The biggest week of the year is finally here for college football fans. There are six Top 25 matchups on deck including four in the SEC alone. Some may have more on the line Saturday night, but none will be filled with the type of hate and passion that will fill Tiger Stadium on Saturday afternoon.
It’s Alabama. It’s LSU. It’s two truths and a lie.
Truth No. 1 – LSU doesn’t have a great win this season
One of the main talking points on the Alabama side of things heading into this matchup is that LSU doesn’t have a great win. What’s their best win? That’s been echoed a lot during the bye week leading up to this game. And, it’s a fair question.
The Tigers are just 1-2 on the road this year. They’re also 0-2 against currently ranked teams. The Clemson win lost its luster almost immediately with how bad Dabo Swinney’s club has played this year. The Texas A&M win was the same. The wins in October came against McNeese and two .500 teams.
But, here’s the other question that people on Bama’s side aren’t asking – what exactly is Alabama’s best win? The come-from-behind win against 3-5 Florida State? The struggle win against Texas A&M? The answer is probably the shellacking they gave Mississippi State in Starkville with an almost healthy Kamario Taylor, or the win over top 10 Kentucky on the road where they dominated the second half after trailing at the break. Those are both good wins for sure. However, those came in Week 2 and Week 5, and Alabama has looked much different since then.
Part of that is because of injuries. But, part of it is because defensive coordinators are learning how to defend this offense much better. That’s an offense that averaged over 50 points per game in the first five games of the season then followed that up with 17 and 10 scoring outputs against ranked opponents. Both of which were losses by the way. It feels like that is more in line with what this Alabama team is capable of doing against an LSU defense that has been tenacious all season long and ranks in the top ten nationally in yards per game allowed.
Truth No. 2 – This isn’t the same Alabama as it used to be
By no means is this a written version of a Bama is Burning skit. I will say however, this is not the same Alabama team we have seen over the years.
It feels like every year for the last two decades there have been two teams every August who are beyond convinced they are beating Alabama in the upcoming season. Those two teams are LSU and Georgia. And for most of the last 15 years that seemed to be more of a pipe dream than reality. But, Georgia hasn’t beaten Alabama twice in a row now for the first time in 20 years. And while LSU is coming off back-to-back losses to head coach Kalen DeBoer it feels like this is the year that their trend with Alabama is bucked as well.
This year’s Alabama team is better than last in some ways, but it’s also a far cry from what it used to be when it dominated this series for a decade. That sounds odd to say considering they’ve won the last two games by 40 combined points, but anyone with two eyes, or in my case four, can see the difference and the flaws this team has. The offensive line play has been bad since 2021 when Nick Saban was still making trips to the national title game. The defense has plenty of holes, too. And then there’s the run game that continues to struggle.
All of that combines with a team that has struggled on the road far more at home under DeBoer. Yes, they’ve had that win in Athens last year, but they’ve also lost both trips to Knoxville under their new head coach and inexplicable losses to Vanderbilt and Oklahoma. It’s hard to look at all those things and feel supremely confident in Bama making a trip to what was once considered Bryant-Denny West.
The Lie – This deserved a night game
This will certainly be an unpopular opinion, but it’s the right one. The complaints that have stemmed from this not being a night game are invalid, and if I’m being honest kind of dumb. I have no clue whether or not SEC commissioner Greg Sankey has it out for LSU, but that’s a conspiracy theory with some merit at least. What I do know is that this frustration over not getting a night game for what isn’t the biggest game of the weekend is pretty silly. This game means everything to the two fan bases, and will serve as a defacto college football playoff elimination game. However, the Sugar Bowl rematch between Ole Miss and Georgia is a bigger game with higher ranked teams.
Also, let’s not pretend like this game deserves primetime because of what it used to be in the 2010s, nor should LSU fans even want that. The Tigers are 1-7 in night games against Alabama in the last eight games. And if all that wasn’t enough they have already played six night games in eight total games this season. Night games aren’t a birth right for anyone. Georgia has played the third most day games of any team in the SEC over the last five years and they are the premier program in the country, not just the conference.
I mean what are we talking about here guys?
