When the first College Football Playoff poll came out two Tuesdays ago, LSU landed safely at No. 2 and most everyone didn’t bat an eye. They were, after all, the best team in the best conference at the time.

Emphasis on at the time.

The first poll, as we all know, doesn’t mean a thing. Neither does the second or the third. It’s only the last one that matters, because that one fills the postseason field of four.

LSU was there because it had started 7-0 and running back Leonard Fournette looked like he was going to rush for about 2,500 yards and be the first-ever unanimous Heisman Trophy winner. A few hours after the poll came out, the talk over an adult beverage at the bar swung to which of the first four teams – Clemson, LSU, Ohio State and Alabama – wouldn’t be in the final poll.

What I said shocked my friends. Not the first part, but the second part.

“That’s easy. LSU,” I said to my friends. “I don’t think they’re even going to win another game.”

It was a bold comment, to be sure, but that’s the way I felt. LSU’s back-loaded schedule of Alabama, Arkansas, Ole Miss and Texas A&M was going to be rough. It also set them up for a huge fall.

First off, I figured LSU would try – and fail – to play smash-mouth football with Alabama. That’s exactly what happened. LSU stubbornly tried to run Fournette right at them and all he gained was 31 yards on 19 carries. Take out his one 18-yard run and he averaged 26 inches on his other 18 carries. Alabama won convincingly 30-16, and it really wasn’t that close.

That was the second-worst rushing game of Fournette’s career. Second-worst? Yep, last year he gained only 9 yards on five carries in an ugly 17-0 loss to Arkansas following the Tigers’ 2014 loss to Alabama. I liked Arkansas this year too, putting LSU on upset alert, because I thought the Hogs had enough confidence to keep Fournette under control and expose the LSU defense with their red-hot offense led by Brandon Allen and Alex Collins.

That’s exactly what happened in a 31-14 Arkansas beatdown. At Death Valley. At night. On national television.

Part of my thinking Saturday night was that the Razorbacks were really playing well. They’ve hit their groove with Brandon Allen playing the best quarterback of his career and the running game doing its thing. Plus, I like Bret Bielema and always have, now at Arkansas and through his seven years at Wisconsin when he went 68-24. He knows how to game-plan, and he struck LSU where it hurt. He watched enough LSU-Bama tape to know they could run on the Tigers, and that’s exactly what they did, rolling up 299 yards on the ground. Collins had 141 yards on just 16 carries and Allen, who had thrown for 442 yards and six touchdowns the previous week at Ole Miss, had the same exact numbers, throwing for 141 yards on just 16 throws.

He didn’t need to throw. The Razorbacks knew they could run it on LSU and after they were up 21-0 late in the second quarter, you knew they were going to keep on running it. Bielema knew LSU was vulnerable.

And now we all know it too.

What we’ve learned in these two weeks is that you can push LSU around, on both sides of the ball. They have given up 549 yards of rushing in the past eight days. That’s bad, but what’s worse is that the Tigers – a team that cuts its teeth on being a power running program – has gained just 113 yards on 56 rushes, a whisker over just 2 yards per carry.

This isn’t meant to be an indictment of LSU coach Les Miles or his staff. It’s the SEC West and everybody’s good. LSU’s fan base – probably the most tender and most sensitive in the SEC, and that’s saying something – immediately goes to the “Fire Les” card when things go bad, but that’s silly. He’s still one of the best coaches in America, and LSU is lucky to have him.

It’s just that right now the Tigers have some flaws, and it took a while for them to get exposed. No one could do it in those first seven games, but let’s be honest, that wasn’t exactly a murderer’s row of opponents. The nonconference foes scared no one and the Tigers caught Auburn when they were down. Mississippi State should have beaten LSU in mid-September, missing on a tying 2-point conversion and then taking a silly penalty before missing a 52-yard field goal at the buzzer. From 47, maybe it goes in.

The Tigers’ only impressive win was Florida, which they won 35-28. But there was a huge warning sign there too, and it’s blatantly obvious now. Florida’s offense with Treon Harris at QB isn’t very good – it has proven that in the past few weeks –  but the Gators still hung 28 on the Tigers in a 35-28 loss.

What’s left for LSU is Ole Miss in Oxford this Saturday and Texas A&M at home on Nov. 28. I’m sticking with my original thought, that the Tigers don’t win another game.

I’m still firmly convinced that Chad Kelly – my favorite pleasant surprise of the SEC season – will pick apart the LSU defense. And I’m all the more convinced that the Tigers “fans” will have completely turned on them by Nov. 28, and that vaunted home-field advantage will disappear into the night or, more likely, the noon-time air since that’s certainly not a prime-time matchup anymore. The Baton Rouge boo-birds will be in full throat by then.

LSU isn’t far off, but they just don’t have a Plan B right now. When Fournette gets bottled up, Brandon Harris just isn’t ready to do enough to beat you through the air. And the defense? Well, they’ve been thoroughly disappointing these last two weeks. There’s more talent there than they’ve shown.

Or is there?

It’s up to them to prove it. They’ve got two more tries to do so.