I’ll stop you right there.

You read that headline and immediately assumed that you were about to read some column wherein I mocked a prolific Pac-12 program like Washington while scoffing at the notion that anyone could possibly be compared to the historic 2019 LSU team. Like, the one that rewrote record books and made us reimagine what we thought was possible of modern offense.

I’m not here to discredit Washington, nor am I here to say that it’ll be impossible for anyone to ever match what LSU did in 2019.

In the preseason, I picked the Huskies to make the College Football Playoff. I wouldn’t talk anyone out of ranking them as the No. 1 team in the sport. If I had to vote today, Michael Penix Jr. would be my leader in the clubhouse to win the Heisman Trophy, which I’m totally not bitter about as an Indiana graduate who thought he’d never be healthy enough to become a star as recently as 14 months ago. For my money, Washington is America’s team in 2023.

This isn’t the place where you’ll find any sort of bashing of Washington. This is, however, the place where you’ll find why there’s a key hole in the comparison that’s been making the rounds on the internet this week.

Most notably, ESPN analyst Booger McFarland made that comparison on ESPN’s College Football Playoff show, and my guy Aaron Murray also banged the drum that 2023 Washington and a very 2019 LSU feel to it:

Murray is right in that if you focus on the identity of the team, the strengths and weaknesses are super similar. I’ll take it a step further.

Look at the side-by-side of who 2019 LSU and 2023 Washington are from a statistical perspective:

By the numbers
2019 LSU
2023 Washington
Points/game
48.4
44.3
Yards/play
7.9
8.5
Passing yards/game
402
425
20-yard scrimmage plays/game
7.5
7.8
Points allowed/game
21.9
20.8
Yards/play allowed
5.1
5.3

(Unable to fit in that table was “are they led by a veteran quarterback that had to leave a Big Ten East team for an entirely different region of the country to play in the right system and become a household name for a program in purple? Yes.”)

Wait, so then where are the differences? Like, besides the fact that obviously, we’re talking about a team that went 15-0 compared to a team that’s halfway through the regular season.

Go back to this past Saturday. That’s when these comparisons started getting traction. Washington hosted College GameDay and had an incredible atmosphere on hand to witness a comeback win against Oregon.

In that sentence alone, Washington is already not on 2019 LSU’s level.

As Preston Guy pointed out, 2019 LSU never played in a single game in which the opposing team possessed the ball in the 4th quarter of a 1-score game. Really. Not even against Texas, Auburn, or Alabama. Those teams made it a 1-score game, but never in the 4th quarter did they possess the ball with a chance to tie or take the lead against LSU.

That’s dominance. That’s why we hold this team in such high regard. Or at least we should. That’s why it’s not fair to say a team that needed a comeback in the final 2 minutes of its first game against an AP Top 25 team is in the same breath as 2019 LSU.

LSU didn’t have a single game wherein an opposing coach’s decision to go for it on 4th down was scrutinized because the Tigers never had a game that came down to that.

That’s not to say that LSU never had to dig deep late in games and that everything was always a cakewalk. But think about how impressive it is that in the 3 instances that Texas, Auburn and Alabama — all of which were AP top-10 teams at the time of the matchup — all made it a 1-score game in the 4th quarter, here was how LSU’s offense responded on the following drives:

  • at No. 9 Texas
    • TD — 6 plays, 75 yards
    • TD — 6 plays, 75 yards
    • TD — 6 plays, 75 yards
  • vs. No. 9 Auburn
    • TD — 11 plays, 67 yards
  • at No. 3 Alabama
    • TD — 12 plays, 75 yards
    • TD — 7  plays, 75 yards

To recap, in the 6 instances in which the LSU offense could’ve given the ball back in a 1-score game in the 4th quarter, it instead marched down the field with a minimum of a 67-yard touchdown drive every, single, time. And by the way, 2 of those games were in as hostile of an atmosphere as you’ll see in college football, which is a touch more impressive than Washington’s most recent road game … a 7-point win at 3-loss Arizona.

That’s what separates that 2019 LSU team from the best of the best. It wasn’t just it was led by a fun, confident quarterback who racked up more than 6,000 scrimmage yards, or even that it had 14 players selected in the 2020 NFL Draft. For all I know, Washington will check both of those boxes, as well.

But being as in control as LSU was at every turn — and doing so on a path that included a record 7 opponents in the top 10 of the AP Poll — shouldn’t be forgotten. That’s too impressive of a feat to be glossed over with any comparison, especially for one that has just a 6-game sample size. Even if Washington goes on to win a national championship and finishes with a similar statistical profile to 2019 LSU, let’s look beyond the numbers before including them in the same breath.

For now, the side-by-side profiles are a fun midseason topic of discussion, and it’ll remain that as long as Washington has a “0” in the loss column. If the Huskies pull off that perfect season in a year in which the Pac-12 looks as deep as it ever has, we’ll all be tasked with coming up with the right words to convey the magnitude of that accomplishment.

Just don’t sell 2019 LSU short.