The LSU loss mighta been the early-season jolt we needed
- Thread starter Clark Griswold.sixpack
- Start date
According to Will it woke everybody up. So far that seems true and if it continues I would trade that terrible loss for a 9 and 3 or 10 and 2 season anytime. Buuuut.......ya never know. I hope it continues to pay dividends.
I think the real answer is that we played a nobody and two SEC teams that were too scared to bring pressure. We'll beat Alabama and Georgia too if they play soft zone all day against us. But they won't because they're not dumb. Kentucky will scheme up something defensively, too.
LSU beat us because they got pressure on Rogers and knocked us out of rhythm offensively, and as a result we couldn't overcome mistakes with penalties and turnovers. Are we better since then? Sure. But it's hard to tell how much of it is our improvement and how much of it is the defensive gameplans of who we've played.
There are some serious defensive choices that have to made when facing our offense. It is incumbent that a team's defense will commit play a full 60 minutes - both physically and mentally. Alabama and Georgia are capable of that, ceratinly
To me, more improtantly, we're (or the team, rather) on the right trajectory. I, for one, didn't they would be at this current record, be ranked, and playing at the level they currently are. It's refreshing and exciting because we are quite competitive.
Just looked and Kentucky has held every team they've played, but South Carolina, to their lowest point total of the year. Held Carolina to it's 2nd lowest. A decent Georgia team held them to 7.
This will be an interesting test. I fear our kickers in a game like this.
They can do something similar to State and still allow thirty points. I’m certainly not going to rank their defense alongside LSU. Kentucky doesn’t produce a lot of sacks and they have yet to face a passing offense as prolific as MSU. If they only get their seasonal average of 1.3 sacks per game then they will get sliced up big time.
Just dropping 8 no longer works against this team. You have to mix the drops with pressure (talented 4 man front & blitzes)....BUT if you don't get home quickly you better have DBs that can cover more than a second or two. Even in the SEC few teams have this combination. We've already lost to one of them.
I do believe revamping the OL helped that a lot. Of course, when you drop numerous passes that would have extended drives, or maybe even the score, it gives the perception that the LSU defense just shut us down when really we did it to ourselves.
No doubt it's going to be tough. We've lost our last three trips there and haven't covered there since 2012. We don't play well there historically.
This beautiful running game is a huge difference maker. I feel like they should have used it more to exploit that bogus offset d line LSU was using. I can't understand why you would not send DJ straight up the middle over and over. That woulda stopped that junk. I tried to tell them as I was watching but apparently they could not hear me yelling at my TV.
This week is pretty important in the sense that a loss will bring back all the old talking points, and you’ll have a crowd telling us that 7-5 is our best case scenario and Leach will always be mediocre here. But a win will go a long way toward really building excitement around the program and giving people a sense of belief that our program simply hasn’t had since early 2018.
Even if Bama kills us next week, if you’re 6-2 hosting Auburn and 7-2 hosting Georgia, the excitement level on campus will be high. But winning this game is important in that regard.
I wouldn’t call it a must win in the sense that anyone’s job is in danger if we lose, but it’s a crucial game if we want to keep our NY6 hopes alive this year.
Even if Bama kills us next week, if you’re 6-2 hosting Auburn and 7-2 hosting Georgia, the excitement level on campus will be high. But winning this game is important in that regard.
I wouldn’t call it a must win in the sense that anyone’s job is in danger if we lose, but it’s a crucial game if we want to keep our NY6 hopes alive this year.
I always laugh when people say a loss makes you better. Good teams don't need to lose to improve, unless it's facing much better competition maybe. LSU ain't that.
Most times you are right, but there are plenty of instances of very good teams having a WTF loss and rallying the troops afterward. The most famous I can think of is probably Florida-Ole Miss 2008.
We are not remotely as talented as that Florida team was. But you get the point. Some teams do require a slap in the face.
Hard to avoid silver linings as a State fan. Hell, we put em on our uniform.
Let’s hope we don’t see a carbon copy of that game tomorrow.
Kentucky is built to win the second half. They did that @ Ole Miss and @ Florida.
Great point. Another one that comes to mind is Ohio State losing to unranked VT at home early in 2014. They proceeded to run the table and beat Bama on their way to a title. Obviously, we are not as talented as that team either, but it's another example that some great teams need a wakeup call early in the season.
There is room for nuance. Not everyone fit into the Leach sucks Leach is great communities preseason. My concerns were we kept disappearing in the red zone when we had compressed space and we didn’t counter the drop 8 defenses by committing to the run last year. Both of those things have been resoundingly corrected this year. If we go 7-5 I’ll be disappointed because of how we started, but I am very optimistic about what I have seen with our offense and Leach this year so far. I just hope last week wasn’t like when SloMo ran that motion sweep tempo offense one time and we killed it then for some reason we went back to “check with me” for the rest of his tenure.
Go look at Auburn's 2013 schedule. Stranger things have happened. Early loss on road at average LSU. System offense that started slow and heated up as the season went on, and was nearly unstoppable at the end. Of course, they did have some luck that year (against Georgia/Bama coincidently) so I'm not calling for a run to the playoff or anything. But games like tomorrow are where we find out what we're made of, akin to them going and beating A&M (with Manziel) on the road that year. And funny enough, they also played a Pac-12 opponent that year (Leach, funny enough).
It helped that LSU had that DE play out of his mind. So many of you think it's about scheme, most times it's just 1-2 impact players.
I disagree somewhat. I feel like our running game kept Will out of rhythm more than LSU did. It seemed really obvious on the timing routes that were dropped. I do believe Will has gotten better over the course of the season getting used to handing the ball off and then turning on that killer mentality on the passing plays.
It also helped that they lined up so aggressively outside. They either knew we weren’t running the ball or assumed we may get 4 or 5 yards but would eventually pass in a series of downs and they would either get a sack or cause a pick assuring we couldn’t get a first down.
I made this exact comparison yesterday, and I will continue to believe my own horse shiite until state gives me a reason not to. For the time being it’s just fun just to have these conversations. Way better than the alternative