No time for a preview

Off to run to anther meeting, but a couple of points about the game tonight:

– Ohio State has played a weak ass schedule, so it’s hard to look at their body of work and see how they’ve done.

– If you look at their stats against I-AA teams and BCS conference teams, they actually played like shit against the weak teams, and they get up for big games.  A little un nerving if you ask me.

–  LSU has played a hellacious schedule this year.

– LSU has been injured all season and are healthy now, however Beanie wells was injured for the 2nd half of the season.

– Beanie wells does not equal Glenn Dorsey, Ricky Jean-Francois,  Early Doucet, and Matt Flynn.

– I don’t buy the “Ohio State is being disrespected” and so they’ll play mad and win. They’ll play mad but that won’t equal the talent gap between the two teams.

– I also don’t buy the “Ohio State is just as fast as LSU” argument. The difference is going to be with LSU’s defense. On offense, I actually our speed is about equal with Ohio State’s DL, LB’s and DB’s. However, our DB’s, DL, and LB’s are much MUCH faster than tOSU’s offense. I expect a pick six, even though Boeckman is a really good QB, I think Zenon, Jones, Steltz, and co will get the edge.

– Brandon Lafell has seemed to bounce back from his mid-season errors and is playing well at the present.

– Super midget Trindon Holliday is healthy. SPEED SPEED SPEED.

– Given all of these items, I think that tOSU will have a good running game, but will have a miserable passing game. We will ultimately beat Tressell at his field position game and win by 2+ TD’s*.

*Disclaimer: There’s always the “Bo Pelini is asleep at the wheel because he’s the new nebraska head coach” argument, there’s your wildcard. There’s your equalizer folks.

In other news:

– USC and Georgia in no way have any argument whatsoever.  Just because you’re good at the end of the season and blew out a high school team from Hawaii, or the 3rd best team in the Big 10 doesn’t negate the losses on your scheduled folks. USC has done less with more talent than anybody else in the nation. Georgia, you had to win your conference. Tulsa has as much of an argument as these two teams.
– Why is Les Miles widely regarded as retarded in the media but Frank Beamer, Herban Meyer, and Bob Stoops are widely regarded  as masterminds of the game?

– Saban – almost choked that game away against Colorado. That was some of the worst 2nd half adjustments the world has ever seen, but not the worst – let’s not forget that game against Iowa in 2004 people.

– Kevin Smith – good but not as good as all the hype surrounding the game vs. Mississippi State. Good win for Croom!

In the coming weeks, we’ll release:

1) our vote for the lowsman trophy – the worst player on a bcs conference team. Who is going to win?  Current front runners include o-linemen from Syracuse and Notre Dame, some members of the secondary in south carolina and Nebraska, and the entire miami hurricane team.

2)  the top 25 people most deserving of a beating in college football.

3) Recruiting updates galore.

I’m back, bitches.

Sorry I took the last 3 weeks off. Life’s been busy, and honestly, did anyone need a prediction from me to tell you that we were going to be either Alabama, Ole Miss, or Louisiana Tech? A couple of points on the last couple of weeks:

• The team seems to be in a rhythm lately. Looks like the defense isn’t as dominant as advertised in the pre-season. While they are not dominant, they do come up with clutch plays when it counts a la Chad Jones’ forced fumble against ‘Bama, or the turnovers against Ole Miss when the Rebels were in scoring position. Yes, I know that it was a brain-hemorrhaging coaching blunder by Orgeron to put Adams in the game, but it does take someone on the other end of the ball to make the interception.
• Jacob Hester and Trindon Holliday are better than advertised – sure Hester doesn’t have the breakaway speed or the flashy moves that the other guys do, but all he does is get around 4 yards a carry, and get first downs. Trindon Holliday? Who knew the super-midget would be this good? Too bad we didn’t have him doing returns against Florida last year.
• Les has done awesome here, and I’m his biggest fan, but the guy has had a karma sculpture of golden horseshoes welded together like a shamrock up his ass more than once over the past few years. In recent memory, you have the wins over Florida, Auburn, and Bama — but let’s not forget the previous two years when Jamarcus Russell literally won the game for us more than 4 times: Against Alabama in 2005, Auburn in 2005, Tennessee in 2006, and Ole Miss in 2006. I know I’m leaving some games out but the truth remains the same: these are 7 games that were a lucky bounce either way: Les could just as easily be 24-12 as he is 31-5.There’s a big difference between 11-1 per season and 8-4.You know what they say about luck, however, the harder one works, the luckier they tend to get. Les is a workhorse, and I hope he stays.
• Les Miles to Michigan. Whenever the media makes such an adamant argument, beware. Remember the beginning of the season when all the pundits predicted Saban to have a 9/10 win season? Or USC being the best team EVER in 2005, or how about Ohio State to blow the fuck out of Florida in 2006? Whatever Michigan / Les decide, it will be a difficult decision.

• I have to address all the haters over the summer that told me how “great” a coach Saban is, and how I should “hang myself” and that I am “just bitter” on my predictions. I’ll admit that Saban is better than I had expected, but the refs clearly won the games for the Tide against Ole Miss and Arkansas. You should be 4-7 right now. Congrats on that turd you just laid on “9-11” or “pearl harbor” against Louisiana-Monroe, currently ranked 104th in the country. I told you that they would lose to either Louisiana-Monroe or Houston. Except the national championship year, he always laid a turd against an inferior team.Yes, I know that an LSU fan should be the last person to talk about barely winning games, but hell, we’re the most penalized team in the conference. Alabama is the least penalized team. That being said, good luck against Auburn. Bama has the edge on WR’s, but JPW has to get better. Enjoy the process, bitches.

LSU defeats Auburn, 40-13

This is what the score should have read. Thank god we pulled this one out. LSU dominated Auburn almost the entire game, but almost lost, choking occuring on two key plays that put our season on the brink. Ryan Perrilloux pitched the ball to the defense at the end of an option play, setting up an Auburn touchdown, instead of giving LSU an almost certain field goal (10 point swing right there), and Brandon Lafell tossed the ball to the defense after seemingly catching the ball inside the 5 yard line, costing LSU a touchdown (another 7 points). Total points LSU gave away on turnovers=17. Enough said. I’m going to lay off Lafell this week, I feel bad for the kid, who was last seen crying on sidelines after being (deservedly) benched by the coaching staff. But before we go into any more detail on the game, one thing has got to be noted:

Early’s back, and with his return, Matt Flynn played like the star we all knew he could be. Even with Flynn’s best performance to date, there were at least 4 drops (one leading to an interception) which would have improved his numbers even more. At any rate, Flynn and Doucet returned to be the dynamic duo we had been anticipating all summer long. Without Doucet, Flynn has appeared average, but as has been noted numerous times on this website, some of that has to do with the rest of our receiving corps being named “Chump McButterfingers”, and some of that has to do with Doucet’s unbelievable talent.

If we don’t turn the ball over in those two key situations, this game isn’t even close. Other observations on this game:

Clock Management: A lot has been made of Miles’ supposed “gamble” when Demetrius Byrd caught the ball with 1 second left on the clock. This was more calculated risk as anyone knows all season. Whatever our receiver’s catching percentage (catches divided by the number of times the ball hits you in the chest, hands, or head) it has got to be better than Colt David’s kicking percentage beyond the 40 yards. As one person noted, the only thing less reliable than Colt David from 40 yards is Colt David from the right hash at 40 yards. ALL THAT BEING SAID after watching the replay, it looks like the clock operator let the clock tick down to 1, when Byrd actually caught the ball with 4 seconds left. I have no doubt that Miles would have lobbied the officials and gotten those 4 seconds back had Byrd not caught the ball.

Perrilloux vs. Flynn: Enough said.

HT: LSUFreek

Chop block on Dorsey: There should be a suspension, but there won’t be. Mike Slive’s office will have none of it, they’ve never corrected poor officiating before, why start now? Still, it’s a shame that a bunch of aristocratic suits in Birmingham would let an act like this, causing a great kid like Dorsey to potentially lose millions of dollars due to this. If Dorsey knew that someone was going to try to intentionally injure him this year, he would never have come back. If kids don’t return, it hurts the league, plain and simply. Slive has never been a long-term thinker, and never will be, and so an act like this will go unpunished, and at some point, some kid is going to get hurt, or some fan is going to go after one of these guys, and it’ll make a horror of a dateline NBC special, and someone’s going to either lose a pro career or go to jail, or possibly both. The guys that could prevent it refuse to do so. Fucking bullshit.

BCS thoughts:

LSU ended up #3 in the BCS this week, with the home stretch of the schedule looking pretty good, the only tough game remaining will be Alabama. If our catching game gets better, and we stick with Flynn over Perrilloux, we should win out until the SEC Championship Game, and at that point it’s anybody’s guess of who will win that game. As SMQ wrote last night, there are still Ohio State, Boston College, and Arizona State that are undefeated. However, their schedules to this point have not been nearly as strong as LSU’s. LSU has won 4 games against top 25 teams. Ohio State hasn’t played 1 top 25 team. I believe the voters will take this into account. Just because you’re undefeated doesn’t mean that you deserve to be the top ranked team in the country. Meanwhile, LSU really needs to take care of business, and while Alabama is a concerning game on the schedule, the SEC champoinship is even more concerning. Meanwhile, Ohio State only has to play Michigan, a team that was beat by a I-AA team this year. Crazy times.

Around the League

Speaking of Alabama, I was completely wrong about the Tennessee game. What the fuck happened? I don’t know. John Parker Wilson looked pretty good against the Tennessee defense. It’s hard enough for me to admit that I was wrong about Bama. I hate Bama in the face, but still, they blew the doors off of Tennessee, and so yay for them. I hope LSU takes the time off to heal, learn how to catch, and dominate again on defense. We all know Les has been thinking about this game for months, and I hope we’re all prepared for it.

Vandy beats South Carolina? The Ole Ball Coach in year 3 ain’t doing so hot I guess

Houston Nutt dominated 44-13 over the Orgeron. Does Darren McFadden go pro after having a dismal year or does he want take another year to mature and win a heisman? I take it back, he’s got to play Auburn, who will try to injure him.

Florida defeated Kentucky 45-37. Tebow accounts for 75% of the offense. If there was a way for him to catch the ball, Herban Meyer would figure it out. He looked hurt at the end of the game, it’ll be interesting to see if he bounces back.

Mississipi State got the crap kicked out of them by West Virginia. No real surprise here. Still, I think Croom keeps his job at the end of the season. He’s got to win 2 of the following to go to a bowl game: Kentucky, Alabama, Arkansas, and Mississippi. I think he can win the last two on the schedule. Bama might be difficult. No way he beats Kentucky. I think he gets a contract extension if they go to a bowl.

In other news around the leauge, the Edmonton Eskimos are mad at Notre Dame for stealing their uniforms, and Joe McKnight did pretty good against a terrible team .

We’ve got two weeks until ‘Bama. I’ll follow Virginia Tech vs. Boston College this week, as well as identify the worst player in a BCS conference. Until then, Adios.

Payback time: LSU vs. Auburn preview

Sorry I haven’t written an update about Kentucky. I think Jana said it best during the preview when she said that the LSU receivers need to start catching the fucking ball. That’s why we lost to Kentucky. That and stupid penalties.

In other news…….

Les Miles reported today that Early Doucet is practicing at 100% and that we should be seeing him a lot during the Auburn game. This is good news, seeing as how he has been our best receiver the past 2 years, in my opinion. He’s not as big as Dwayne Bowe, or as fast as Craig Davis, but he catches everything in sight, is extremely agile, and deceptively quick. He’s a game changer. For those of you who haven’t noticed, our offense has been average since he left, and he will bring a spark to this Tiger team, opening up the passing and running lanes as a decoy, and is worth about 2 TD’s in this game, unless we blow the doors off of Auburn early, in which case Miles will save him to keep him healthy.

. …but that’s not likely to happen against Auburn, as they have a better defense than we will have faced all year. Without further audieu, your keys to the game:

Krista Says: Our defense is very, very good at defending the pass, and defending the run. We shut down Darren McFadden last week. We’re a lunchpail defense, and while we don’t allow many points or yards, we also don’t force many turnovers.

On special teams, our punting is very solid, and makes up for our defense’s lack of flair.

On offense, we’ve got to rock out with our cox out, because we can’t run the ball for shit. If we can’t run the ball on South Florida, it’s not like we’re going to do much better against Dorsey & Co.

Hilary Says: True, we haven’t faced a defense like Auburn’s, and it’s not like they’re schedule has been terrible, but we’ve got the advantage on defense. Check it out: they’ve got no running game. This is going to allow our defense to blitz the bejesus out of Cox, and our pass defense to shine. We lead the league in turnover margin, which should give our offense good field position.

On special teams, it looks like Chad Jones is going to be returning punts. But let’s be honest, it’s not like our return game or our punting game has been lighting it up this year. If Auburn can get 2 or 3 first downs on each possession without turning it over, we could be in trouble because we’ll have a much longer field to score than they will.

Offense baby. Offense. Y’all suck for criticizing my boy Matt Flynn after last week’s game. Sure, he made a few mistakes, but the receivers made many more. Early Doucet’s return should cure that. He’ll actually catch the ball this week, and should open up the passing lanes for the other receivers. I actually have a theory about Brandon Lafell — he seems to have more confidence with Early around and seems to catch the ball better. I hope I’m right about this. If not, we should see a little more of Terrence Tolliver who seems to be getting better every week. Ryan Perrilloux will probably pass the ball once or twice, but I believe the coaching staff is bringing him along slowly and allowing him to grow into the system. Sure, he tore it up against Middle Tennessee State, but c’mon folks, Middle Tennessee isn’t a top ranked SEC defense like Auburn or Florida. Hell, he even missed two wide open receivers against Tulane, costing our team 14 points.

We’re probably going to need to mix it up a little bit with the running backs. Hester’s good and reliable, but it’s not like those Auburn punks are good at forcing turnovers. Besides, he looked a little shook up after a TD in overtime last week. I think we’ll see more of Charles Scott and Keiland Williams this weekend. They will look more impressive than they have against other good defenses because Early Doucet will force Will Muschamp to game plan around him, allowing our speed rushers to gain more yardage.

Prediction: Well, after hearing from our two ladies on their respective teams, I think Auburn must play conservative, with short and precise passing, and playing a field position game in order for them to win. If they don’t, LSU will be able to control the tempo of the game and it could be over by halftime.

For LSU to win, we need to pressure Cox, and defend the passing game. They haven’t been able to run the ball all year, and I don’t anticipate this trend to change against our front 7.

In the end, I believe LSU will win this game, 21-14. Despite Early’s return, Auburn has a great defense, and LSU has gotten pounded in hard hitting games in the last 2 weeks against Florida and Kentucky. Our running backs and QB should be fresh, and Early will add some new legs to the receiving corps, but I expect our lines to be tired out and a little bruised from the past few weeks. That being said, if we fire on all cylinders, and Auburn comes out flat (entirely possible for a night game in TS), we could win this game 47-0. I say could because I honestly believe we win this game 21-14.

Around the league:

Ole Miss got robbed by Nick Saban and his referees last week. That call on the Ole Miss receiver running out of bounds was atrocious. That’s the second time that ‘Bama got a call in order to win the game. In a related story, does anybody notice that Nick Saban has the same record as Mike Shula this time last season?

There’s rumors of Tommy Tubberville leaving Auburn to go to Texas A&M. I don’t believe ’em. Why would he leave Auburn, and why would A&M want another coach from Alabama?

Rutgers upset South Florida last night. It was a good game, but sloppy sloppy sloppy on defense. I really don’t think the Big East teams can hack it against the Pac 10 or the SEC, the two best conferences this year in my opinion. Jim Leavitt thinks he’s still got an outside chance at the BCS championship. That guy’s a fighter, but it ain’t gonna happen.

Boston College and Ohio State ranked higher than LSU, really? C’mon folks, they haven’t played anyone in the top 50. After Auburn we’ll have played 5 of our games against teams in the top 50.

The BCS picture has a long way to go before any definitive picture is made.

Looks like Callahan is going to get canned at Nebraska. What the fuck? Didn’t he restore Nebraska to glory last year by bringing them to the big 12 championship game? Another example of irrational acts by universities and boosters in the NCAA.

No updates on the USC scandal yet. I wonder what’s going on there.

Joe McKnight finally got in the game, and looked pretty solid averaging something like 7 yards a carry. The pro-McKnight case: He’s only a freshman, and USC’s entire offensive line is in shambles. The anti-McKnight case: All his carries have come against shitty teams. We won’t be able to make a definitive ruling on whether or not he’s the best HS prospect of all time until he graduates, so chill out people.

Mark “dirty” Sanchez will start in replace of Booty. Dirty Sanchez, Booty, Mustain, it’s just too easy with SC’s QB’s.

Boston College and Arizona State are idle this week. If LSU and Ohio State both win, we could be ranked #1 by the computers.

How many players are going to leave Notre Dame? Looks like Charlie Weiss is really screwing it up over there, taking a huge steaming shit on the program after Willingham was unfairly forced out.

Games to pay attention to and why:

Tennessee vs. Alabama: Watch the Bama meltdown if Fulmer wins – if he does, the SEC East becomes a very interesting race.

Arkansas vs. Ole Miss: The battle of the hotseat, although I think Nutt probably gets canned at the end of the season (perhaps unfair — got screwed by Mrs. Mustain and a news reporter), and Orgeron keeps his job at the end of the season no matter what. I’m kind of pulling for Ole Miss, even though I hate them when they play us.

Florida vs. Kentucky: Either team winning increases our SOS. I’d like to see Woodson do well, and Tebow cry. Go cats!

Michigan State vs. Ohio State: Tressell decides to play I-A ball finally.

Mississippi State vs. West Virginia: A win for croom increases our SOS, and wins him an extension as well. He is doing good things at Mississippi State.

Southern Cal vs. Notre Dame: Another loss for Charlie Weiss is a good day for us. It will be interesting to see how a decimated Southern Cal O line and a backup QB and third string / fourth string RB do against a terrible Notre Dame team. Honesetly, if I were to tell you that Mcknight and Sanchez were going to play against Notre Dame at the beginning of the season, you’d say….yeah, when it’s 50-0 with 2 minutes to go in the 4th quarter, right?

Michigan vs. Illinios: C’mon Carr — we’re rooting for you to keep the maize and blue hands off miles.

Penn State vs. Indiana: Just kidding, but why is this game on TV?

I’m out……

Rafael Little is out against LSU

Rafael accounts for 28% of Kentucky’s offense, but it’s not like Tony Dixon’s a slouch. Dixon has impressive stats but a lot of it comes in garbage time. I figure with Early playing and Little out, the score should be about 35-22.

In other news, I watched Hawaii and San Jose State play last night. Colt Brennan is atrocious. The amount of press the reformed rapist is getting is comical. How does a heisman candidate throw 4 picks? To be sure, his passing statistics are impressive, but he plays a shitty schedule. He’s thrown 9 picks in the last 3 games. Maybe he can room with Chris Leak in the CFL. Montreal or bust, bitches!

Teams we’re cheering for this weekend: 

Mississippi against Alabama – Gotta root for the rebels in this one, Orgeron has to beat someonein order for him to keep his job, and it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy than Nick $aban.  Imagine all the comedy we’d have to go without if Orgeron wasn’t around.

South Carolina against North Carolina – I hope spurrier shoves it up North Carolina’s ass. Twice.

Georgia / Vanderbilt – One team wins, the other loses, doesn’t really have an effect on our strength of schedule. I would like to see Vandy win, just for the upset factor.

Tennessee / Mrs. State – It would be nice to see croom win, but I like fulmer as a coach.

Auburn / Arkansas – has no effect on our strength of schedule, I guess I’d like to see Arkansas win because I’d like to see McFadden win the heisman trophy (assuming Dorsey is out of the running b/c he’s a lineman), but if Auburn loses then I think the perception is that our schedule is weaker thani t really is.

By the way, the cheerleader over Herbstreit’s left shoulder looks like a horse

Tulane over UAB – Strength of Schedule

Va Tech over Duke – It’s embarrasing that Duke even has a football program.

See you after the game.

Early Doucet To Play…..Rafael Little Questionable.

Looks like Early Doucet is going to play this weekend. Yesterday’s Baton Rouge Advocate article  says that he practiced in full gear at full speed. We definitely need him if we are going to beat Kentucky this weekend. Meanwhile, looks like Kentucky’s Rafael Little is questionable for the game. For those of you unfamiliar with Kentucky, his nickname is “little Reggie Bush”; he’s a very, very good running back. Personal opinion, I think a competitor like that is going to do everything in his power to play.

This is going to be an awesome game, I’m looking forward to seeing Andre Woodson work against our Defense.

LSU vs. Kentucky Preview

Kentucky fans praying for an upset.

 

I wanted to argue that the upsets this year were a result of the media ignoring the talent on lesser teams, such as Andre Woodson and Rafael Little at Kentucky. Then Stanford beat USC, and I realized that literally anything can happen, especially if you lose half your team to injuries, as was the case with the Trojans last week. To be fair, I believe Pete Carroll took Stanford lightly, believing that he could beat Stanford with his second team, and keeping some of his better players out of the game to heal up…and he almost succeeded. I don’t think Les Miles will make this mistake against Kentucky, a team that is 5-1 this year (4-1 against I-A competition, and 1-1 in the SEC), and a team that has an offense roughly equal to the one we just faced at Florida, but only because they have a running back. However, their defense is not as good as Florida, or South Carolina, in my opinion. Judging from last year’s performance, we still win this game 35-0 if you take away TD’s scored by Tigers last year that are no longer with the team, but that assumes a healthy Early Doucet and Matt Flynn, and also assumes that Kentucky didn’t improve at all year over year.

 

For those of you unfamiliar with Kentucky, Andre Woodson is probably one of the top 5 quarterbacks in the country. He’s more accurate than any quarterback we’ve faced, and a better passer than even Tim Tebow, although he’s not as mobile, being sacked for -72 yards in SEC competition this year.

Oh shit, I have to play LSU this week?

Andre’s favorite targets are Steven Johnson who had 111 receiving yards against Arkansas, and Keenan Burton, who had 76 yards against South Carolina. Running the ball, Kentucky has a capable running back in the ever-shifty Rafael little.

 

Kentucky has a solid run defense lead by Jeremy Jarmon and Wesley Woodyard. Although Jarmon leads the SEC with 6 sacks, he actually only has 1 sack against SEC competition.

 

Monica Says: n order for Kentucky to win this game, LSU has to tackle the same way they did against Florida during the 1st half, Jarmon and Woodyard need to stop LSU’s rushing attack, and Woodson needs to be mistake-free, which isn’t that much of a stretch considering he’s thrown 18 TD’s and 2 interceptions. Coach Rich Brooks also needs to mix up the play calling and utilize Little and not rely on Woodson as much as he has this year.

 

Jana Says: On LSU’s side of the ball, we need to CATCH THE FUCKING BALL. Seriously, Lafell and the Mitchells have dropped more balls than Ron Jeremy against Florida, Tulane, and South Carolina. We desperately need a healthy Early Doucet back. Les Miles said this week that “we would probably see Early in the Kentucky game but it wouldn’t surprise him one bit if we didn’t.” I’ll take that to mean that Early is doing everything he can to get healthy, and depending on how our WR’s do in practice, Early may or may not dress for the game.

 

 

Our rushing attack should be stellar as always, as Kentucky’s rush defense is ranked 91st in the country.

 

As always, the strong part of our team is Defense, and although Kentucky has a solid offense, if we do the things that we were able to do in the first half of this year, we should be able to shut them down.

Score Predictions:
If Early Plays: 37-25
If Early is Out: 30-25

Wow! Florida – LSU recap

All I can say is what a game! Well, that’s not all I can say — On Friday, I correctly predicted the score to be 28-24, however I had no idea that in order to get to 28 we’d have to go for it on 4th down 4 times on the same drive, that Colt David would miss 2 FG’s (one difficult, the other….not so much), that Brandon Lafell would drop 3 passes (one leading to an interception), or that the hero of the game would be Jacob Hester.

While I wish that we would have blown Florida out, I’ll admit was probably the most exciting game I’ve ever watched. However, the story of this game has less to do with the “genius” or “large ballsack” of Les Miles, but more to do with how much our team misses Early Doucet, Jacob Hester’s character, and the cool-headed decision making of Matt Flynn. There were a lot of situations where Matt had to throw away the ball, where it would have been easy to try to force a pass and possibly turn the ball over (something we saw happen from time to time over the past few years with Randall, Mauck, and even in Jamarcus’ early days).

 

What the media has misdiagnosed for a large ballsack is actually Les adjusting to the game, and knowing the character of this team. Put yourself in Les’ situation:

 

– Florida’s offense was the best we’ve seen all year.
– Tebow was doing a great job against us (despite his completion %age, he did score 3 TD’s).
– Colt David had his first name changed to Cold and missed 2 FG’s. It should be noted that David did throw a sick block on a fake FG in the game.
– Our receivers couldn’t catch a cold in the 1st half.
– We had a lot of success early on running the ball.

 

Now ask yourself the question – given these facts, is it a safer bet to go for it on 4th down and try to gain 1-3 yards, or is it better to punt and risk another score? Kudos to Les for recognizing the situation and reacting accordingly, but it was much less of a risk to go for it than conventional wisdom would allow.

 

Player of the game: Jacob Hester, duh.
Running laps this week: Every WR on our team, except for Lafell and Mitchell, who should spend their time learning how to catch. I take back all of the nice things I said about Lafell after the Virginia Tech game, due to this week’s performance.

 

Now, as for those who might ask, “should the best team in the country have to go for it on 4th down so many times?”, the answer is this: LSU has played the toughest schedule thus far, beating 3 teams ranked in the top 10 at the time that the game is played. What more do you need to know?

It’s kind of funny, earlier in the year after Florida beat Tennessee, Herban Meyer brought in all the recruits that were on campus visiting him, and said, “If there’s a better team to play for in the country, then go”. Speak too soon much Herban? After this game, Herban said “We’ll be back….smokin'”. What the fuck is that? You may want to get through South Carolina and Kentucky first before claiming your comeback.

Today Herban Meyer worried openly about the safety of his players after Tebow received a large amount of voicemails from those who would wish him ill, but he really shouldn’t — they are protected by both a police escort during away games, and a forcefield that making them immune to the legal system.

 

Meanwhile, who’s worrying about the safety of Tony Joiner’s victim who received more than 200 death threats last week urging him to drop the charges?

 

It should be noted, that I have a newfound respect for Tim Tebow, who had a good sense of humor about the whole thing, at least publicly. While I hate all the hype surrounding Tebow, because of the way he handled this situation, and because he was able to eat crow about the cell-phone-dialing touchdown dance, I’ll refrain from posting the seven pictures of him crying after the game.

 

People that are probably losing their sense of humor this week:

 

– Pete Carroll, who forgot to recruit adequate backup offensive linemen, and insisted on relying on ultra-mediocre QB John David Booty. To be fair, Booty did break his finger against Stanford, but he’s looked subpar this year without Dwayne Jarrett. Looks like the NCAA is finally investigating the Reggie Bush situation as well.

 

– Karl Dorrell, who gave Notre Dame their first win this week. Seriously dude, I know that you don’t personally commit the turnovers, but still, fire yourself.

 

– Mack Brown, who lost superstud Limas Sweed, in addition to another game this week.

 

– Saban’s assistants, who got thrown under the bus this week. Seems like Saban’s assistants always change, but somehow his teams always never seem to put away inferior opponents properly (while finding a way to throttle the bejesus out of equally-ranked opponents ala Oklahoma in 2003).

Tulane Recap, Florida Preview, and around the league…..

Good morning Tiger fans, I apologize for taking the week off last week, I figure if the Tigers can take the week off before the Tulane game, so can I. First of all, I’ve heard a lot of people criticize Matt Flynn, for the performance he put out last Saturday, but let me just say this — it’s hard to play well when you’re hurt and you’ve got the Tulane defense in your face on every play.

Let that sink in……

It’s hard to play well when you’ve got the Tulane defense in your face on every play. What does that tell you? Our o-line played like shit, that’s what it tells you. While Perrilloux seemed to look better and have a confident presence on the field, he was 1 for 3 for -1 yards. Anybody who saw the game knows that Perrilloux (though I love’em) missed two wide open receivers in the end zone for the 2 passes he didn’t complete. One was way overthrown, the other was way underthrown. Meanwhile, somehow Flynn racked up 258 yards.

All said and done, the Defense did it’s job last Saturday, allowng less than 100 yards on the ground.

Up this week? Florida, who lost to Auburn last week. This game will be unpredictable, to say the least — For LSU, Early Doucet is still out, while for Florida “bubba” Caldwell will play for Florida for the first time in 3 weeks. Tony Joiner will be playing for Florida, who was arrested on felony charges this week for breaking into an impound lot to get his girlfriend’s car back. The owner of the lot calls it a huge “misunderstanding” that Joiner had made arrangements to retrieve the car. Call me skeptical since most people don’t try to pick up their cars from an impound lot at 4:30 in the morning, and break in to do it. Once again Herban Meyer’s policy of “boys will be boys” will prevail.

At any rate, this game is very unpredictable because Florida hasn’t played a defense like our defense (or an offense like our offense) and we haven’t faced an offense as potent as theirs. In the end, I think that a couple of things happen in this game:

1) Florida’s lack of a running game (besides tebow) will become exposed.
2) Our secondary will get tested, but will do okay despite.
3) Matt Flynn and our four headed running back beast will expose  Florida’s  defense as a team that scheduled a bunch of all-girls schools for the deaf and blind this year.
4) Tebow turns the ball over at least 2 times.

I think LSU wins this one 28-24.

Have a great weekend everybody!

South Carolina Re-cap. Spurrier not cocky enough

I love college football. I love the unpredictability, I love upsets, the playoff that starts on week one, the debates on which teams and conferences are better, and I also I love it for plays like this:

To be sure, Miles had the better horses on Saturday, and we were expected to win…..but Miles outcoached Spurrier. LSU was prepared, and won the game without a star offensive lineman, and a QB that was at about 60% of his ability. Also of note: this was the first time that Ryan Perrilloux joined the game before the point spread was covered, so he really must be gaining the trust of Miles & Gary Crowton. This would have been an easy game to lose, looking back on it. Before I get into it, here’s what I liked about yesterday’s game:

1) The play of the offensive line: South Carolina has a solid D, but only had 3 tackles for a loss. With an injured offensive line, and a muddy field this could have been a weak link.

2) Matt Flynn’s toughness: Flynn showed a lot of courage by playing yesterday. It was clear that he was hurting, and the field conditions really didn’t help much. His no-look behind the back pass to Colt David on the fake field goal at the end of the first half broke the gamecock’s back, in my opinion.

3) Another solid week by the LSU defense. Another week, another game where we forced a coach to doubt his starting QB, pulling him in favor of the backup. Sure, we gave up 16 points, but you can’t shut out opponents, much less a Spurrier-coached team every week.

Here’s what I didn’t like about this week’s game:

1) Our stable of highly touted receivers – I’m not going to point out any specific player, god knows they’re all college kids trying really hard, and they’re young, but for fuck’s sake catch the @#%#%@$@ing ball. Richard Dickson is excluded from this, as he made a few good catches and didn’t seem to drop the ball at all. Speaking of our highly-touted receivers, where was Tolliver yesterday?

That’s about it. Stay tuned later on in the week for commentary on the upcoming Tulane game, who suspended their starting running back for 4 counts of attempted murder this week, and commentary on the first 1/3 of the season. Other commentary around the league:

Oklahoma 62- Tulsa 21

Stoops — put in your fucking backups, or your QB’s gonna get Bomar’d. You’re as big an ass as Herban Meyer.

USF 37 – UNC 10

Typical big east. Schedule weaker teams from BCS conferences to try and prove a point.

Syracuse 38 – Louisville 35

Wasn’t Louisville a top 10 team? Nice defense, giving up 38 points to the worst offense in Division 1-A.

Florida 30 – Ole Miss 24

Finally a Florida game where I don’t have to bitch at Herban Meyer for running up the score. I thought Ole Miss was going to pull this one off. It’s a shame people still talk about coach O as being on the hot seat, he actually is turning this program around. I really like what BJGE is doing, and the new Ole Miss QB is looking like the real deal.

Boston College – Army (score irrelevant)

Direct quote from ESPN’s commentators: “And BC proves why they should be ranked in the top 10 right here, such brilliant moves against army”. Army. They’re not even good enough to be in division I-AA, and the last bowl game they were in was over 26 years ago. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves…

Michigan St. 31 – Notre Dame 14

Notre Dame flat out sucks this year. Terrible. You have to feel sorry for Jimmy Claussen, they have a terrible offensive line. Seriously though, Charlie Weiss should be fired after this season, but won’t because of his mega-contract. It’s a sad sad state of affairs. People will point to racism with Ty getting fired with a better record than Charlie, but Charlie just has a better agent. Man does it do a heart good to watch that fat fucker squirm when getting interviewed by the media.

Colorado 42 – Miami of Ohio 0

Butter face, but jesus look at them abs!

Mississipi State 31 – Gardner-webb 0

It’s a shame that this game actually counts in Sly Croom’s W-L column, but I guess we all have our cupcakes right? And shouldn’t cupcakes be relational? Sure, we play Middle Tennessee and Tulane, but Sly needs an easier team to teach them how to play ball.

Tennessee 48 – Arkansas State 27

Phil, glad to see your offense is back on track. Play some D.

Georgia 26 – Bama 23

Ahh…Simeon, don’t be so hard on yourself, you guys really shouldn’t have been in this game to begin with. You don’t deserve to be in a Saban secondary.

A familiar sight for many LSU fans, a dejected Saban after choking against a beatable team. To be fair, Alabama has done MUCH better than I thought they would this year, and I have to give them credit, but oddly enough a lot of that credit is due to Major Applewhite’s offense. This team does not have a Sabanesque D.

Kentucky 42 – Arkansas 29

What more can you say about Rich Brooks and Kentucky this season? Sure, Arkansas isn’t the greatest team this year, but they’re not a bad team either. It’s a shame that Mitch Mustain transferred — this game might have been closer, but it’s hard to tell.