Two truths and a lie: LSU’s inexcusable loss to Kentucky
We do it every Sunday. And for the last six Sundays following an LSU road game, the mood has been the exact same, mourning. This Sunday was once again supposed to be different, but alas the Tigers return to Baton Rouge with way more questions than answers.
Truth No. 1 – This team can still make the college football playoff
They won’t. But, they can. There’s not a team left on this schedule that LSU can’t beat. Alabama and Texas are both the most obvious potential losses on the remaining schedule, but both of those teams have flaws and LSU might be healthier once they get to that point in the season. If they win out the Tigers are definitely in. Going 10-2 with wins over Mississippi State, Texas, Alabama, and Tennessee would most likely get them home field advantage and potentially a trip to Atlanta for the SEC Championship.
Those big games aren’t the concern at this point though. Head coach Lane Kiffin still needs to prove he can win the games he’s supposed to win. If you were to tell me that this team would finish 9-3 with a loss at Tennessee instead of Texas or Auburn it would be more than believable.
Kiffin has spent a great deal of his initial tenure at LSU talking about the things he learned from Nick Saban. We love to lament about his incredible championship teams and trophies won. What really made Saban the greatest was following their loss to Louisiana Monroe in 2007, Alabama went 120-1 against unranked teams. That’s the Saban that Kiffin needs to channel.
Truth No. 2 – This is Kiffin’s fault
He can’t go out there and make easy throws, not turn the ball over or stay home in the middle of the field on a two-point conversion play. However, making sure his team was prepared to execute all of those things is absolutely an expectation of the head coach, especially one that’s been given the resources that he’s been given. There are a ton of things from Saturday night that could highlight what went wrong, but everyone reading this already knows exactly what those are, so I won’t reopen the wounds.
Bottom line, that loss was inexcusable, and if you’re paying a coach $91 million to coach a $40 million roster, you can’t lose to Kentucky. Period.
The Lie – The Blueprint for success with a first-year coach was given to Kiffin, not Will Stein
The hiring of head coach Will Stein checked a lot of boxes for Kentucky. It was an offensive mind that would be trying to fix an offensively challenged team under Mark Stoops. It was also a homegrown kid who had a tremendous amount of love and passion for that program. We’ve seen that work time and time again. Coaches like Smart, or even Ed Orgeron, have had tremendous success at places that mattered to them, and Kentucky matters to Stein.
But, the thing that really brought a 5-1 record to Lexington quicker than any of that was the blueprint they put in place with the new hire. Kentucky could’ve easily skimped on its NIL resources with football, and a new hire especially considering the $22 million they spent on a basketball team the same year on a one-and-done in the NCAA tournament. They didn’t. They gave Stein enough resources to go get a good quarterback along with 28 other portal players including 14 from the SEC.
Stein has done an incredible job so far in Lexington. They spent significantly less than programs like LSU, and their coach did something the one in Baton Rouge couldn’t seem to do yet – get out of his own way.
