Saturday shined a light on LSU.
This Tiger team is good. It’s not great. That was exposed on the field in Lexington and is becoming clearer on the resume.
Blake Baker’s defense stuffed Clemson in a locker on Labor Day weekend. Since then, Clemson has limped by Georgia Southern, changed quarterbacks and been leveled by Miami. That’s a football team without an offensive identity and ticketed for a .500 season. Mike Elko’s Texas A&M, LSU’s other Power Five win, failed to reach the end zone again at Missouri on Saturday. The Aggies are a disaster.
LSU has taken the field against two functional opponents this year and dropped both games. Sure, both outcomes were decided from inside the five-yard line in the game’s final moments, but both went the other way.
LSU’s defense was cooked for a half at Ole Miss and failed three times Saturday to get a sealing stop. That stop eluded the group in Oxford, too.
Kentucky’s 67-yard drive to produce the game-tying field goal was easy for quarterback Kenny Minchey and Co. The overtime touchdown came in part due to a third-and-eight conversion by the worst third-down offense in college football. The winning two-point play could have been walked in by my four-year-old.
Ole Miss and Kentucky have both cracked 30 points and 400 yards on the Tigers. That’s not elite defense. It’s not even good.
Offensively, LSU buckled in the first half in Oxford, struggled to run the ball in the second half in Lexington, and has the only quarterback in the country with a turnover in every game.
Statistically, these Tigers are strong. They’re going to win more games moving forward. They’ll produce a number of high draft picks. But it’s not an elite team. It’s not a playoff team. Not playing like this.
As far as gelling as a team, playing complementary football, and accomplishing the goals naturally set for a $40-plus million roster, LSU is a team on the brink.
At this point, 4-2 is the worst record LSU could have possibly been saddled with. They’ve been in two tight road games and lost them both. The four wins have been demolitions. It’s not a terrible team with a terrible coaching staff. It’s a good team with a good staff and some glaring flaws that have netted two critical setbacks.
The Tigers needed to make one play on Saturday.
Don’t allow 76 yards on the first snap. Make one of the two missed tackles on the 55-yard punt return score. Get a whistle on Minchey’s limp QB sneak before the half. Maybe a third missed field goal to end the game. Notch a sack on the last drive. Produce a stop on a third-and-eight, or the two-point conversion in overtime. Maybe win one of the two coin tosses to flip the decision making in either half or the overtime.
None of those asks would be unreasonable.
Ole Miss had no chance in Gainesville. Kentucky was whitewashed in the second half by Alabama. Florida has been embarrassed each of the last two weeks. Neither of LSU’s losses looked like the beatdowns they administered to Clemson and Texas A&M. SEC squads are being boat raced weekly. That’s not the issue in purple and gold.
The fatal flaw isn’t a position group or unit, it’s a pair of tight losses that have erased the wiggle room.
LSU head coach Lane Kiffin will rue the decision to punt the ball away on fourth-and-one from the LSU 43 with 1:37 left. There are reasons to support it. LSU had run for just 20 yards on 13 carries in the second half. Kentucky had no timeouts and needed to go 50-plus yards to get in range for a kicker who was battling the demons of a pair of fourth-quarter misses. Princewill Umanmielen was a sack away from sealing things. Same with DJ Pickett and an interception.
Ultimately, when you have a chance to get one yard to beat Kentucky, you have to try to beat Kentucky. Many will suggest this is a new Kentucky. That was disproven a couple of weeks ago when Alabama treated the Wildcats like a JV team in the second half. And LSU tried to let the defense beat Kentucky.
It couldn’t.
Minchey just diced the secondary for gains of 16, 15, 8 ,19 ,5 and 4 yards. Field goal good.
LSU’s flaws – a turnover-prone quarterback, leaky offensive line, wobbly defense and injury issues – are now there for everyone to see. The task from here is to be perfect. The next two games come against a Mississippi State team with no defense, and an Auburn team with no offense. Kiffin has to hope those flaws are either masked or healed by then.
Both games kick off at 11:00 a.m. Broad daylight.
