After a chaotic week 6, why couldn’t LSU get to Atlanta?
The first thing I did when I woke up Sunday morning was check the calendar, specifically to see what year it was.
While it is allegedly 2024, you wouldn’t be the only one to think with all the upsets over the weekend that somehow someway we’ve slipped back in time to the chaotic 2007 season. Vanderbilt beat #1 Alabama. #4 Tennessee laid an egg at Arkansas. #9 Missouri got their teeth kicked in by Texas A&M. #10 Michigan and #11 USC both lost while #8 Miami has been playing Russian Roulette the past two weeks but managed to escape both Virginia Tech and Cal.
Ole Miss looked like a world beater until they played someone actually worth a damn and the Rebs ended up pissing down their own leg, at home mind you, against Kentucky. And if we’re looking for a Michigan-App State parallel for this season we have that in the form of then-#5 Notre Dame losing at home to Northern Illinois.
I’m not saying that one chaotic weekend in 2024 means we’re heading for a 2007 redux, but if we are then maybe, just like it was 17 years ago, big things will be in store for LSU.
To be clear this 2024 LSU team is nowhere near as good as the ‘07 champs, especially on the defensive side of the ball. But teams are allowed to improve over the course of a season and I think LSU’s best ball is still in front of them, especially with the defense.
The Tigers have been playing a ton of freshmen on the defense so isn’t it fair to assume that younger guys like Ahmad Breaux, Gabe Reliford, Dom McKinley, and DaShawn Spears all find their sea legs in the coming weeks? What did we say all last season, we don’t need the LSU defense to be “great”, we just need them to be “good enough” and with the defensive staff Brian Kelly has assembled, I think we’re seeing that play out right now.
After this past weekend I feel equal parts better and worse about LSU’s remaining schedule. Ask Georgia, or Mizzou, or Bama how hard it is to win on the road at SEC. Are we sure the friendly confines of Tiger Stadium can’t help LSU go 3-1 against Ole Miss, Alabama, Oklahoma, and Vanderbilt?
But just as I said in the paragraph above about winning on the road in this league is hard, doesn’t going to Arkansas and Texas A&M in consecutive weekends feel a lot more daunting than it did heading into this past Saturday? If Arkansas can shut down Tennessee’s offense, they could very well shut down LSU’s. If Texas A&M can run for 236 yards against Missouri, they can run all over LSU, too. And no matter how bad things might get for Florida, winning on the road in The Swamp isn’t an easy task. Sure LSU showed some serious mettle by overcoming an early 17-0 deficit at South Carolina, but they needed three Carolina turnovers, two pick-sixes nullified by penalties, and a missed kick at the end of regulation to escape with a three-point win.
LSU’s not going to run the table and close the regular season 11-1. But LSU once again has one of the top offenses in the country and a quarterback that can keep the Tigers in every single game they’ve got left. If Garrett Nussmeier keeps playing like a first round, top-10 pick why can’t LSU finish 10-2 and get to Atlanta? If LSU finished 10-2 that means they’d have three wins over some combination of Ole Miss/A&M/Bama/Oklahoma. Is that resume good enough to get into the 12-team CFP? Probably, and after that who knows where the road might take LSU.
For better or worse, college football is turning into a Diet Coke version of the NFL and it’s only going to get exacerbated now that the sports’ playoff field is expanding. We’ve seen across all professional sports that the best team doesn’t always win and all you need to do is get in the field to have a chance.
Chaos is a massive part of any college football season, and this year has had an especially wacky first half. Do I expect LSU to escape the chaos relatively unscathed and get to Atlanta? No.
But what if they do?