Tell the Truth Monday: We don’t know if LSU is ready for SEC play
By Les East
Published:
Is LSU ready to begin SEC play?
The short answer is, we don’t know.
We’ll find out when the Tigers play Mississippi State beginning Saturday morning in Starkville.
The Tigers weren’t ready to compete for 4 quarters against an apparent CFP contender in Florida State in their season-opening 45-24 loss.
They were more than ready to take advantage of an outmanned FCS opponent (Grambling) in a 72-10 thrashing Saturday night in Tiger Stadium.
But that didn’t provide significant clarity because of the quality of competition.
Mississippi State is not the same as either of those opponents.
The Bulldogs, 2-0 after routing Southeastern Louisiana and holding off Arizona State 31-24 in overtime on Saturday, don’t have the talent that the No. 4 Seminoles have. But they have a lot more talent than Grambling has.
It’s the first Tell the Truth of the SEC season, and the truth is 2 games haven’t given us much of an idea of what to expect from Brian Kelly’s team in its conference opener.
The Tigers looked unworthy of their preseason No. 5 ranking when they played Florida State, and the mismatch that they took advantage of Saturday has no predictive value when it comes to SEC competition.
We know that LSU has a very good – and occasionally outstanding – quarterback in Jayden Daniels. But we knew that before the season started.
We know that LSU has a lot of talented wide receivers, but we don’t know how consistently productive they will be. They had a few drops that were harmful in the opener, then they dominated against Grambling.
We know LSU has better depth at running back than it had a year ago, but we don’t know if that will translate into a week-in and week-out SEC-caliber running game.
Is Notre Dame transfer Logan Diggs the best of the 8 options that Kelly and offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock have to choose from? Or is it perhaps John Emery Jr.? We don’t know because Emery has yet to play, presumably because of academic shortcomings, but he might be available in Starkville.
Is the offensive line as improved as Kelly said it was before the season? It wasn’t when it faced Florida State, but it suggested it might be against Grambling. This week will be a better gauge.
We don’t know if the defensive front 7 is as good as it was lauded to be going into the season. It wasn’t against Florida State and it didn’t stand out as much as one might have expected it to against Grambling.
Is the defensive line one of the better lines in the SEC? Maason Smith, coming back from knee surgery that kept him out of virtually all of last season, was suspended for the opener and was only slightly more noticeable against Grambling.
What about Harold Perkins? Did Kelly and coordinator Matt House over-think his role? Perkins was spectacular at times coming off the edge last season, but the Tigers have made him a middle linebacker who’s supposed to move around in order to create favorable match-ups from a variety of positions. So far he hasn’t been as dynamic as he was last season.
And we don’t know if concerns about the rebuilt secondary and the kicking game are overblown or spot on.
The secondary was overmatched against Florida State and didn’t do any better on Grambling’s first 3 possessions, though it performed better as the game wore on.
The special teams haven’t had major breakdowns like they did with disturbing regularity last season, so maybe improvement is in the offing there. Maybe.
The start of a football season is supposed to reveal how a team’s reality is or isn’t going to match with preseason expectations.
Football teams often make their greatest improvement from Week 1 to Week 2 as the familiarity within new position groups grows and coaches are able to pinpoint shortcomings to focus on and strengths to build around.
It’s difficult to tell just how much improvement the Tigers made from Week 1 to Week 2. The gap between a 21-point loss and 62-point victory is misleading because of the cavernous gap in the quality of the 2 opponents.
LSU certainly didn’t look like a team worthy of its preseason ranking in the opener.
Last week it did what it should have done against an FCS opponent – nothing more and nothing less.
Now it has its first opportunity to show whether it’s capable of repeating as SEC West champion.
So far we have very few clues.
Les East is a New Orleans-based football writer who covers LSU for SaturdayDownSouth.com. Follow him on Twitter @Les_East.
