David Leong-Imagn Images
By Hunt Palmer
It should come as no surprise that four of the five best grades go to LSU’s defense and four of the five worst grades are on the offense.
LSU’s defense held a potent Alabama offense to 20 points and forced a pair of takeaways. LSU’s offense never found the end zone. All season the Tiger offense has scuffled. Saturday night it led to a quarterback change that’s highlighted in the grades.
The ground game was poor, and the pass protection lacked consistency. That’s been the case most of the season.
Defensively, LSU bottled up Alabama’s rushing attack and fought for 60 minutes without much help from the other side of the ball.
Here are Pro Football Focus’s grades from the 20-9 loss.
HIGHEST GRADES
- Dashawn Spears, S – 90.0
- Harold Perkins Jr. – 80.3
- West Weeks, LB – 80.3
- Michael Van Buren, QB – 77.8
- Jimari Butler, DE – 71.2
Spears has played his Dime role well all year. The Florida game was the highlight, but he’s consistently been in position. He only played 12 snaps, but he graded a 90.4 in coverage. He made the tackle on the one pass that went his direction. It was only a two yard gain.
Harold Perkins Jr. made the huge play of the game defensively with the strip sack of Ty Simpson. He graded 94.6 on his six pass rush snaps. He dropped into coverage 30 times and allowed five catches on his six targets. Perkins is bets used as a situational pass rusher. He’s four years in, and that’s apparent now. Perkins did lead LSU in tackles with nine.
West Weeks played his best game of the season. It started with the fourth down stop of Jam Miller to halt a Tide drive. He made seven tackles, and four were solo. He graded 81.8 in tackling.
Michael Van Buren’s stat line wasn’t great. He was just 5-for-11 for 52 yards. He did grade an 82.8 in passing. PFF gave him one big time throw. Trey’Dez Green also dropped a crucial third down throw that would have been a nice completion under pressure. We haven’t seen the last of Van Buren this year.
Butler was credited with a hurry and a pair of tackles.
LOWEST GRADES
- Patrick Payton, DE – 39.5
- Trey’Dez Green, TE – 44.4
- Weston Davis, RT – 44.9
- Bauer Sharp, TE – 45.5
- Kyle Parker, WR – 46.4
Payton had a huge missed tackle on Ty Simpson in the backfield. That allowed Simpson to break Alabama’s longest run of the night. He missed two more, so his tackling grade was 20.6. Payton was also penalized once for offsides.
Green had the bad drop. He also graded 53.1 in run blocking. It wasn’t his best day.
Davis was replaced in the second half by Ory Williams. He graded 46.4 in run blocking and 67.3 in pass blocking. He was flagged for a false start. Davis has consistently ranked among LSU’s lowest graded players. We’ll see what the final month golds for LSU at right tackle.
Sharp had a false start on a 4th and 1. His run blocking grade was a 46.0, and he fumbled.
Parker was targeted twice and did not have a reception.
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