Or, how to win a game in which you never led until the final play of the game
18: Number of Whit Weeks tackles
I suppose we’ll never know one way or the other, but I’m confident that LSU does not win Saturday night if the targeting call on Weeks is upheld and he gets ejected from the game. Weeks was a tackling machine Saturday night, and if he has more individual efforts like that, his 2024 season will be remembered in the same vein as Devin White’s 2018, Damone Clark’s 2021, or Kevin Minter’s 2012.
3: Number of missed first quarter scoring opportunities for Ole Miss
It takes two to make an upset happen and Ole Miss was a more than willing dance partner in this particular tango.
Tre Harris dropped what would have been an 80-yard touchdown on Ole Miss’s first offensive possession; Caden Davis missed a 32-yard field goal on the second offensive possession; and Henry Parrish was stonewalled on 4th and 1 at the LSU four yard line on Ole Miss’s third possession. Was Ole Miss unlucky or did LSU make their own luck? Yes.
43: Mason Taylor’s receiving yards in the 4th quarter
All 43 of Taylor’s yards came in the fourth quarter. Give credit to the Ole Miss defense, heading into the fourth Taylor had caught two passes for zero yards but he found a way to get open when it mattered most.
On 4th and 6 Taylor caught a pass for 14 yards to keep what wound up being the game-tying drive alive. On a 3rd and 10, Nussmeier kept a play alive with his feet and found Taylor for 19 yards and had it not been for his elbow touching down, Taylor would have scored the tying touchdown right there. He added another 10 yards to move LSU just outside of the red zone with 50 seconds remaining in regulation. Kyren Lacy might be remembered forever for his game-winning touchdown in overtime, but that game never even gets to OT if Mason Taylor doesn’t make three clutch plays.
50%: Ole Miss’s red zone percentage
Ole Miss got into the red zone six times Saturday night and only scored on three of those possessions. More importantly, of those six red zone possessions, only one led to a touchdown. Give Blake Baker all the credit in the world. His defense may have bent a few times, but they never broke. LSU’s defense never allowed Ole Miss to score that knockout touchdown and they allowed the offense to hang around and get things going when it mattered most.
14: Garrett Nussmeier’s longest rush
JAYDEN DANIELS IS THAT YOU?????
But seriously, this is what we’ve been begging Nuss to do through six games this year. If a running lane is there take it; and if Joe Sloan is going to insist on keeping those option plays in the playbook, Nuss has got to keep at least once or twice a game to keep the opposing defense honest. If the entire stadium knows Josh Williams or Caden Durham or Kaleb Jackson is getting the ball on these plays, I guarantee that the defense does, too.
It’s ironic that in 2022 we were begging Jayden Daniels to use his legs less and push the ball down the field, to only have the exact opposite mentality two years later with Nussmeier. He’ll never be the runner that Daniels is, but Nuss has gotta add that dimension to his game.
0: Number of seconds LSU led Saturday
LSU dodged three bullets in the first quarter to keep things 0-0 after the first 15 minutes, never led for the remaining 45 minutes, and still walked away with the win. Them’s the breaks sometimes.