All of the above. The younger players nerves settled in the second half. Whiskey losing both their starting and backup nose guard really opened up the running/passing game for LSU in the second half. A 3-4 without a good nose guard can really be hurt, and that is what we saw. I think even had their nose guards not been hurt you would have seen an improvement in the second half. Maybe we don't get the W without the injuries though. Their starting fullback and Gordon were also hurt.
They shouldn't be, but Sam Houston has nothing to lose and the Tigers have every reason to be complacent. Sam Houston has a quarterback and a couple of good receivers that cannot be taken lightly. We should manhandle them on the lines physically, but these guys run a hurry-up offense and they never huddle. They run a huge number of plays per game and the defense will have trouble substituting at times. The defensive line will have to rotate men frequently to keep 4th quarter legs and that means playing the freshmen, who could screw up and allow a big play. We could beat them by 50 and cruise in the 4th quarter . . . but it would not shock me for them to keep it much closer than that.
Sam Houston apparently also likes to run the hurry up and get plays off as fast as possible. Don't be surprised if the starters and 2nd stringers play the whole game due to the fact we have Dan Mullen and Malzahn coming up soon.
If we get a good lead, it would be a great game to get Harris in, the 2nd string OL and the 3rd team DL and LB's. We schedule these games for several reasons. This is 1 of them. Playing time for younger players.
Players get hurt...back-ups have to step up...that didn't happen for the Wissies. Wisconsin got exposed in two areas: 1) they have a depth problem on D, and 2) their qb appears quite average (and Stave, who started all 13 games last year, is out indefinitely with a shoulder problem). Except for a few fears about your qb play, I didn't see anything that couldn't be fix in the next two weeks..... Take the win!!!!
I can understand playing like cardiac kids during SEC play or when playing a ranked non-conference opponent, but if teams like Sam Houston come into Baton Rouge and start hanging around into the 4th quarter, I'd be really concerned, regardless of what type of offense they ran.
