LSU has been waiting a whole year for this – 369 days to be exact.
Another crack at Texas A&M.
In Tiger Stadium. With a better team. With more at stake. With tons of motivation.
The Aggies won last year, 74-72 in 7 overtimes in College Station.
You all remember the deal. Controversial calls. Suspect replay overturns.
LSU thought it had won a bunch of times, but A&M kept getting more chances. And capitalizing on them.
The 1972 U.S. Olympic men’s basketball team would have shaken its head at how many times the officials gave the Aggies do-overs.
But now it’s payback time.
Here are 5 reasons LSU gets revenge against Texas A&M:
1. Joe Burrow
That Joe Burrow passed for 270 yards and 3 touchdowns and run for 100 yards and 3 more touchdowns against the Aggies.
What do you think this Joe Burrow is going to do to them?
The Heisman Trophy winner-elect won’t run for 100 yards. But he’s going to throw a lot of passes. He’s going to complete somewhere around 80 percent of them. For lots of yards and some touchdowns.
Ja’Marr Chase is going to find the end zone. At least once. Maybe More.
Justin Jefferson? At least once.
Terrace Marshall Jr.? Maybe. Thaddeus Moss? Maybe.
Clyde Edwards-Helaire is getting there too. Maybe on a pass from Burrow, maybe on a handoff from Burrow. Perhaps a little of both.
The Aggies play good defense, but so do Florida, Auburn and Alabama. And look at what Burrow did to them.
2. Giveaways and takeaways
LSU isn’t great at turnovers, but it’s better than A&M. And A&M can’t win this game unless it takes the ball away multiple times more than it gives it away.
Burrow isn’t going to be very helpful in that regard and the Tigers in general don’t give it away much.
The Aggies are 11th in the SEC in turnover margin. They have to be much better than their track record in this game and LSU isn’t going to let that happen.
3. The pass rush
The Tigers’ pass rush and defense overall have been inconsistent this season.
Kellen Mond made a whole bunch of plays against them last year and he’s going to make plays in this game.
But A&M has allowed the most sacks in the SEC this season and when Dave Aranda decides to blitz, the Tigers usually get to the quarterback.
They might let Mond slip through their fingers a couple of times and if Aranda is slow to go to the blitz as he sometimes is, the sacks might not come right away.
But eventually they will and that will leave Mond with no chance of keeping up with Burrow.
4. The CFP committee
The Tigers already were pretty ornery for this game and the CFP had to go and drop LSU from No. 1 to No. 2 in these week’s rankings.
The Aggies might have been more bothered by that development than the Tigers, but the home team is not going to be happy about that and it will be motivated to show the committee that Ohio State’s victory over Penn State last week shouldn’t have outweighed LSU’s 4 Top 10 wins.
Eye test?
LSU will provide one for the CFP committee.
5. Last year
Have we mentioned last year’s game yet?
The Tigers already were talking about it moments after they beat Arkansas last week. They’ve been thinking about it since last year.
They want revenge. They want to wipe away the memory of that premature Gatorade bath they gave Ed Orgeron. They want to wipe away the memory of the interception that wasn’t an interception, the expired clock that wasn’t expired, the fumble that was an incompletion, the illegal formation that wasn’t called and the pass interference that was called and shouldn’t have been.
Sure, most of those calls and no-calls could have gone either way. But they all went A&M’s way.
In LSU’s mind it was robbed – and that’s all that counts.
As lagniappe, it’s senior night and the Tigers are trying to finish an undefeated regular season and build momentum for their game against Georgia in the SEC Championship next week.
There is a laundry list of motivational factors and they all favor LSU.
Motivation is nice, but it doesn’t mean a lot if you don’t have the better team.
But when you do — as LSU does — it can mean a whole lot.
Les East is a New Orleans-based football writer who covers LSU for SaturdayDownSouth.com. Follow him on Twitter @Les_East.
