSU may finish with a better schedule, but the Tigers have already played their FCS opponent and have already played Auburn, which for now is not as good as Texas A&M. LSU is 0-2 against top 20 teams, although Missouri was #21 (AP; #22 Coaches) and has since improved to #12 (CFP).  These things do not tell us who will win matchups on the field, but there is something to be said for being tested.

SEC West Implications

I don’t want to imply that LSU is going to win this game not to mention win out, so I’ll start with saying if you’re an Alabama fan, you can book your tickets (or at least your hotel room) to Atlanta the second the game ends if they win. Alabama likely wouldn’t technically clinch though because theoretically Ole Miss can represent the West if the Rebels win out AND Alabama loses to Kentucky and Auburn.

But I did want to mention one other factual thing a lot of people are getting wrong.  LSU is still the favorite to win the West if they do win out even if Ole Miss beats Georgia.  Yes, Ole Miss would win a head-to-head tiebreaker, but head-to-head means it’s just those two teams.  I suspect Alabama will beat Kentucky and Auburn, so that would make it a three-way tie with all teams 1-1 against the other two.

I guess it would be fitting for the last SEC West title race to come down to games like… Missouri vs. Tennessee on November 11 in Columbia. The Volunteers won by 6 touchdowns in Knoxville last season; but their point total dropped by over 30 against Alabama from last season, so I wouldn’t look for a similar score this year against Mizzou.

I have a standalone blog ready if Ole Miss does beat Georgia (and no other relevant upsets take place) that will tell you everything you need to know, but for now just know a three-way tie (meaning LSU beats Alabama and no one else beats LSU, Alabama, or Ole Miss the rest of the season) will come down to whose SEC East opponents do best.  Ole Miss has already played Vanderbilt and will play Georgia; LSU has already played Missouri and will play Florida; and Alabama has already played Tennessee and will play Kentucky.  LSU’s opponents have the best combined record at the moment.

Week 2 Top 25 and SEC Thoughts

I’ve been accused of being an SEC homer in the past, but I’m not going to sugarcoat it.  There were two more disappointing results to add to the LSU loss in Week 1.  Neither was as bad as Utah, the defending and eventual Pac-12 champions, losing to a Florida team that wouldn’t even finish with a winning record last season. By SEC standards though, losing to a similarly-placed team in another conference as Alabama and Texas A&M did is still bad news. 

Texas A&M and Alabama

It was a doubly good weekend for Longhorns fans. I guess it will be OK in hindsight if Texas A&M finishes last in the SEC West and U. Miami is in the top half of the ACC, but chances are the Aggies will beat at least one competitive team this year (as they beat divisional champions LSU last season).  I think there is a limit to how low Alabama can fall, but if they’re third and Texas goes undefeated in the Big XII, maybe that loss will also be understandable in hindsight by the end of the year. Alabama could still win the national championship, but I’m just giving one scenario.

In Tuscaloosa, Ala., Saturday, Texas QB Quinn Ewers threw for 349 yards and 3 touchdowns, including the one above to Xavier Worthy in the second quarter.

Early Big Games Are Not Always Determinative

Like I discussed last week, sometimes a team just gets off to a rocky start and fixes the problems before getting exposed by a conference opponent.  This happened to Ohio St. in 2014 before winning the first College Football Playoff.  An SEC example happened in 2006, when Arkansas was embarrassed against USC, 50-14, before winning the SEC West.  2006 was when the 7-year run of SEC national titles began, so it wasn’t a sign of a weak league then.  USC went on to win the Rose Bowl, but not before losing as many Pac-10 games (2) as the Trojans had lost in the previous four seasons combined.

Putting A&M aside since I don’t think a lot of people picked them first or second in the SEC West, the fact that it happened to both LSU and Alabama is somewhat concerning.  As far as I can recall, there wasn’t a second such game in 2006 or the few years after by one of the top SEC teams. 

I also want to say I don’t agree with some people saying that this means Texas will be a top contender for SEC titles right away.  One game isn’t an 8- or 9-game SEC slate; and even though Texas should be an easy place to recruit, they probably will have less experience in key positions next season.  Also, without the divisional format, it isn’t likely they can make a championship game almost by default like Missouri did a couple of times.  Texas A&M, which joined at the same time as Mizzou, still has never made an SEC championship game despite typically having much better teams.

Ole Miss and LSU

Neither of the next two SEC West teams I’ll mention have gotten much of the flak for last week, but I’ll also be fair and say I wasn’t impressed by them either.

Also, Ole Miss should have appeared vastly superior to a Tulane team that is missing a lot of its talent from last season (when they still lost to Southern Mississippi and Central Florida despite the positive season overall) and was also playing without its starting quarterback.  The starting quarterback might not have made a difference of 17 points (the final margin of victory), but it easily could have made a 7-point difference.  That game would have been a lot different if Ole Miss had made a field goal to go up three points instead of ten with just under two minutes left.  If Tulane didn’t have the urgency of being down two possessions on the ensuing drive, the turnover that resulted in the final Ole Miss touchdown would have been less likely.

LSU was expected to beat Grambling by a big score and did so, but I still think it was a bad sign that it was 14-10 LSU at the end of the first quarter.  If Grambling hadn’t deferred after winning the toss, they would have had two different leads.  It’s not like the field goal was from 50 yards either.  It was a 23-yard field goal, so Grambling was close to scoring before stagnating in the red zone.  It shows you don’t even have to be an FBS talent to catch passes against LSU, you just have to be tall.  I’m sure there are some tall receivers in the SEC.  A few players got out of the backfield too easily too.

Nonetheless, if LSU manages to go to Starkville and get a win (more on that below), the other teams in the division could be beatable.  I think the Tigers also have a fairly favorable cross-divisional schedule with Florida (at home) and Missouri (on the road).

Mississippi St. and Auburn

I mentioned last week that the Pac-12 had not lost any games against other conferences in Week 1.  The one bit of good news from the SEC West is Mississippi St. and Auburn became the first two teams from other conferences to defeat Pac-12 opponents.  Cal and Arizona only had a combined five conference wins last season, but it’s not like Auburn was terrific either (2 conference wins by a combined 6 points).  Yes, I know LSU struggled on the Plains last year anyway; but LSU has struggled there in the past against weak Auburn teams (even in 2012).

It will also be interesting to see how hosting Arizona compares to hosting LSU from Mississippi St.’s perspective.

Mississippi St. QB Will Rogers, who has thrown the most completions in SEC history, runs the ball against Arizona in Starkville, Miss. He only threw 13 of those 1192 completions on Saturday despite the game going into overtime.

LSU/Mississippi St. Series

Even if LSU wins, it’s going to be bittersweet, to me at least.  2024 will be the first year that Mississippi St. will participate in an SEC season and not play LSU.  The first SEC season was in 1933, and the last regular season Mississippi St. played without playing LSU was 1925.  The only Tigers’ schedule that didn’t have the Bulldogs on it over that time was 1943, when Mississippi St. didn’t field a team. 

I don’t understand why they couldn’t keep the series going next season while they figure out what the permanent rotation will be, but of course no one asked me.  Next season, LSU will play Vanderbilt for the 33^rd time, South Carolina for the 23^rd time, and Oklahoma for only the fourth time.  I think somehow one of those (or even Florida or Arkansas) could have found someone else to play while LSU played Mississippi St. again. 

I will have more to say about this whenever I get around to updating the rivalry blog, but I want people to appreciate that much while the game is taking played.

LSU/Mississippi St. Preview

About the game itself, it might be a good thing for LSU that Mississippi St. has moved away from the air raid since I’ve made no secret of my lack of admiration for the LSU secondary so far.  By the way, I had to laugh during the week when LSU commentators who acted like the Tigers could somewhat easily handle the Seminoles and were good bets for the top 10 (if not top 5) acted like they agreed when Brian Kelly told the media that he knew it would be an area of concern.  I understand why he didn’t tell us, but why didn’t the LSU media tell us if they knew?  LSU has a well-paid PR department.  They don’t need volunteers masquerading as journalists. 

I hope I’m wrong, but I think I’d take the Bulldogs and the points at home anyway.  Based on what State did last week, I do give LSU the edge but not by much.  Just because Miss. St. didn’t throw it much last week doesn’t mean they can’t or won’t if they feel like that’s what LSU is giving them.  The LSU defensive backs can’t get taller in the next couple of days, but I’m hoping they do a better job at breaking up passes on throwing downs and that there is more of a rush to assist the pass defense than there was against Florida St.

if Mississippi St. is not able to generate much offense without the help of the turnovers which they relied on to win the last game, then it might be relatively easy to outscore them. In that case, this might result in LSU being conservative to try to preserve the lead. Something like 23-14 or 27-19 would still fail to beat the spread. If LSU has to try to go score for score, then it’s also unlikely the Tigers win by double digits.

General Blog and Rankings Comments

Before I post the Top 25, I did want to mention that I’m not completely confident about my posting schedule for the next couple of weeks since I have some traveling planned.  It will be done by the time I usually post my first computer ratings in early October though.  It’s also more difficult to post blogs of my usual quality while traveling.  Enjoy the pretty rankings chart below since you might not see it again for a little while.

This is already long, so I won’t explain any particular ranking decisions.  I’m still giving some credence to preseason rankings at this point; but when I transition into a purely computer-based system, all preseason bias will be removed.  This does not take place in major polls or committee rankings.

Top 25

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

Out of Top 25: (23) Pittsburgh, (24) Fresno St.

LSU/FSU Reactions and Season Outlook

I’m sure most who are reading already know all of this, but I’ll provide a short recap for posterity. I will add this blog to the links on the “Rivalry Series” page. I know I’ve been posting something every other day, but don’t expect anything new until Sunday at the earliest. If you missed it, I posted my Top 25 and made some preliminary comments on Tuesday.

Recap

LSU got to the Florida St. 5 on the opening drive before settling for a field goal.  The Tigers got to the 8 two drives later, but a 30-yard field goal attempt was partially blocked.  There were only three LSU drives in the first half other than the one that was ended by the half.  The drive in the middle was a three-and-out, and Florida St. took advantage with a touchdown on a flea-flicker, so the ‘Noles led 7-3.  Toward the end of the half, Maliik Nabers fumbled a punt, but Florida St. turned the ball over on downs on the subsequent possession despite taking over at the LSU 16.  This kept the lead down to 4 at the half.ings got more exciting in the second half. 

Ontaria Wilson went high to catch the flea-flicker as the late-arriving defender went low in the second quarter in the Superdome Sunday. The Seminoles led for the remainder of the game.

Florida St. scored on their first two drives (field goal, then touchdown), interspersed with another LSU three-and-out, to take a 17-3 lead.  LSU and Florida St. exchanged touchdowns on the next two drives.  The Tigers cut the lead to 24-17 on the next drive (their second of the half); but given that the drive took almost five minutes off the clock, only 4:14 was left to play. 

After a first down on the opening play of the next drive, the Seminoles stalled on the next three plays.  So, with 2:!5 left in the fourth quarter, the Seminoles were forced to punt for only the second time all game, and it was fumbled by Nabers yet again.

Florida St. had a third and goal at the 1 yard line with only 1:20 on the clock, but on that play, FSU running back Treshaun Ward didn’t handle the pitch cleanly and fumbled the ball back to LSU.

This is what occasioned the 99-yard drive I mentioned.  That drive almost ended when Mason Taylor caught a pass in the middle of the field.  He was initially ruled out of bounds with one second left, but a replay seemingly showed that his knee touched with two seconds left.  In the NFL, this may have ended the game as the clock would have kept running by rule. 

But a first down stops the clock in college, and the play was whistled dead regardless.  It looked like Taylor’s knee touched with two seconds left; but it was announced that there would be one more play, and no adjustment to the clock was made.  It’s unclear if the LSU center would have been forced to snap the ball within that one second, but we will never know since Florida St. called a timeout before the snap anyway. 

Regardless, on the final play from scrimmage, Jayden Daniels found Jaray Jenkins on a crossing route toward the back of the end zone to make the score 24-23   In another flashback to earlier in the game, the extra point was blocked, ending the game. 

So all the fumble and ensuing drive ended up doing for LSU was to make the score closer.  With LSU’s kicking problems, I wouldn’t have put money on the Tigers winning in overtime anyway.  I also wouldn’t have been confident in LSU converting a second do-or-die two-point conversion play (which is basically the kind of play the touchdown was) either, so I don’t completely fault the coaches for not going for the win.  I did wonder why Kelly instantly raised one finger in the air to indicate kicking the extra point though.

Another key to the game I wanted to mention was Florida St.’s success on third down. The Seminoles went 11 for 17 overall and 4 for 6 on third and long (defined as third and 7 or longer). LSU only converted 5 of 11 overall and 1 of 4 on third and long.

The Big Picture and Additional Reaction

Losing by 1 when the 4 points that were blocked would have covered the spread is nothing like the slap in the face that the 11-point loss to UCLA (after the margin was 18 late in the fourth) or the 22-point loss to Kansas St. (after the margin was 35 late in the fourth) was.  Florida St. isn’t necessarily better than those programs, but LSU was never behind by three or more possessions in this game.

It’s unreasonable to expect to just flip a switch between the last game last year and the first game this year regardless of who the coach was.  Kelly didn’t inherit a well-oiled machine like Les Miles did.  He didn’t even inherit an underachieving (and overworked) squad of veterans like Ed Orgeron did.

The Tigers had a new starting quarterback, a center who had never been a center in an actual game before, and (for most of the second half) two backup defensive ends (Maason Smith was hurt in the first quarter, and Ali Gaye was ejected in the third quarter).  They were also without running back Jon Emery, Jr., who was supposed to be the top returning back going back to last season.  (More on that later.)  This was in addition to replacing most of the rest of the offensive line and most of the secondary in the offseason.

By the way, I disagree with some of the comments that Daniels did terrific, and every drive that ended quickly was someone else’s fault.  I think former LSU and NFL running back Jeremy Hill tackled that narrative well here.  In short, while the offensive line does need work, there were open receivers that Daniels didn’t even look at before scrambling and usually running. The pocket didn’t instantly close around him every play.  I didn’t catch the name on every play and I’m not going to re-watch the game to take notes (once was painful enough), but one of the best receivers at improvising to get open is Jack Bech, and he was only targeted once the whole game.

LSU QB Jayden Daniels runs for a first down in the Superdome on Sunday. Although he ran well and his completion percentage was good, the question remains if he can do enough in the air for consistent offensive success.

Will this year be another 1999 or another 2000?

I think most of those predicting 10 wins or more have now been disabused of that notion, but there are still very good (great may be off the table) and very bad ways this season could go.

Some younger fans may not know this, but there was actually a time before Les Miles.  I want to draw an analogy to something that happened in the beforetimes.  I remember the last time some stick in the mud from the Midwest whom we vaguely remembered facing in a bowl game showed up to coach LSU.  Kelly has tried harder to shake that image than Saban ever did, but the point is Saban didn’t exactly wow everyone with results right away either. 

I really think 2000 was the last season for LSU that was anything like this one going into it.

I would argue the team we saw in January was worse than what Nick Saban inherited in 1999.  In the game before Nick Saban was hired, LSU beat a good Arkansas team, 35-10, under Interim Head Coach Hal Hunter.  LSU did lose 8 games under Gerry DiNardo in 1999; but they were neck-and-neck with some very good teams, and players weren’t deserting the team like it was a sinking ship (it helped that the transfer portal didn’t exist then) or they would have had no chance to beat Arkansas (who’d entered the game at 7-3 after knocking off both reigning SEC divisional champions).  

If LSU had had the same team it had in January all of last season, not only would we have lost every SEC game, I doubt even one of the losses would have been close.

Saban’s first team was able to ease into things.  The first game was a blowout against Western Carolina (whose only two wins were over I-AA opponents).  The second game was against a Houston team that would finish 3-8 (whom the Tigers beat by a pedestrian score of 28-13).  Even with those warmup games, LSU dropped the next two, an understandable loss at Auburn, followed by an upset home loss to UAB. 

UAB’s Rhett Gallego kicks the winning field goal in Baton Rouge in 2000.

As an aside, LSU plays UAB again this year.  Assuming we get past them, Southern, and New Mexico, we probably won’t have lost to a team like UAB in this coach’s first year.  I don’t think there is one game on the SEC schedule (LSU is the only SEC team to lose so far, by the way) that looks as easy to beat as that team should have been given that the two SEC East opponents are Tennessee and Florida.

Anyway, UAB did finish with almost as many wins as LSU had in 2000; but for two teams to be even, a Conference USA team needs to have more wins, not fewer.  After a 41-9 loss to Florida, LSU did have a 4-game SEC winning streak in 2000, but one win was over 2-9 Kentucky and one was over 3-8 Alabama (by two points).  Which two SEC opponents this season are only going to win 2 or 3 games total?  Vanderbilt and South Carolina aren’t on the schedule if either of those were your answer (not saying they won’t do better anyway… Vandy is 1/3 of the way to bowl eligibility actually).

Unfortunately, I think that 1999 season is more similar to what LSU is facing this year.  LSU played three games against teams that didn’t qualify for bowl games and won three games.  They weren’t the same three, but the point is Saban’s four-game improvement in the regular season was partly due to the schedule.  The worst SEC opponent in 1999 was Auburn, which finished 5-6 (so with a modern schedule the Plainsmen probably would have also qualified for a bowl).  There were two one-point losses during the losing streak, and one loss was to the eventual SEC champions (Alabama) by six points on the road.  

So the team did not play dramatically differently overall in Saban’s first year even though he was a dramatically better coach than his predecessor.  Winning three close games rather than losing them is what made the Tigers bowl-eligible rather than 3-8.  What happens in future close games could make a huge difference in the number of wins here also.  I hope the Florida St. game isn’t a sign of things to come with regard to close games (as the loss at Georgia was in 1999); but the Tigers also dropped the first close game in 2000 (UAB), so it doesn’t have to be.

There is one slight advantage of this year compared to that year in that there are still three remaining non-conference games (LSU will likely be favored by multiple touchdowns in all three) whereas there were only three non-conference games total in 1999 with the same number of wins needed to make a bowl (6).

What To Expect

I touched on this earlier, but the chance of a season with double-digit wins went down considerably; but 7 or 8 wins, either of which I’d consider a success and said so before the season, are still realistic if things go well.  I’ll get to what might happen if things don’t go well.

To get a little more into “inside baseball,” I know almost everyone improves from Week 1, but the way this team had to come together in the offseason, I think players will improve faster than most as they get used to one another and learn their roles better.  Maybe Daniels will learn to read a defense before scrambling or Nussmeier will get a shot. 

Also, I do think by the time Emery comes back (he fell behind academically due to COVID, and the NCAA… enough said there), LSU might have a rushing attack other than the quarterback.  His first game will apparently be against Mississippi St.

I’m not being a what the forums call a sunshine pumper though.  Assuming we get past UAB and the other non-conference opponents that remain, I can’t tell you with confidence what three SEC teams we beat to become bowl eligible.  I won’t rest easy about winning a single one in isolation.

I don’t expect Auburn or Florida to be great this year (I barely had Utah ranked, so the win over the Utes [who probably should have won] didn’t drastically change my mind), but it gives me some pause that both games are on the road.  Mississippi St. is a good shot at a win; but except for the two years when Burrow was on the team, LSU has struggled against the Bulldogs since Dak beat them in 2014.  In my estimation, the quality of opponent only goes up from there. 

Maybe the home crowd could put LSU over the top against Ole Miss, Tennessee, or Arkansas.  Another occasional source of late-season success of late has been Texas A&M; but this is less true on the road, where the Tigers haven’t officially won since 2016 (some would say they won the 2018 game more than once).

On the other hand, I wasn’t overwhelmingly confident last year’s LSU team was going to beat #20 Florida or #14 Texas A&M (both of which were needed to become bowl-eligible) last year.  I also don’t remember being confident about LSU in 2000 when they went into a game against #11 Tennessee and another against #13 Mississippi St., but they managed (winning both in OT).  Had the Tigers lost both, they would not have made a bowl game in Saban’s first year. Side note: Tennessee also makes a rare visit to Tiger Stadium this year.

LSU TE Robert Royal catches the winning 25-yard touchdown pass in overtime to upset Tennessee in Baton Rouge in 2000.

Since that season in 2000, we always have had the talent and the fighting spirit (both of which were on display to an extent against Florida St.) needed to win the games we need to win to become bowl eligible (which LSU has been every year since 2000, although it voluntarily absented itself from bowl consideration in 2020), even if that means beating multiple ranked teams.  I’m not taking anything for granted though.  With special teams like that, even if the offense and defense improve, this could well be the year it doesn’t happen. If none of the three areas improve significantly, it could be a repeat of 1999.

SEC Scheduling Options and Solutions

General Update and Intro

I wanted to start by saying that I know I’m behind as far as things I’ve been planning on. 

I saw a joke online recently that said.  “Hobbies?  I am thirty-xx years old.  I do not have hobbies.  When I have any free time at all, I will go lie down.”

Sadly, that has been my pattern at times lately; although I do still have some hobbies.  I still haven’t gotten my normal pattern back since the lockdowns and whatnot.  I have gotten to travel a few times over the last couple of years, so I guess that counts as a hobby; but the way my work schedule works is I just have more to do before I leave and after I get back.  So if I’m gone for a week, I can’t even think about blogging for two weeks, sometimes longer.

I still need to update the rivalry blogs.  Since we are almost at the end of the academic sports calendar (schools are done, but baseball is still going), I’m going to wait until then to give an update as to what conference has been doing what in the major sports as far as top-four finishes. 

I’ll wait until the football preseason to recap the last football year.  I didn’t really wrap that up after the championship game.  I was glad that four teams were able to vie for the championship rather than two; but due to the whole holiday situation I mentioned earlier (also, even if I wanted to, it’s hard to schedule a lot of things in December), I rarely have time to say much after the actual champion is crowned.  I’m more interested in who goes to what bowl and who makes the Playoff now anyway since championship controversies are basically over with, but it was still nice to bring things to a nice conclusion when the season ended with the big bowls right around New Years before work was full-speed again.

Anyway, about a month ago, the SEC meetings in Destin, Florida, took place.  Thankfully no final decision was made or there would have been no point to blogging about it at this point.

Two options were presented regarding scheduling once Texas and Oklahoma enter the SEC.

There are so many considerations and things to be aware of, so I’m just going to write one big long article.  Maybe I’m not enough of a marketer, but I don’t have the time and the energy to split it up into small segments to tease where I’m going with this.  I’d rather spent time catching up on the other things, so everything I think is worth noting on the topic will be here.

Option 1: Eight Games with One Permanent Opponent

The first is easy to dispense with, so I’ll start there.  That would be an 8-game schedule with one permanent opponent.  Among the established SEC teams, there are three two-team states [Alabama-Auburn, Ole Miss-Mississippi St., and Tennessee-Vandy], so that knocks out 6 of the 16 teams.  Going forward there will be two annual neutral-site games. I’m not calling them the PC names—The Cocktail Party between Georgia and Florida and the Red River Shootout between Texas and Oklahoma.  I know Texas A&M-Texas would be in-state, but I think both Oklahoma and Texas would insist on playing each other annually instead.  Anyway, that takes out 4 more, leaving 6 teams to match up.  I think they’re fairly common-sense:

I don’t think this is very controversial

LSU-Texas A&M (long-term occasional rivals before the Aggies joined the SEC, they’re in neighboring states and battle over many of the same recruiting prospects)

Arkansas-Missouri (existing annual rivals; and apart from Oklahoma, who’s obviously taken, they’re in a geographic area all to themselves while being close to one another)

Kentucky-South Carolina (annual rivals since the Gamecocks joined the SEC for the 1992 season, and frankly they’re the only leftovers on the eastern side of the map.)

I will acknowledge a few small arguments that might come up.  I’ve seen some suggest Arkansas-Kentucky and Missouri-South Carolina, but that’s silly, especially if you’re only picking one matchup per team.  Missouri and South Carolina were illogically forced into the SEC East together and made the best of it by creating a trophy; but that doesn’t mean the series must continue annually.  Other than in years where Arkansas has a good basketball team, I don’t think anyone would be excited about Arkansas-Kentucky. 

I think both Arkansas and LSU fans would acknowledge that they’re not that geographically close to each other [despite the two states sharing a border, Baton Rouge is in the Southeastern part of Louisiana, and Fayetteville is in the Northwestern corner of Arkansas; Little Rock and Shreveport are no longer suitable venues for major SEC games as they were in the 1930s and 1990s, respectively], and the trophy they pass back and forth was also kind of forced. 

Texas A&M played Missouri a few times when both were in the Big XII, but they were never annual opponents except briefly in the couple of years after the Aggies joined the SEC, and that didn’t evolve into any kind of meaningful rivalry. Geographically, there is a lot of Texas to the North and East of College Station; and Texas and Missouri aren’t neighboring states.

Intro to Option 2: Nine Games with Three Permanent Opponents

It’s the other option that’s liable to cause a bar fight somewhere in SEC country.  That would be 9 games with three permanent opponents. 

First of all, why a 7/1 and 6/3 format?  Why isn’t 7/2 or 6/2 an option?  It’s simple.  This would allow you to play the OTHER teams exactly twice every four years, one home and one away.  So if there are 16 teams with an 8-game schedule, you subtract the team in question and the annual opponent (16-1-1=14).  That leaves 7 spots for 14 teams. You play half of them the first year and the other half the second year.  In the third year, you repeat the same schedule as the first year except it’s in the opposite respective stadiums.  In the fourth year, you swap stadiums but otherwise with the same schedule as the second year.

With the 6/3 format, you subtract the team in question and three annual opponents (16-1-3=12).  That way you have an even number and can play exactly half of the teams one year and the other half the next along the same lines as the 7/1 format I explained.

This is the option favored by the big wigs who have gone undefeated and/or have won national championships despite a loss. 

I can definitely see a capable program like Ole Miss (with no national-championship team in 60 years and no consensus national championship ever) or Tennessee (with one in the last 70 years) worried they might get just one shot and blow it by losing the extra SEC game or that they might finish second in the SEC rather than first as a result of the extra game and not get the same forgiveness that Alabama might get when they finish second.

Even more marginal programs like Vanderbilt would probably prefer 8 games.  If they can only manage to win three or four, they still have a shot at a bowl game.  If they went 3-6, they would have to be perfect in the other games to make a bowl.  If they went 2-7, they wouldn’t be allowed to play in a bowl.  At 2-6, they might still have a shot if they can run the table out of conference.  At 3-5, they can afford to lose one out of conference. 

Also, an extra home game in Nashville every other year isn’t going to yield a program-changing amount of money regardless of the opponent.  An extra Alabama-Florida or LSU-Georgia game by contrast is a huge sum of money and probably gets a prime TV spot.  You can bet it’s not going to be at 11 a.m. on the SEC Network.

The other issue is with one more conference game, that’s one less spot for a meaningful non-conference game.  Some argue that all 16 teams will just play one more easy opponent, but that hasn’t historically been the case.  There have been many instances of an SEC team scheduling two quality opponents out of conference.  I think if there are 9 SEC games, any team would be crazy to have more than one ever, at least not without a major expansion of the Playoff.

Rivalry Week

I didn’t think of this until I almost completed writing this blog, but the 9-game series would also make Rivalry Week weird for LSU. 

If there is only one permanent opponent (as above), Texas A&M stays available for LSU in Rivalry Week since the Aggies won’t be playing Texas that week every year, assuming Texas-Oklahoma is the annual game instead.  There isn’t an obvious team for Texas to play that week, but I imagine they could keep at least sporadic series going with former Big XII and Southwest Conference foes.  Texas-Oklahoma is earlier in the year, and I hope Oklahoma would keep playing Oklahoma St. An alternative arrangement would be for LSU to play A&M earlier in the schedule in years where the Aggies are playing Texas and during Rivalry Week in other years, but then both LSU and Texas would have to find alternatives every other year. I would prefer if LSU/A&M kept the same date.

It gets trickier for LSU if A&M is playing Texas during Rivalry Week every year, which would most likely be the case in the 9-game schedule. These are the obvious Rivalry Week games in that scenario, assuming Oklahoma keeps playing Oklahoma St.:

Non-SEC teams are added as abbreviations with a transparent background. I’ll explain below why Louisville isn’t included.

If the annual series between Texas and Texas A&M is once again played during Rivalry Week (as was the tradition before the Aggies left the Big XII for the SEC), for the third time in 30 years the Tigers would be losing an annual “Rivalry Week” opponent. I’ll elaborate in the next two paragraphs for anyone who wants that explained.

With only a handful of exceptions from the 1930s through 1991 (a couple of rescheduled games and a couple of series against non-major Western teams), LSU completed its regular season against Tulane.  Starting in 1992, LSU began to complete the season against Arkansas, which had just joined the SEC and needed to start (or re-start if you take a long enough view) a semblance of a rivalry with someone. Starting a few years after that, LSU decided it wasn’t worth it to play annual home and home series against Texas A&M (which usually started the year) or Tulane (which was second-to-last for a few seasons) in addition to the various SEC series.

A couple of years after Missouri and Texas A&M joined the SEC in 2012, it made sense that rather than playing each other they would play Arkansas and LSU, respectively.  So since 2014, LSU has played Texas A&M (in part to replace Texas and in part because that was a “historical” series still in most fans’ memory) during Rivalry Week.

There would be no obvious SEC team to fill the gap for LSU.  Traditionally (before 2014), Tennessee ended its season with Vanderbilt and Kentucky (for a long time Vanderbilt was last, but then they switched), but obviously the Volunteers can’t play both on the same weekend.  Maybe if Tennessee ends with Vandy one year and ends with Kentucky the next, whoever isn’t playing Tennessee during Rivalry Week can play LSU. Kentucky has been playing Louisville that week of late, but traditionally the Kentucky-Louisville game was earlier in the season anyway.  Surely the Cardinals could go back to playing someone else that weekend. I don’t want to get into ACC scheduling politics, but there are teams in the ACC without obvious traditional opponents for that week.

Suggested Permanent Opponents under Option 2

My Preferred Permanent Opponents

Alabama: Auburn, Ole Miss, Tennessee

Arkansas: Missouri, Texas, Vanderbilt

Auburn: Alabama, Florida, Georgia

Florida: Auburn, Georgia, South Carolina

Georgia: Auburn, Florida, South Carolina

Kentucky: Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee

LSU: Arkansas, Mississippi St., Texas A&M

Mississippi St.: LSU, Ole Miss, Vanderbilt

Missouri: Arkansas, Kentucky, Oklahoma

Oklahoma: Missouri, Texas, Texas A&M

Ole Miss: Auburn, Mississippi St., Vanderbilt

South Carolina: Florida, Georgia, Kentucky

Tennessee: Alabama, Kentucky, Vanderbilt

Texas: Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas A&M

Texas A&M: LSU, Oklahoma, Texas

Vanderbilt: Arkansas, Ole Miss, Tennessee

If the competitive balance isn’t right or one of your favorites is missing, keep reading.

Hopefully, you can understand the basics of how the map works and I don’t have to provide the information in list format for every map I saw fit to mention in this blog. 

Most of these should be obvious why I chose them on the map or based on a passing familiarity with the historical rivalries, but I’ll explain a few that I chose over others I could have chosen.

Oklahoma and Texas A&M were both in the Big XII South, and Oklahoma was in both the Big XII (albeit in another division) and Big 8 with Missouri.  There isn’t a similar tie between Oklahoma and Arkansas even though they’re both in the Northwestern part of the map.  Also, Arkansas and Texas were annual rivals in the Southwest Conference before the Razorbacks joined the SEC and have renewed the rivalry several times since.  I mentioned that when that happened, the LSU-Arkansas rivalry was kind of forced and therefore not one that had to take place every year.  However, being the #3 rivalry for both schools is reasonable.

Vanderbilt could have been matched with Arkansas or Missouri, but the only logical opponent to drop would have been Mississippi St., which has a really forced annual series with Kentucky that doesn’t make a lot of geographic sense.    Why make longer trips for both if there isn’t a compelling reason to do so?  Mississippi St. could have also been replaced with Kentucky, which would be slightly better for Vanderbilt but would make even less sense for Mississippi St.

Since I ruled out Missouri playing Vanderbilt annually, the only real option to Missouri’s east was Kentucky. Kentucky and Missouri are the two northernmost teams in the SEC, and neither had another strong competitor for the #3 slot.

While not quite as unnatural, hence Florida joining the SEC many decades before, the Gators have a similar issue to Missouri being that they’re in an extreme position on the map somewhat alone.  In the last 10 years or so, they were probably happy to play Tennessee rather than Auburn most of the time; but I’m not sure Auburn is going to be a better program going forward. 

Younger fans may not understand why other than geography Florida should play Auburn at all.  Unlike some of the others I discussed there is nothing artificial about this rivalry.  I know they’ve only played once since 2011, but bear with me.  Until 2002, each team had two cross-divisional opponents.  Florida-Auburn was important enough to be annual until then.  It wasn’t quite as prominent as Auburn-Georgia though (and Florida was a more interesting and logical opponent for LSU than Kentucky was), so it had to go.  In the 58 seasons between the end of World War II and the revamping of SEC schedules in 2003, Auburn played Florida 59 times.  (They played in a rematch in the SEC Championship in 2000.)

So by now, you’ve probably figured out why Auburn might be perturbed with this map.  They’re paired with three opponents who are among the most successful programs in the conference over the past several years in terms of championships and championship game appearances. No one else has three opponents all of whom have at least one national championship in the last 15 years.  But a lot has changed with Florida since that Gators national championship in 2008.  Other than 2020, when there were two extra SEC games (and the winning percentage in a typical year probably would have resulted in six wins), the Gators have only won 7 or 8 conference games three times since that championship season.  One of those was the year after.  By contrast, the Gators won four SEC games or fewer (that’s .500 or below) six times.  Since 2008, Georgia and Florida have only combined for 13 wins twice.  They combined for 10 or fewer wins seven times.  Georgia has been a rock-solid program the past five years, don’t get me wrong; but the point is Georgia and Florida are rarely top teams at the same time.

As for Alabama, it’s possible Saban has peaked or at least will have in two or three years (or longer… they could start with 8 and go to 9 later) before this would go into effect.  I don’t know if 2011 to 2017 Alabama would have lost to LSU in 2019 or to Georgia last year.  I’m not saying he’s on his way out or that he might not have a more national championships in him, but I am saying we shouldn’t assume Alabama is going to be dominant for the foreseeable future.  I know it was a long time ago, but in 7 of the 10 years before Saban was hired, the Tide won four games or fewer in the SEC. 

If Saban retired tomorrow, Alabama could still win a national championship in January, but ask Auburn what happened after the last time they won one in 2010 or even LSU what happened in the last two years.  Things can go downhill in a hurry.  Malzahn nearly won one at Auburn in his first year in 2013, and it was pretty much downhill from there.  Even that 10-year period at Alabama before Saban I mentioned… the first of those was only five years after Gene Stallings’ national championship season. As I mentioned, Florida has had just a few really good seasons since winning two national championships in three years under Urban Meyer.  It’s not going to be three national-championship-caliber opponents every year. 

It could be that Texas A&M would have more of a gripe with their schedule, but that depends how well Oklahoma is able to withstand its latest coaching change, how quickly Brian Kelly can get acclimated in Baton Rouge, and how soon Texas returns to national prominence.  For Texas, it’s been “any season now” since 2009.  Oklahoma has been a reliable standard-bearer in the Big XII and a regular participant in Playoffs and championships.  Texas played for two national championships in the first decade of this century.  I don’t like to brag about LSU this way, but obviously the Tigers have won three national titles and played for another in the last 20 years.

Speaking of Texas A&M, as I touched on at the end of the last section, it occurred to me that if they do start playing Texas every year once again (and almost everyone thinks they should if there are three permanent opponents), there would be some turmoil regarding who plays whom on Rivalry Week.  Even if Bedlam stops being an annual series (I for one hope it doesn’t), Oklahoma and Texas probably wouldn’t want to move their traditional matchup in the Dallas area at the time of the Texas state fair to the end of the season and probably would want to (assuming they were playing A&M annually anyway) go back to playing the Aggies that week.

I do think no matter what arguments I make (or someone more notable makes) there is a high chance that people will reject a schedule that doesn’t pay more attention to perceived competitive balance than I did, but that’s unfortunate.  Most teams are going to be luck of the draw anyway since every team in the SEC would be on your schedule at least once in a two-year period.  Even if you get the annual opponents that seem easier, you might get the best Georgia team one year, the best A&M team the next, the best LSU team the year after that (and maybe another great Georgia team), and so on.

I’m not pretending these things don’t matter at all.  Even when Vanderbilt is having a good run and Alabama is relatively mediocre, you’d still rather have Vanderbilt on the schedule.  A mediocre Alabama team will have better athletes.  Even in the 10 pre-Saban years you still would have had about a 1 in 3 chance of Alabama winning 75% or more of its conference games.  Vanderbilt hasn’t won over 75% of its conference games since it was in the Southern Conference in 1929.  The Commodores have only had two winning SEC records since 1959.

So there would be a percentage advantage or disadvantage in the big picture for some schools, but as long as it’s mostly beneficial to the schools who haven’t won, I think that’s OK.  A given team playing South Carolina, Tennessee, and Missouri has an easier route, but Kentucky has never played for a conference title and hasn’t even gotten particularly close to a divisional title that I know of.  I’m OK with that.  Vanderbilt could have three easy opponents if Tennessee and the Mississippi schools are having off years.  I’m OK with that too. 

Part of the reason I’m not in favor of the nine-game schedule is it makes the competitive balance more difficult.  It’s much more likely that a team comes ahead or behind based on strength of schedule whether it’s due to the luck of the draw, annual opponent, or unequal number of conference home/away games.  The big schools are the ones asking for this, so if whoever is near your team that makes sense historically and geographically is too good, join the smaller football schools in pushing to keep the eight-game schedule.

My Strongest Alternative Suggestion

I’m willing to be nice and show a willingness to compromise based on those last few paragraphs.  I would also be extremely happy with this second option, which I think avoids a lot of potential gripes from Auburn and Texas A&M fan bases in particular.

I’m not only going to show you these two, but the other two that I made myself are variations on things other commentators are suggesting, so this is the only other one that’s purely based on what I want and believe in.

Someone might have read what I said about Alabama and thought I was only saying that because I wasn’t pairing LSU with Alabama.  Although I prefer Texas A&M (and not just because of LSU’s record against them), my alternative plan is to put my money where my mouth is and keep LSU-Alabama an annual event.

This pays less attention to the newer rivalries even if they make sense.

You can just by looking at the map that I did a good job keeping the far western teams together, keeping the central teams together, and keeping the Eastern teams together.  It lacks some series I like such as LSU-Arkansas, Florida-Auburn, and Alabama-Ole Miss, but it adds some good ones. 

Arkansas would play both of its old Southwest Conference rivals (Texas and Texas A&M) annually. Florida would continue to play three of the five SEC East teams it has played every year since 1992.  Florida-Kentucky has been a reliably good game lately even though until recently the Gators had a decades-long winning streak over the Wildcats.  Auburn-Mississippi St. isn’t going to be the Game of the Century anytime soon, but it’s better than Auburn or Mississippi St. versus Vanderbilt.  Also, I think given that Missouri has had a killer travel schedule and will continue to have one regardless, it’s only fair to give them the closest three teams as permanent opponents.

LSU would also play its closest conference rivals, in that case the ones with whom they share the most history.  In recognition of the importance, LSU completed its conference season for almost 30 years in a row with those three, ending when Arkansas joined as mentioned previously.  Before that stretch (when Tulane was still in the SEC), they were almost always three of the final four conference opponents.

Oklahoma, Texas, and Tennessee would play the same teams as the previous map.  Vanderbilt would have a slightly longer trip to play Missouri than they would have to play Mississippi St., but I don’t think that’s a big deal.

LSU vs. A&M, Ole Miss, and Mississippi St.

This is a blend of my two suggestions as far as LSU is concerned. I don’t mind it. I think it’s good to promote the LSU/A&M rivalry again, and I think it’s worse to lose the LSU/Ole Miss rivalry than Alabama. I would say that even if this were the late 1990s or early ’00s.

It’s the one that Matt Moscona thought was likely, but as far as I know he didn’t opine about which other teams should play which.

This is similar to my first suggestion, but i connected Missouri and Arkansas with the roughly parallel traditional SEC East teams.

There are the same Auburn and Texas A&M issues as in the first suggestion here, so of course I did an alternate keeping these opponents for LSU.

More similar to my second map, this keeps the western teams who weren’t in the SEC before 1992 playing each other along with maintaining more SEC East rivalries. It’s too easy on Alabama in my opinion though.

LSU vs. A&M, Ole Miss, and Alabama

I usually respect what Ross Dellenger has to say, but what he laid out in Sports Illustrated is terrible.  I don’t know if it was just a joke, but when I used to follow him on Twitter, he used to post about drinking whiskey on the rocks whenever he was stressed about something.  Maybe he fell off the wagon while writing his article.

With all the long and overlapping lines, it almost looks like there are more permanent games here.

I already talked about how I don’t think Missouri-South Carolina or Kentucky-Arkansas make a lot of sense.  Kentucky wouldn’t really play any games to be excited about.  I mention that I don’t think they really care about Mississippi St.  Those were just two of the teams without obvious cross-division rivals.  It’s not something anyone is going to be heartbroken to end now.  That would leave Georgia as the only annual SEC East series for the Wildcats.  I know they would give the Bulldogs their best shot, but even their biggest fan would probably dread the game more than they would be excited about it.  At least they’ve held their own against Tennessee, and that’s much more natural rival geographically as well as historically.  Even Kentucky-Florida has been a better series of late even though Florida dominated for decades. 

Dellenger added some extra, even more contrived rivalries that make even less sense.  I’m sure everyone will be talking about their plans for the big Auburn-Vandy game every year.  Florida-Oklahoma sounds like a good Orange Bowl or Sugar Bowl when Florida has a good year, but annual rival?  What?  If you’re going to make Florida play a second heavyweight program in addition to Georgia, Oklahoma should be last on the list. 

Mississippi St. is another school that wouldn’t have any rivals to be invested in except for the obvious.  State and A&M played in a snowy Independence Bowl in 2000 as Jackie Sherrill got to sneak out a victory against his old program, but that was the only time they faced one another between 1937 and 2012, the year the Aggies started SEC play. The only time one team had visited the other school’s campus was 1913.  It was a good matchup for the Independence Bowl organizers in that one year, but I don’t think it’s something “the 12^th man” would be excited about on an annual basis. 

Anyway, I felt it necessary to find a scenario that I think makes sense assuming he’s correct about LSU at least.

This is the only one I’ve done where Florida still plays Tennessee, but I think it’s wrong not to have Kentucky play Tennessee.

I kept his plans for LSU in tact, but I made some trades to try to rehabilitate his list to make it more palatable.  I can understand what he was trying to do with balancing the schedule, but you don’t just do that and ignore everything else.  I did keep Kentucky-Mississippi St., but I gave the Wildcats Vanderbilt and South Carolina, both of which make more geographic sense.  I don’t know the history before 1992, but they have played every year since.  At least I eliminated several of the matchups that made absolutely no sense.

2021 Week 4 Top 25

rank team last
1 Alabama 1
2 Georgia 2
3 Oregon 5
4 Penn St. 4
5 Florida 7
6 Ohio St. 8
7 Cincinnati 6
8 Iowa 3
9 B. Young 9
10 Coastal Car. 13
11 Arkansas 17
12 Oklahoma 11
13 Notre Dame 15
14 Oklahoma St. 16
15 Texas 19
16 Ole Miss 20
17 Michigan 22
18 Michigan St. 23
19 Texas A&M 14
20 Baylor —
21 Fresno St. 21
22 Louisville —
23 C. Florida —
24 UCLA 25
25 San Diego St. —

Out of rankings: (10) Clemson, (12) Liberty, (18) Iowa St., (24) Wyoming

Sorry this is so late.  Normally I would push a blog back at this hour, but it had to be posted given that it’s now Saturday on the east coast.

I don’t usually drop a team as far as I did Clemson, but that’s the danger with leaving a 1-loss team in the top 25 at this time of the season.  Two losses is too high a percentage of the season to stay ranked, but at the same time losing to what looks like one of the best teams so far shouldn’t necessarily knock you out of the top 10.

Liberty also fell all the way out, but I don’t think I’ll get much push-back there.

I can’t get on board with some of the other ACC teams I’ve seen getting votes right now.  North Carolina looks bad.  North Carolina St. lost to Mississippi St.  In its only games of note, Wake Forest beat Virginia, who has another loss and it’s to North Carolina, and Florida St.  No need to elaborate about the ’Noles. 

Some lazy pollsters ranked Auburn, but the Tigers should at least go win in Baton Rouge if they want to show there is something special about this year’s team as compared to others from the Plains in recent years.  Maybe Penn St. was a moral victory in the eyes of some, but if there are undefeated teams with actual victories over opponents of some quality, I’ll take them instead.

Iowa struggled against an opponent Vanderbilt beat, so I had to knock them down a bit.  Plus Iowa St. lost again.  I did give Baylor credit for the win over the Cyclones, but again I don’t think it’s appropriate to rank a two-loss team at this point in the season.

Louisville LB Jaylin Alderman made his only snap of the game count when he returned an interception for a touchdown to break the tie in the final 30 seconds against Central Florida.

I’m giving some delayed credit to Louisville, who beat Central Florida two weeks ago.  I took the Knights out but didn’t put the Cardinals in.  Some other teams fell below Central Florida and Louisville last week more than either adding anything significant to their respective resumes.  Reminder that the Knights beat Boise St., who had a strong win over Utah St. last week.  The Broncos did suffer one other loss, but it was to Oklahoma St., so they may be ranked in the coming weeks if they continue to do well in the Mountain West.

Speaking of which, I decided to take Wyoming out (Ball St. isn’t as good as i thought they were previously; also, the Cowboys barely beat Connecticut) and replace them with another Mountain West team, San Diego St.  The Aztecs are 2-0 against the Pac-12, although Arizona barely counts.  Utah is a respectable win though, at least based on information available so far.

Week 3 Top 25 and Conference Report

Week 3 Conference Report

The only decent interconference records are held by the Big XII (23-4 including 11 FCS wins), Big Ten (23-7, including 6 FCS wins), and SEC (30-6, including 8 FCS wins).  You can only tell a limited amount from the games between those conferences, but I think Arkansas’ win over Texas is significant.  Arkansas is usually one of the worst teams in the West, and Texas is usually one of the best teams in the Big XII.  To my shame as an LSU fan, I think the Tigers have the SEC’s worst loss, but the good thing is the Pac-12 barely has a winning overall record, so they’re not close to being considered.  UCLA is an improving program, but they shouldn’t beat a team with LSU’s recent success in the SEC.

It is bad that Vanderbilt lost to East Tennessee St., but it’s not that unexpected for the worst of any conference to lose to an FCS opponent.  This year, FCS teams have won 10% of the time against FBS opponents.  Also, the Commodores redeemed themselves somewhat against Colorado St.  On the other hand, the Big Ten and Big XII have not suffered such losses yet.

The best win by the Big XII was West Virginia over Virginia Tech, but the Mountaineers also suffered a loss to Maryland.  I don’t really fault the Big XII for the other two losses: Iowa St. usually loses to Iowa, which looks to be a very good team this year; and Kansas staying with Coastal Carolina as long as the Jayhawks did was a positive in my view.

WVU RB Leddie Brown runs for a touchdown on Saturday in Morgantown. He rushed for 161 yards on the day.

The Big Ten has the most losses in this group, although most are excusable.  Nebraska did well to keep Oklahoma close.  Illinois (losses to Virginia and Texas-San Antonio) is just having a bad year.  Northwestern has had recent success though, so their loss to Duke isn’t as well-taken.  I also didn’t expect Indiana to beat Cincinnati.  I do fault Ohio St. a bit for losing to Oregon.

So, for the Big Ten, I just think there is too much blame to go around.  There also isn’t a really great win.  Michigan St. had a good win against U. Miami, but I think the Hurricanes were just overrated.  Penn St. was a good win over Auburn, but Auburn has a new head coach after losing at least 4 games every season since the national-championship loss to Florida St. in the 2013 season.  Auburn is just not what they used to be.  I know Penn St. did poorly in last year’s abbreviated season, but after going 11-2 and winning the Cotton Bowl in the last full season, I still think they’re a program more on the right track.  It just wasn’t a huge deal that they beat Auburn at home.

The SEC’s other losses weren’t anything to write home about.  Pittsburgh was somewhat of an upset against Tennessee, but the Vols are usually in the bottom half of the SEC if not the bottom quarter.  Mississippi St. has an accomplished head coach with an entertaining personality and therefore some potential, but we haven’t seen much from the Bulldogs since Dan Mullen left after the 2017 season.  I’d frown upon losing to most American Conference opponents, but Memphis is a much better program than most in that conference. 

I’m giving to the edge to the SEC at this point based on Georgia’s win over Clemson.  Neither the Big Ten nor the Big XII has that giant-killer sort of game on its resume.  Georgia is one of the top 5 to 10 programs right now, don’t get me wrong; but Clemson is one of the top 2 programs right now.  West Virginia beating Virginia Tech (who was only ranked because they beat a likely overrated UNC team) is no comparison.

Since this is a combined blog when originally I meant it to be two separate blogs, I’m just going to give a list of the other conferences with their records and my ranking.

The American Conference (AAC) might raise some eyebrows based on record alone, but trust me that they have better wins and a stronger schedule as a whole.  I mentioned a couple of them above: Memphis over Mississippi St. and Cincinnati over Indiana.

4. ACC (22-12, including 10 wins over FCS)
5. Pac-12 (16-15, including 7 wins over FCS)
6. MWC (20-13, including 8 wins over FCS)
7. AAC (17-18, including 8 wins over FCS)
8. Sun Belt (17-10, including 8 wins over FCS)
9. Independents (13-6, including 2 wins over FCS)
10. CUSA (16-17, including 12 wins over FCS)
11. MAC (13-22, including 10 wins over FCS)

As for the rankings, the first thing I wanted to note was that I left USC in last week’s rankings by accident.  I should have ranked Central Florida #24, although last week’s performance has taken the Golden Knights back out of the rankings.  I also should have taken UL-Lafayette, which lost to Texas in Week 1, out and left Texas in at #25.

So this should have been the final three teams and the “out of rankings” list last week:

23 Ball St. 23
24 C. Florida —
25 Texas 15
Out of rankngs: (20) UL-Lafayette, (21) S. California, (24) Buffalo

Week 3 Top 25

Moving on to this week, I decided to move Oregon up another chunk of spots.  I know at the end of the season “win chains” (Team A beat Team B who beat Team C and so on) get ridiculous, but it’s one of the few things to go on as we transition from a general sense of a team in preseason to a situation where we can exclusively rely on observations from this season alone.  We also don’t have enough games played where we can disregard a win chain where maybe a 3-win team upset an 8-win team. 

Anyway, the Ducks beat Fresno St. in Week 1.  The closeness of that game was actually part of the reason I didn’t rank the Ducks after Week 1, but now that the Bulldogs beat UCLA, who beat LSU by a couple of possessions, the Ducks have two good wins.  This increase in rank doesn’t have anything to do with Oregon’s win over Stony Brook last week.

Oregon RB CJ Verdell outruns the Buckeye secondary for a 77-yard touchdown in Week 1 in Columbus. This is still a very significant game for both parts of this blog.

Also, Ohio St. (the other meaningful victim of the Ducks) has improved in status in my view.  The Buckeyes are the only team to beat Minnesota, who just beat Colorado by 30.  The Buffs played a close game against Texas A&M the week before.  Anyway, this not only bolstered my decision to move up Oregon, it also led me to move Ohio St. up and Texas A&M down.  I also moved Oklahoma down after another close game against a seemingly mediocre opponent.

Although I didn’t want to punish Liberty or Coastal Carolina for any particular reason, I don’t mind them being the victims of the Buckeyes’ and Ducks’ improvements given Coastal’s close game against Buffalo and Liberty’s close game (in week 2) against Troy.  Those were both road games against respectable Group of 5 programs though.  I also didn’t want to move Oklahoma down that far, so someone had to get the short end of the stick.

Partly because Georgia Tech lost to Northern Illinois, I also moved Clemson down considerably for its struggles against the Ramblin’ Wreck.  In the Tigers’ defense, they did score nearly twice as many points as did the Yellow Jackets; but when that margin is one possession, that’s still a cause for concern.  I don’t see this as a contradiction to giving Georgia credit for beating Clemson, but this is another instance of the natural process of changing the focus to this season.  Clemson needs good wins to compensate for the loss now, and that wasn’t one.  They can’t just point to success over past seasons.

Also, Georgia and Clemson seem to be moving in opposite directions.  I’m encouraged by the Bulldogs’ 96 points in the last two games.  UAB isn’t great, but the Blazers have won 8 of 12 including last season.  Asking Georgia to score any more points than they did would have been wrong, and UAB was held off the scoreboard until the fourth quarter.  South Carolina was not a good team last year, but don’t forget that the last time the Gamecocks went to Athens they won.  So a solid 27-point win was also about as much as you could ask of the Bulldogs.  No need to give South Carolina bulletin-board material for next year.

Again, I hope you’ll forgive my lack of elaboration for the other new and moved teams since I’m trying to keep the size of this combined blog under control.  Apart from Wyoming, all of the new teams are also being recognized by the major pollsters. 

Wyoming beat both Northern Illinois and Ball St.  I mentioned that Northern Illinois beat Georgia Tech, whom Clemson barely beat.  I ranked Ball St. in the preseason, and the Cowboys beat the Cardinals by a larger margin than Penn St. did.  For all I know, Ball St. may not win another game; but I don’t think they changed much between playing Penn St. and playing Wyoming at the very least.  Northern Illinois’s other loss is to Michigan, which I’m also giving credit for starting the season well.  It’s only consistent to also include Wyoming at this point.  I did rank the Cowboys a couple of spots below the Wolverines, but they had a much closer game against the Huskies than Michigan did.  I know they don’t attract the attention of many voters (although someone in the AP put them 25^th); but if Wyoming were named Notre Dame with the same resume they do now, they’d probably be in the top 10.  I definitely don’t think they’ve done anything as bad as losing to Fresno St.  They haven’t beaten LSU either, but we don’t really know what that means yet.  Doubt should be resolved in favor of the undefeated team, at least in September.

Wyoming QB Sean Chambers led the offense to over 200 passing yards Saturday in Laramie. He also added 21 net yards on the ground.

rank team last
1 Alabama 1
2 Georgia 2
3 Iowa 3
4 Penn St. 4
5 Oregon 13
6 Cincinnati 6
7 Florida 8
8 Ohio St. 14
9 B. Young 11
10 Clemson 5
11 Oklahoma 7
12 Liberty 9
13 Coastal Car. 10
14 Texas A&M 12
15 Notre Dame 15
16 Oklahoma St. 16
17 Arkansas 21
18 Iowa St. 22
19 Texas 25
20 Ole Miss —
21 Fresno St. —
22 Michigan —
23 Michigan St. —
24 Wyoming —
25 UCLA 19

Out of rankings: (17) U. Miami, (18) Indiana, (20) Virginia Tech, (23) Ball St., (24) Central Florida

Last Week

SEC and Overall Rankings Weeks 2 and 3

Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to write anything last week. I wouldn’t have had time this week if it weren’t for the holiday today.  I’m still trying to catch up at work from everything that wasn’t done during the shutdowns.  Last time I wrote about how badly LSU did in a game they won in a blowout the next week.  It would be nice to have a repeat of that. 

I definitely didn’t think both Florida and LSU would be coming off of a loss before the season or even going into last week.  LSU has four games against currently top-15 teams on the schedule.  Even with wins in the other three (Ole Miss has a great offense, and Arkansas has a win and two close games against good teams; I don’t have anything too complimentary to say about South Carolina, but they may be as good as or better than the Missouri team LSU just played), that would leave the Tigers with a 4-6 record.  If there is ever a year when you need a non-conference schedule it’s when you have 5 returning starters, and two of the big ones have missed three games combined.  There have been years without a winning record in conference since LSU’s last losing season in 1999 (3-8), but this year a losing record in conference is a losing record period.  I’m not sure if 5-5 gets a bowl game this year.

The development of the passing game, led by Myles Brennan, has been one of the few bright spots for the LSU team so far.

More details about the games and teams later.  I’m going to show the Week 2 lists first.  I think it’s better than trying to do two weeks at a time.

Week 2 (these are based on SEC weeks) Rankings

SEC

1. Alabama
2. Georgia
3. Florida
4. Tennessee
5. Auburn
6. Arkansas
7. Ole Miss
8. Mississippi St.
9. LSU
10. Texas A&M
11. Kentucky
12. South Carolina
13. Vanderbilt
14. Missouri

Inter-conference group

1. Clemson
2. U. Miami
3. Cincinnati
4. Notre Dame
5. North Carolina
6. Oklahoma St.
7. S. Methodist
8. Virginia Tech
9. Brigham Young
10. UL-Lafayette

Week 3 Rankings and Comments

SEC

1. Alabama
2. Georgia
3. Florida
4. Texas A&M
5. Auburn
6. Tennessee
7. Arkansas
8. Ole Miss
9. Kentucky
10. Missouri
11. Mississippi St.
12. LSU
13. South Carolina
14. Vanderbilt

Inter-conference group

1. Clemson
2. North Carolina
3. U. Miami
4. Cincinnati
5. Oklahoma St.
6. Notre Dame
7. S. Methodist
8. Virginia Tech
9. Brigham Young
10. UL-Lafayette

Rankings commentary

I was impressed by Georgia’s win over Auburn, but I still have some doubts due to their narrow win over Arkansas.  Arkansas is greatly improved, but they’re not a national-championship contender.  Tennessee doesn’t tell me much since the Volunteers have only beaten two of the five worst teams on my list.

Going back to Arkansas, they really should have beaten Auburn, but the officials were so anxious to blow the whistle on a spike they didn’t notice it went backwards.  I still think it’s appropriate this early on to group together teams with the same records though.

Texas A&M barely beat Vanderbilt, which has been blown out by LSU and South Carolina, so that’s why I couldn’t put them ahead of Florida.  They did just beat the Gators, but they were at home (with a real crowd… God bless Texas), and I really believe the Aggies only won because they were the last team with the ball.

Kentucky narrowly lost to Ole Miss and easily beat Mississippi St., so it made sense to put them a couple of spots ahead of the Bulldogs and one spot behind the Rebels.  Mississippi St. did better against LSU than Missouri did, but Missouri was missing a lot of players and has had a more difficult schedule. Mizzou also didn’t lose badly to a 1-2 team.

I don’t think anyone outside of the SEC would beat Clemson or even come close right now, so I considered not moving U. Miami down at all, but I was impressed with North Carolina’s win over Virginia Tech.  Not much else interesting has happened in the last couple of weeks.  SMU beat Memphis the week before last, so that’s why they’re there and the Tigers aren’t.

LSU

Missouri Recap and Criticisms

Back to those other Tigers.  I know Missouri is the Tigers too, but to avoid confusion I won’t call them that.  First, I want to say that Miles Brennan played great despite several incompletions (many not his fault), and I’ve already seen a good bit of improvement from the first week.  He’s also getting better at avoiding big sacks, so it’s more than just the stat line.  WR Terrace Marshall, the one veteran with extensive experience, and true freshman TE Arik Gilbert are also doing well. 

Those are the only places where I don’t have criticism.  For some reason, LSU refused to run the ball in the first half.  It’s not that they can’t run the ball.  Apart from three runs from the Mizzou 1 (on only one of which he scored), Tyrion Davis-Price gained more than 6 yards per carry; and John Emery, Jr., had two carries for 7 yards.  It’s not unusual for the running game to improve as the game goes on, especially with a productive passing attack to go along with it.  Obvious rushing situations also tend to work better when you find some kind of way to get the ball lateral to spread out the defense rather than just trying to pound it forward.

Weaknesses on defense are easier to exploit than weaknesses on offense.  There have been some good pressures; but if the opposing quarterback can avoid them and make a decent throw, there is a good chance it will be a touchdown. If it’s a pass out of the backfield or only a short distance downfield, it can go for 25 or 30 yards.  Missouri had three lost fumbles and a turnover on downs after a poorly conceived fake punt.  A team without those mistakes (especially if the Fighting Tigers don’t learn some ball control) could score 70 against LSU, especially if you consider that Mizzou was without some of its best receivers. 

All that said, LSU still should have won the game.  There is the obvious goal line stand at the end where they could not score from the one in four attempts; but on the drive before that, they had a first down from the Missouri 22.  If they manage a field goal there, a field goal on the last drive wins.  Instead, LSU suffered a sack and a delay of game penalty that set up a 3^rd and 18.  They would try a field goal anyway, but it was blocked.  It may not have been had it been from a shorter distance with less need to drive the ball though.

LSU-Florida Recent Series

There haven’t been enough games between LSU and Missouri to do one of these, but here is my Rivalry Blog that covers LSU and Florida.

This rivalry has been played every year since the 1970s with only brief interruptions in the decades before that.  I’m definitely NOT calling an LSU win, but there has been a fair share of upsets in the history of the series, most prominently when Florida was the only team to beat LSU in 2003 (which they did in Baton Rouge), when the Tigers won the national championship.  In 1997, LSU was the first team to beat the Gators after the Florida national championship the year before.  The most-recent major upset was in 2017 when LSU rebounded from a loss to Troy by beating the #21 Gators (then led by current Razorback Feleipe Franks) in the Swamp.  That game started a tailspin for Florida that ended in the firing of HC Jim McElwain. 

I mentioned the location of a couple of the games since neither team has seemed intimidated by the other’s home stadium over the last couple of decades.  Part of it is they’re at similar latitudes (the heat and humidity, sometimes well into the season, gets to some of the opponents) and accustomed to big crowds and big games.  LSU has gone long stretches of time (such as November 2008 to September 2014) with no home losses except to Florida and Alabama, and LSU is often one of the few with a recent win at Florida.  For instance, LSU and Florida St. were the only two teams who won at Florida between November 2014 and early October 2017, when LSU won for the second time in a row at Florida. LSU was the only team to win at Florida between the end of the 2003 season and the last week of September 2007.  LSU, Auburn, and Ole Miss were the only teams to win there between the end of the 2003 season and October 2010 with LSU being the only one to do it twice. 

I mention in the Rivalry Blog that the most interesting part of the series in my recollection has been when Les Miles was LSU’s coach and Urban Meyer was Florida’s.  Both started with the respective schools in 2005.  Meyer left Florida after the 2010 season, and Miles was fired from LSU in September 2016.  Anyway, in those six seasons the two teams were even at 3-3.  All three LSU wins were by 4 points apiece while all three Florida wins were by 10 or more, but only one was a blowout.  The two teams combined for three national titles and five SEC championship appearances during that period. The fortunes of the programs have fluctuated; but the close games have continued after Meyer and Miles left their respective schools, including five in a row between 2014 and 2018.

Clyde Edwards-Helaire, who averaged over 10 yards per carry in the game, scores on a touchdown run against UF last season, helping LSU to a rare double-digit win over the Gators.

In the last 9 years, LSU has gone 6-3 against the Gators but only 2-2 under Orgeron.  Dan Mullen is 1-1 against the Tigers as the Florida HC.  He was only 2-7 against LSU while the Mississippi St. HC, but the two wins were in his last four years with the Bulldogs.  Mullen beat Orgeron the only time he faced him as the Bulldog HC, 37-7, in 2017.

I just updated the Vanderbilt Rivalry Blog

. 

Week 1 Review and Rankings

There have been a couple of major developments since my last blog.  Apparently the Big Ten and Pac-12 have decided to play very shortened intra-conference seasons.  It might slightly legitimize whichever team ends up as the national champion (provided it’s not from one of those conferences… no matter how dominant it may be, winning 7 or 8 games is no comparison to winning 15), but it really doesn’t help much in ranking teams.  There is no objective means to evaluate two teams with a similar record in different conferences without inter-conference play, and many similar teams won’t have similar records anyway if they start the season six weeks apart.

Until those two conferences start play, I will still rank everyone but the SEC on one list and the SEC on another.  I’m just going to do a top 10 for the other teams.  There are only 12 teams in the AP poll that aren’t in the SEC or in a conference that hasn’t played, so everyone in my top 10 list deserves to be considered a ranked team. There may be one or two left out who’d normally be ranked, but so be it. It can be a challenge filling out the last couple of teams anyway.

SEC

Anyway, you probably noticed I’m an LSU fan, and the Tigers lost for the first time since that unholy abomination of a football game in College Station on November 24, 2018.  So that was a pretty good 22 months.  If you don’t count that as an LSU loss, I guess you can say it was more like 22 3/5 months, since there was no question about the rightful winner of the LSU-Alabama game on November 3, 2018 (the final was 29-0).  For updated records of the LSU-Mississippi St. series (the most-played series in LSU’s history), see here.

Stanford transfer K.J. Costello threw for 623 yards against the depleted LSU defense in his and head coach Mike Leach’s SEC debut.

In other SEC news, Florida was EXPOSED by Ole Miss when the Rebels scored 35 points and gained 613 yards. 

If you couldn’t tell, I’m making fun of everyone (paging Colin Cowherd) who said something similar about the LSU-Ole Miss game last year.  Actually, I’m making Florida #2 after the first week.  The Fighting Kiffins aren’t pushovers on offense.  They weren’t under Rich Rod, so I don’t think that has changed.

The land plankton Ole Miss defense isn’t good, but no one else in the SEC scored 50.  Mississippi St. was the only other one who even got to 40, and that was against an LSU team with like negative returning starters if you consider that the Tigers didn’t even have five of the players they expected to have on an already-depleted team a couple of months ago.  I’m sure others will do better—there are a lot of smart defensive coaches with a lot more veteran players—but the Pirate (Mike Leach) can be hard to contain even when you have a good veteran defense.

Number 1 may be a surprise.  I’m going with Auburn, who beat a ranked (albeit not by me) Kentucky team by 16 and probably would have won by over 20 without a pick-six being called back.    Alabama may well beat Auburn easily, but a 19-point win over Missouri (although it was a 32-point lead in the third quarter) isn’t anything to get excited about.

Rankings—SEC only

1. Auburn
2. Florida
3. Alabama
4. Mississippi St.
5. Tennessee
6. Georgia
7. Texas A&M
8. Vanderbilt
9. LSU
10. Kentucky
11. Ole Miss
12. South Carolina
13. Missouri
14. Arkansas

Until I’m shown otherwise over the course of a full game, I’m going to assume Arkansas is terrible again and that it’s Georgia’s fault the game was close for a while. 

I feel similarly about Tennessee-South Carolina.  The Gamecocks kept it close until the end at least.  I initially had Missouri ahead of South Carolina, but I changed my mind when I saw that 13 of the Tigers’ 19 points came after Alabama already had 35 on the board.

I’m also going to lean toward Florida having a good offense, so I’m not beating up on Ole Miss too much for the points the Rebels gave up.

LSU needed an ugly pick-six just to look like they were close to as good as Mississippi St. and still lost by twice as much as Vanderbilt lost to Texas A&M.  I’ll be surprised if Vandy beats the Fighting Tigers, but I think they should be more encouraged by Week 1 than LSU should be.

I still think Kentucky will be a good team even though they looked out of their element against Auburn.  Wildcats fans still should not be as pleasantly surprised as Commodore fans.  LSU fans are on a completely different level as far as being spoiled, but they honestly shouldn’t be that upset with a team this inexperienced who had no kind of warm-up for the conference schedule.

Others

Top 10 Interconference-Schedule Teams, AP poll equivalent (meaning if the AP disqualified the same teams I’m disqualifying) in parentheses

1. Clemson (1)
2. U. Miami (3)
3. Pittsburgh (11)
4. Cincinnati (7)
5. Central Florida (5)
6. Notre Dame (2)
7. North Carolina (6)
8. Oklahoma St. (8)
9. Memphis (12)
10. BYU (10)

Trevor Lawrence (16) was at least partly responsible for three touchdowns in Clemson’s opener against Wake Forest.

Clemson has been competing for national championships every year, and I don’t see why they won’t this year.

U. Miami has beaten two credible opponents in conference, as does Pittsburgh, so I don’t see why I ‘d put Notre Dame ahead.  The Irish struggled against Duke, and I don’t know why they played South Florida or why they should get much consideration for that game.  I also thought Cincinnati’s win over Army by two touchdowns and Central Florida’s two easy wins merited more consideration.

Oklahoma St. and North Carolina haven’t done anything spectacular, but they each won a conference game against a team that might be OK.

Memphis beat Arkansas St., who beat Kansas St., who beat Oklahoma.  That’s how desperate I am just to fill out a top 10, but it makes more sense than putting anyone else in that sentence in the top 10.

BYU blew out Navy and Troy.  I couldn’t see a better argument for anyone else.

Unlike the major polls, I have no interest in 0-0 teams.  It’s really a shame that teams like Cincinnati lost spots in the rankings due to the inclusion of such teams.  ULL, which for some reason calls itself Louisiana, went from 19^th to unranked after winning.  How does that make sense? 

Anyway, the only qualifying teams the AP poll has that I don’t have in my list are Oklahoma, which clearly doesn’t deserve a ranking unless it’s for something they did before Christmas, and Texas, which did only slightly better against Texas Tech than Houston Baptist did.

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.