It was easy to dismiss LSU after last week.

After watching what the Tigers did to suffer their first loss of the year against Florida, the natural thought was that LSU’s impressive start was just that. A start. Perhaps Miami and Auburn were overrated to start the year, and LSU was just a nice team that wasn’t really capable of competing for a Playoff spot.

After all, oddsmakers had LSU’s regular-season over/under at 6.5 wins. Confirmation bias might have set in when oddsmakers made LSU a touchdown underdog at home for Saturday against No. 2 Georgia (by the way, all of College GameDay and SEC Nation picked Georgia).

After Saturday’s blowout win against the Bulldogs, though, it’s definitely time to dismiss something as it relates to LSU — the preseason notion that the Tigers aren’t Playoff contenders.

Saturday marked the third time that LSU was an underdog against a top-10 team in 2018. And Saturday marked the third time that LSU walked away victorious.

That’s more top-10 victories than plenty of Playoff teams have accumulated in an entire season in years past. Yet LSU is already building the best list of quality wins of team in the country. The same schedule that was supposed to humble the Tigers and put Ed Orgeron on the hot seat has simply legitimized them.

I mean, who could possibly still be skeptical of LSU after Saturday?

Credit: Stephen Lew-USA TODAY Sports

It seems like a foolish question at this point, but you know there will be Associated Press voters and talking heads who claim that LSU was fueled by an incredible home-field advantage. That can be true, but Saturday was the first of LSU’s 3 top-10 victories that actually came at Tiger Stadium.

As they say, defense travels. On Saturday, it didn’t have to travel very far against a Georgia offense that looked overwhelmed all afternoon.

It wasn’t just the fact that LSU held an offense that came in averaging 42 points to just 16 points, or that they forced one of the nation’s most accurate passers in Jake Fromm to complete fewer than 50 percent of his passes.

It was the plays that the LSU defense made that reminded everyone just why the Tigers are in the Playoff hunt. Between Kristian Fulton’s diving interception and Michael Divinity’s spin move to sack Fromm, it seemed like every time the Tigers needed to come up big, they did.

And that’s not to say it was all the defense doing to heavy lifting. The offense that many were skeptical of because of Joe Burrow’s accuracy put up 36 points. And by the way, that was in a game that Burrow completed just 50 percent of his passes.

But once again, Burrow did all the little things to lift LSU. You know, just as he’s been doing all year.

People hung up on Burrow’s completion percentage probably missed the other plays Burrow made, like making fourth down automatic and effectively running tempo looks in key situations. It’s still hard to believe that someone with just 7 career starts has those winning intangibles already.

There shouldn’t be any doubt anymore as to whether Burrow can lead LSU in key moments.

And while Burrow made winning plays, it probably helped that the Tigers had their best ground game effort that they’ve had all year. Against a Georgia defense that allowed an average of 113 rushing yards per game, LSU racked up 275. Clyde Edwards-Helaire did his best Derrius Guice/Leonard Fournette imitation with 145 yards rushing.

Still, though, this didn’t feel like an LSU win of old. The Tigers didn’t look like the team that was limited in what it could do on either side of the ball. Shoot, if the Tigers had glaring weaknesses, they probably would’ve been exploited for more than 1 loss at this point.

That obviously hasn’t happened. What has happened is the same LSU team that was picked to finish fifth in the SEC West is setting up for a matchup for the ages against Alabama. The 2018 squad that was supposed to end LSU’s streak of 18 straight 8-win seasons looks special.

You don’t beat the No. 2 team in the country by 20 points and not have a little magic.

This team, however, isn’t pulling rabbits out of its hat or running trick plays left and right (actually, it was Georgia that tried to pull off the Les Miles fake field goal). It’s lining up and imposing its will on quality team after quality team.

Orgeron made the obvious declaration that Saturday was the best game that LSU played all year. That much we all knew. For one afternoon, his squad made the defending national runner-up look like a fringe Top 25 team. Call it preseason roll reversal or whatever you want. Just retire those preseason narratives about LSU.

The Tigers were more battle-tested than Georgia, and they’ll be more battle-tested than Alabama when the Tide rolls into Baton Rouge in a few short weeks. Matching Saturday’s effort isn’t a given, but we have enough evidence to at least know that it’s possible.

Whether LSU is able to stun Alabama in a few weeks or not, it won’t change what these first 7 weeks of 2018 have shown us.

These Tigers are legit Playoff contenders. It’s way past time to accept that.