By Micah Neese
Hello Tiger fans! This week LSU will look to get it’s fifth ranked win in Baton Rouge under the lights. After the devastation that occurred last year, LSU is more than sufficiently prepared for this game and they are looking to rewrite the history that happened the last time these two teams met when our hopes for a new year’s six bowl and a ten win regular season were dashed in a seventh overtime.
Let’s take a moment to flashback to a game that was unlike any other before or since. In the final moments of a choppy game on LSU’s part, in which Texas A&M was allowed to hang around and haunt us until the very end, Grant Delpit seemed to have caught the game winning interception. Orgeron was dumped with gatorade in jubilation, and the home crowd went quiet as LSU rejoiced. As if in justification for LSU letting another SEC West team hang around until the end, the refs came onto the field blowing whistles and the play was reviewed. The snap had been after the play clock had expired. With a second left, Kellen Mond hit a touchdown pass in the middle of the end zone to keep them alive and you knew who was going to win. Seven overtimes later Kyle field was flooded with maroon and LSU left crestfallen.
This year LSU is very alert to the fact that these Aggies would love nothing more than to take the No. 1 team in the nation to the final buzzer. I can promise you they won’t be hanging around for the sake of a good football game. Orgeron told the press, “It’s going to be on. No question. I’ll never forget the game last year.” We look to avenge the toughest loss in program history in much the same way as we avenged the eight humiliating losses to Alabama. This year has been all about righting the wrongs since 2011. We have been stuck in the challenges of the SEC west for almost a decade and this year we are rising above it.—-
I have watched a lot of Kellen Mond, the big prospect from IMG. He has been my second favorite SEC quarterback to study throughout this year. He’s so fundamental. When he rolls out the pocket, you can see him getting his head around, his shoulders squaring, pointing, and then delivering a beautiful ball on the run off his left foot. He can take a pristine three step drop and hit a crosser route in stride. He is a dangerous athlete when he breaks the line of scrimmage. If you’re wondering why their mediocre 7-4 record doesn’t show Mond’s talent, their receivers lack the same skills as LSU’s and are unable to create the same separation against tougher secondaries. They are prone to crumble under strong defenses like Clemson and Georgia who held them to a total of 23 points. LSU will have to do the same if they want to beat those two teams.
Their defense has plenty of holes, but neither Tua or Trevor Lawrence were able to break 300 yards passing against it. Burrow will once again prove to be the best. On paper they seem stout, good rush defense, secondary, etc. It seems to me though, that when you hand Joe Burrow a defense and tell them they are one of the toughest, he doesn’t seem to change his style. He, a competitor above all else, remembers how brutal it was last year. I don’t see Burrow dipping below 300 yards no matter what you throw at him and, with Burrow at the heart, this offense is unstoppable.
The last game of the season is already at our doorstep, but our dreams are just coming into fruition.
