Joel Klatt claims LSU should be the SEC favorite after Week 1

LSU had arguably the best win of opening weekend when they went on the road and won at Top 10 matchup at Clemson. That now has the Tigers as the new favorite in the Southeastern Conference, although early still, for Joel Klatt at FOX Sports.

Earlier this week on his show, Klatt reacted to several of the biggest outcomes across the country and conference by conference, during the first full weekend of college football. That included LSU’s win at Clemson, which he felt saved the SEC in week one.

“The SEC? Let’s face it. I mean, LSU saved that conference from a really bad week, and maybe you could even say an embarrassing week,” Klatt said. “Let’s just put it to you this way. If Alabama would have lost to Florida State, Texas would have lost to Ohio State, and LSU would have lost to Clemson, that would have been a disaster for the SEC – a disaster! And so, LSU saved them.”

That’s not to dismiss the wins by Auburn over Baylor, or Tennessee over Syracuse, which Klatt also went on to discuss, or even South Carolina over Virginia Tech. However, Texas and Alabama both took opening losses while teams like Georgia, Florida, Oklahoma, Texas A&M, and Ole Miss all posted blowouts over smaller schools, making LSU the winner, far and away, of the first weekend in the SEC.

After plenty of questions about them this offseason, and having not won an opener this decade, the Tigers had their own coming-out party in that one. LSU showed a version of itself that it hadn’t before, with the offense we all expected led by Garrett Nussmeier but now paired with a defense coached by DC Blake Baker that looked far more legit at each level than it’s been before.

Pair that all in year four for Brian Kelly, and Klatt thinks that LSU has something for this season. That’s certainly so, with no one else in the SEC having really announced themselves either to this point alongside the Tigers.

“LSU looks great, and LSU looks balanced, and they’ve got an experienced quarterback, a coach that has been pointing at this for a long time and has done basically everything in the sport except get to the top of the mountain and he came here for that purpose. And they built a roster, and spent the money, and fixed the defense. And now, all of a sudden, like, I see it with LSU,” Klatt said. “LSU, after week one – I know, I don’t want to overreact. But they should be the favorite in the SEC. They’re the most complete team in the country. And, again, they’ve got the experience at quarterback, which we know is so important.

“I don’t really know yet about Georgia, okay. That’s to be fair. I know a lot about Alabama. I think I know enough about Texas. Texas is not going anywhere. I think Texas will be just fine. That’s a very good football team, but LSU looked better. There were certainly some holes for Texas, namely the quarterback play, the game plan – you know, that was not great. LSU didn’t have that. For those reasons, LSU, for me, is a favorite in the SEC coming out of week one.”

Again, week one is the key wording there, as there’s a lot of season left to go for everyone. Still, going six seasons between wins in an opener, the Tigers — now ranked at No. 3 in the AP Poll — felt as good as any team in the country this week, with that victory potentially setting them up for even more this fall.