Greg McElroy knows all about pure late-season desperation, having played in plenty of big November games as the quarterback at Alabama.
Nowadays, the college football analyst breaks down those November games, the ones that will decide the fate of both teams as they chase their dreams. In Week 11, in 2026, SEC name brands Texas and LSU have dreams of an SEC title and a College Football Playoff berth, and those dreams almost certainly rest on the result of Saturday night’s battle in Baton Rouge.
It’ll be the 2-loss Longhorns (7-2, 4-2 SEC) and the 3-loss Tigers (6-3, 3-3 SEC) in a 7:30 p.m. ET kickoff at Death Valley, with the ABC spotlight on this matchup of teams who are desperate to avoid a 3rd — or a 4th loss.
Texas has little to no margin for error in making the Playoff, and LSU surely can’t afford another stumble if it wants to retain any outside Playoff hope. So, that desperation will be dripping all over Tiger Stadium, at night, at Death Valley, and McElroy believes the desperate home team will win out.
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McElroy is going with Lane Kiffin‘s crew, which is a slight home favorite over Arch Manning and Co. He broke it down on his Always College Football podcast earlier this week.
“I’m taking LSU to win this game, 24-20,” McElroy said. “At night, in Death Valley, that’s when that (LSU) pass rush gets a sixth man. And I don’t know if Texas’s O-line can hold up throughout the night.”
And if it can’t, if McElroy is right, then Texas’s Playoff dreams could likely evaporate by the end of the night.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
