PALMER: Ranking LSU’s remaining matchups

By Hunt Palmer

As thousands poured out of the Tiger Stadium seats onto the playing field late Saturday night, LSU planted itself firmly in the College Football Playoff discussion. We can take records and rankings of years gone by and attempt to determine who would have been in and who would have been out, but ultimately this is our first set of hard data. Prior to this season, it didn’t matter who was ranked 11^th and who was ranked eighth. Now it does.

A two-loss Penn State has never earnestly been compared to a two-loss Texas A&M or Pitt. What happens if a two-loss team qualifies for an SEC Championship game and takes a third loss to an unbeaten and top-ranked Texas?

We don’t truly know.

What is clear is that LSU, after seven weeks, is in the discussion. Just as quickly as you enter the discussion, you can exit. LSU may have margin for error, but we can’t know how much. The Tigers are a better football team today than they were on Labor Day. That ascent also needs to continue.

All of LSU’s non-conference games are in the rearview. Six league games remain. By this columnist’s eye, all of them are winnable. All of them are also losable.

Let’s rank them in order of difficulty starting with the toughest.

1. At Texas A&M- Mike Elko has these Aggies playing good football. The end of the Jimbo Fisher devolved into an absolute mess. That all-world signing class of 2022 ended up creating far more problems than wins, and Fisher was sent back to his ranches because of it. Elko did a wonderful job as A&M’s defensive coordinator under Fisher, and then he spread his wings and won some games at Duke. His era opened with an offensive dud against Notre Dame, but since then the Aggies have won five straight including three conference games. It hasn’t always been a work of art. Bowling Green hung around into the fourth quarter, and Arkansas had the ball with 2:39 left and a chance to go win the last Jerry World edition of that rivalry. But A&M’s last time out was an annihilation of Missouri on Kyle Field. LSU hasn’t won in College Station since Joe Burrow was a redshirt freshman at Ohio State. After A&M beats Mississippi State, the worst team in the SEC, on Saturday, the Aggies will be ranked in the Top 12 and winners of six in a row. There won’t be an empty seat in Kyle as LSU arrives. We saw what a great home field advantage can mean just last weekend in Tiger Stadium. Texas A&M will be the toughest environment LSU faces this year by a wide margin.
2. Alabama- Three weeks ago this looked like a lock for the top spot. Then Diego Pavia happened. Alabama hasn’t looked like the 43-ton death machine it was for better than a decade under Nick Saban. Don’t misunderstand. Alabama looks like a very good team, but the days of 56-14 every single week are over. Vanderbilt played the Tide straight up and won. South Carolina followed that up in Bryant-Denny with a hotly contested game. Those two teams may not be in the top half of the SEC. Saban’s 2008-2020 teams would have laid them both to waste by halftime. Jalen Milroe is a good college player who has his flaws. The defense has been lost since halftime of the Georgia game. Over the last 10 quarters, Alabama has allowed 92 points and 1,158 yards. Averaged to four quarters, that’s 463 yards and 36.8 points. And you’re including games with South Carolina and Vanderbilt here. The Tide ranks 13^th in total defense in the SEC. LSU’s defense is still very much a work in progress and should have some issues with Milroe’s dual threat ability. If LaNorris Sellers and Diego Pavia can go up and down the field on the Tide, Garrett Nussmeier should have his opportunities at home as well.
3. At Arkansas- I wouldn’t have believed you seven weeks ago if you told me I’d have Sam Pittman’s Hogs here. And if you flipped the sites for the Oklahoma and Arkansas game, I’d probably flip them on this list. The reality is that road SEC teams have really struggled. Missouri got embarrassed in College Station. Alabama lost at Vandy. Tennessee got clipped in Fayetteville. Georgia was overwhelmed for a half at Bryant-Denny. Sure, there’s also Kentucky in Oxford and A&M trouncing Florida. But by and large, the home teams enjoy a significant advantage, and that will be the case Saturday in northwest Arkansas. That program and fanbase were downtrodden in December, and completely gagging away a win in Stillwater didn’t help. Then A&M won that rivalry for the 12^th time in 13 years, and it looked like the Sam Pittman era was cooked. Then the Hogs won a Top 5 game at home, and the flatline spiked. The Vols played defibrillator for the entire state. Bobby Petrino is piloting an offense that ranks 3^rd in the SEC in total offense and is best in the league in creating chunk runs and converting third downs. Travis Williams has done a great job with a defense short on elite talent, as well. Taylon Green or not, LSU better have shaken the cobwebs from Sunday morning’s hangover. Arkansas won’t be feeling too hospitable Saturday night.
4. Vanderbilt- Y’all realize who is left on this list, right? Since 2000, the remaining two teams on this list have won three national titles, 17 conference championships and five Heisman Trophies. And I have Vanderbilt at No. 4. I have my questions about Florida and Oklahoma, but I’ll leave those in their place. This is about the Commodores. The Alabama game is clearly the highlight here, but that’s far from all Vanderbilt has done. The Dores had Virginia Tech in a chokehold and blew it. They went to Missouri and should have won the game. After Kentucky went to Oxford and completely controlled a win over Ole Miss, Vanderbilt went to Lexington and made Big Blue Nation start thinking about basketball. Week in and week out this Vanderbilt team puts up a fight. It’s not pretty. This offense throws for a paltry 188 yards per game, and the defense ranks 12^th in the league in yards allowed per game. In Tiger Stadium, LSU should win the football game. However, it won’t be the pushover everyone assumed in August.
5. At Florida- Yes, the Gators played Tennessee to the wire in Knoxville. But maybe that was like the dying hospice patient who gets a last wind before peacefully passing. The Napier era is over. It’s just a matter of when. Graham Mertz was lost for the year on Saturday. He’s a team leader they would want to have on the field despite the talent DJ Lagway possesses. The two weeks before LSU visits The Swamp, Florida plays Georgia in Jacksonville and Texas in Austin. Those should get lopsided, and when they do, Napier will either be out of a job or persona non grata in Gainesville. The Swamp will be a morgue when LSU gets there, and even when it was rocking, Miami and Texas A&M rolled in there and completely took over from the start. As I wrote earlier, all of these games are losable, but I think the situation in Gainesville is really going to deteriorate over the next month.
6. Oklahoma- Sorry, Sooners. I just don’t think a team that can’t move the ball is going to win in Tiger Stadium this season. Oklahoma has some good defense players and a head coach with a brilliant defensive track record in college football. However, all of those exotic blitzes and pressures are unlikely to confuse LSU’s offensive line in pass protection. Nussmeier is likely to find some space in the secondary, and OU probably can’t keep up. The Sooners are dead last in the SEC in passing, dead last in the SEC in rushing, 15^th in the SEC in scoring and still have to play at Ole Miss and host Alabama. That feels like a four or five loss team coming into Tiger Stadium after Thanksgiving. And if LSU can navigate the next five games without or loss or even with just one loss, Tiger Stadium will be alive. Oklahoma is probably better than Florida, but this matchup in Tiger Stadium favors LSU by a wide margin, if you ask me.

In this new 12-team era, I do believe in a 10-2 SEC team. That could change as all the results come in over the next seven weeks. But holding that belief, it feels like this game in Arkansas is massive for LSU. With a win by even the slimmest of margins, LSU might have some wiggle room in College Station.

Even with a loss, LSU would go into and come out of the bye week feeling like a contender as Alabama comes to town. LSU will need the home crowd to be raucous in that one. In a bygone era, maybe hunting season siphons a few out of the stadium because of the two losses. Not this year.

Back-to-back losses to Arkansas and A&M would obviously spell doom. Win them both, and LSU becomes a statistical likelihood to make the playoffs.

Many maligned the decision to include a dozen teams in the tournament. They claimed it would ruin the greatest regular season in sports. Nonsense.

The fun is just starting.