On Key: Coach O told some coaches from McNeese that Key was the best dlineman he has ever coached a week before the game. Pretty impressive for a freshman who came into the program later than everyone else. About a week later Miles confirmed that Key would get 2/3rds of the snaps at DE. Think we saw that last night. Ceiling his very high.
Dude he looked like Mingo in his prime. Godchaux is a beast too, was nice to see Herron and Gilmore finally playing too. Bower had a good game and Neal was pretty solid too. Linebackers need work in coverage.
What's funny is until this season, every year I would be sitting here telling Shane the same thing. I'm tired of making excuses.
It was great to open the season with a SEC win. However the play calling was just straight ugly. No other way to look at it. Yes Fournette is a stud back, Heisman candidate, etc. I'd expect him to get a lot of carries. The issue is that the play calling became predictable and redundant. Most of the runs from the second quarter on were for either 10+ yards for under 3 because they knew what was coming. I think Harris has shown a good bit of improvement. Is he looking like a star, hell no. You still have to throw the ball to keep the D honest. A play action pass on first down might actually work. Miles needs to find his Lesticles again. Against a better team LSU blows this game. Key and Tolliver look like future all time great Tigers. I think Key will everything most people though Ming and Hunter would be. Not that they were bad, but neither was stellar outside of some moments. Tolliver looks like another PP7/Claiborne/Webster shut down CB. The future is very bright. I also don't get wasting Guice redshirt for one play. Everytime he comes in it's clearly a RB screen play. I like what I see in the D. Steele calls a more aggressive game than Chavis. The played really well until they began to tire after the O became super predictable. LSU did struggle too much at the end though. The coverage was sagging too much, the same as it was under Chavis. The other glaring issue was the TD killing penalties. Those are too costly when the games get tougher.
I agree with just about everything Red had to say in his original post. All in all, given that we didn't get a warm up game last week and it showed with 9 penalties for 95 yards I'll take this win. Before I get into the plethora of reasons that I saw to be optimistic about, let me first say that Les' got far too Les, too early IMHO. I completely understand why he did it but I think we could have put this one to bed much earlier if Les let's'em loose. That said, Leonard Fournette is a grown ass man I don't recall him not falling forward last night......ever. In Fournette we have our first legitimate Heisman candidate in many years. I know some will say Honey Badger, PP7, etc. but Fournette is a top 2-3 candidate if not the winner and that puts him in a different category. Brandon Harris is the real deal. His arm is big and the ball he throws looks more like the ball that Mett threw than the wobblers that we came to expect from Jennings last year. The touchdown pass to Dural that was called back was a thing of beauty. With the exception of a few small mental errors I thought he managed the stage and the game very well. Les was very protective of him last night and with good reason but I think we will see Harris become a more active presence in the offense moving forward. Our offensive line looks better than any one I've seen at LSU in a while. Those guys really did a nice job, especially on that final LSU drive where they gained a few first downs and ate some clock. Teuhema is a monster. I did notice that Josh Boutte didn't play much after a few penalties early on so I don't know what that will mean moving forward. Arden Key does not look or play like a true freshman who just started playing big boy football 6 weeks ago. We might have something special in him. Overally the D line looked much improved and got a good pash rush most of the night. Coach O doing some work here....nice to see it paying off. Our defensive backs are as good as advertised. I know White got burned by Williams in those last few drives but he came through when it counted in the end. Jamal Adams hit on #8 was nasty. He comes to the stadium with bad intentions.....he just needs to quit talking so much shit. If it is true that the greatest improvement comes between weeks 1 and 2 then Auburn better tighten their girdles because in the friendly confines of Tiger Stadium this team might turn out to be nasty.
I think so, too. Beckwith is a beast against the run. If he can just elevate his pass coverage this year, his pro opportunities will look pretty rosy. We are thin at backer, too. We can't afford any injuries.
When he was well rested White shut Wilson down for the most part. It wasn't until the D began to tire from being on the field too much that Wilson started putting up stats. He is a damn good WR but White did well. You can't expect a D to keep shutting down a decent O when their own O keeps going 3 and out.