Monday Down South: LSU goes down hard vs. surging Noles, but not out
Weekly takeaways, trends, and technicalities from opening weekend’s SEC action.
In this week’s tone-setting edition of Monday Down South…
- Bama’s QB carousel ends where it began
- Florida’s all-too-familiar funk
- Superlatives and Power Rankings
… and more! But first:
Noles rolled, Tigers fold
It’s peak overreaction season, and anyone who’s ever been in the business of firing off college football takes on deadline has let a couple rip this time of year they’d probably like to have back. (Ahem.) Overshooting the mark in a fit of opening-day exuberance is a time-honored occupational hazard. But we do what we have to do, and in that spirit here’s one hot off the skillet that might actually have a chance to hold up: Florida State is back.
Like, all the way back. Not in the speculative, “team on the rise” way that gins up idle preseason buzz. We already knew FSU was a preseason darling after finishing last year on an emphatic 6-game winning streak. But a darling is not the same thing as a full-fledged contender, and based on Sunday night’s 45-24 ambush of LSU, the Seminoles are very much the latter. ACC frontrunners, CFP players, the whole shebang. It took the better part of a decade in the wilderness, but this bunch has the juice.
Now, to go there based largely on one game, one has to make the case that the team they just beat has at least a little juice of its own. In fact, part of what made FSU’s performance so compelling was the ease with which they wrested control from LSU, which seemed to have it for much of the first half. Midway through the 2nd quarter, Florida State trailed, 14-7, its previous 3 offensive possessions having yielded two 3-and-outs and a brutal interception. Only a couple of clutch red-zone stops by the defense after giving up big plays prevented the margin from being worse.
From the moment LSU scored its 2nd touchdown to pull ahead, though, the Noles flipped the script, thoroughly dominating on both sides of the ball. They responded by outscoring the Tigers 38-3 before LSU finally found the end zone again on a late, futile touchdown with a little over a minute to play. In between, the Seminoles scored on 6 consecutive possessions, including touchdown drives that covered 75, 87, 57, 57 and 54 yards, respectively, on a grand total of 34 plays. Quarterback Jordan Travis on those possessions: 14-of-16 passing for 232 yards and 3 TDs, plus a 4th TD rushing.
HAVE A DAY KEON COLEMAN?
— PFF College (@PFF_College) September 4, 2023
It’s early, sure. But in the context of last year’s surge and the subsequent hype, it’s hard to interpret that kind of performance against a top-5 opponent as anything but an arrival. It was also a vindication, on two fronts: For coach Mike Norvell, who took over a listless program in the midst of a pandemic, endured 2 losing seasons, and turned it around just as the walls were beginning to close in; and also, on a wider scale, for the premise of building a quality roster via the transfer portal.
On the same weekend that Deion Sanders’ portal-driven rebuild at Colorado achieved liftoff, Florida State’s statement win was a convincing advertisement for the portal in its own right. Nine of FSU’s 11 offensive starters on Sunday arrived as transfers, including Travis (Louisville); starting RB Trey Benson (Oregon); towering wideouts Johnny Wilson (Arizona State) and Keon Coleman (Michigan State); all-purpose tight end Jaheim Bell (South Carolina); and 3/5ths of the starting o-line. (Only 1 player who touched the ball for the Noles, senior RB Lawrance Toafili, got there the old-fashioned way, directly out of high school.) On defense, transfers accounted for the Noles’ best pass rusher (Jared Verse, Albany); best interior run stuffer (Braden Fiske, Western Michigan); best cover corner (Fentrell Cypress II, Virginia); and leading tackler (Tatum Bethune, UCF), among others. Norvell has yet to sign a top-15 recruiting class, per 247Sports, and yet has clearly succeeded in assembling one of the nation’s most talented lineups from scratch.
Whether it’s possible to sustain that model after current core of portal success stories has moved on is a question for another season. (Spoiler: Probably not.) With this team’s win-now potential, FSU is not thinking any further ahead than December. There’s one more big test between now and then, at Clemson on Sept. 23, which looms as another potential make-or-break game for both teams’ seasons. Beyond that, it’s strictly tending to business through November dates with Miami and Florida and the ACC Championship Game — which, given the elimination of the Atlantic/Coastal divisional format, sets up as a likely rematch with Clemson with potentially very high stakes.
That in itself is a breakthrough. Before Sunday night, when was the last time you remember watching Florida State in a game that felt like it mattered? Against Alabama in 2017? Longer? If we’re talking postseason, we’ve got to go all the way back to 2014, to the Rose Bowl vs. Oregon, in the inaugural Playoff. It’s been awhile. Just by putting Florida State in the same sentence with that kind of stage again, the ’23 Noles are already on their way to a special year.
• • •
Hang on, this is an SEC column, isn’t it? Maybe it should mention the actual SEC team on the field on Sunday night, as opposed to the aspiring one. If you’re inclined to respect LSU’s lofty ranking coming into the game, which I am, the main thrust was more about Florida State’s ascent than anything wrong with the Tigers that a couple solid wins to open conference play can’t fix. It’s a long season. All of their big goals are still intact, including the SEC West crown and, theoretically, a shot at the CFP (albeit with a nonexistent margin for error). LSU rebounded from an opening-night loss to win the West last year, and remained in the Playoff mix well into November even after suffering a second loss against Tennessee.
Then again, if you were all-in on the Tigers as heavyweights, watching them unravel in the second half of their first big measuring-stick game — a game they were narrowly favored to win — hardly inspired confidence. Brian Kelly was certainly not sanguine in defeat, describing his team’s effort as “a total failure from a coaching standpoint and a player standpoint.” It’s the kind of loss that, if they let it, threatens to derail the season. (It’s not for nothing that the next game is against Grambling.)
Some of LSU’s problems in Orlando, such as “how do we cover two 6-6 wideouts at the same time?,” are specific to playing Florida State. One important variable the Tigers do need to resolve ASAP is the role of freakazoid linebacker Harold Perkins Jr. Although he lined up all over the field last year, Perkins was an immediate hit as a freshman due mainly to his ability to harass opposing QBs as an edge rusher. Against FSU, though, he rarely lined up on the edge, spending most of his time instead as an off-ball linebacker assigned to spying Travis if he attempted to scramble out of the pocket — a move that sacrificed the Tigers’ best pass rusher for a frequently passive containment role. The result: Perkins didn’t record a tackle on FSU’s side of the line of scrimmage, Travis wasn’t sacked, and LSU’s new corners were hung out to dry opposite Keon Coleman (9 catches, 122 yards, 3 TDs) and Johnny Wilson (7 catches, 104 yards).
Obviously, LSU does not play against Jordan Travis every week, and won’t face another QB who approximates Travis’ mobility until a Nov. 4 date with Alabama’s Jalen Milroe. No matter who is behind center, getting Perkins his fair share of the pass-rushing snaps should be a fixture of every game plan for as long as he’s on campus.
Alabama: Milroe makes his move
It took an entire offseason’s worth of speculation and suspense to turn Alabama’s quarterback situation into a cliffhanger, and about an hour-and-a-half to put it to bed in the most predictable fashion possible.
Throwin' Darts! ?@JalenMilroe ▶️ Jermaine Burton
?: https://t.co/tFsrUF88Y7 pic.twitter.com/s9gAVcfc2P
— Alabama Football (@AlabamaFTBL) September 3, 2023
After all that, Milroe is the guy. We can’t say he was always the guy, given that Bama went out of its way to gin up more competition at every step of the process, but if any of the other candidates ever had a real shot of nudging him off the QB1 line it’s probably safe to say after Saturday night’s hyper-efficient, 5-touchdown performance against Middle Tennessee State that their window has closed. Milroe spent the past 2 years as Bryce Young’s understudy, started in his place last year in the only game Young missed, and now officially assumes the title of Young’s successor.
Now comes the easy part: Living up to the hype. Right? Milroe made it look easy, anyway, finishing 13-for-18 passing against the Blue Raiders with TD strikes covering 47, 48, and 29 yards on 3 consecutive possessions to end the first half and open the second, easing doubts about his capacity to throw accurately downfield. Earlier in the first half, he also flashed his elite mobility on scoring runs of 21 and 13 yards. (Not that anyone needed to be convinced of that.) His passer rating and Total QBR score both ranked in the top 10 nationally among Week 1 starters.
Yeah, Conference USA opponent, Texas on deck, etc. Duly acknowledged. As always, though, torching lightweight competition is a much better sign than not torching lightweight competition, and the fact that Milroe did it while checking the two boxes that have generated the most doubt about his game — multiple deep shots, zero turnovers — made it as encouraging a debut as Bama could have asked for. Much bigger stages await, beginning this Saturday against the Longhorns; if all Milroe accomplished his first time out was reassuring himself and the rest of the locker room that he’s good enough to own it, that’s all he really needed to do.
Florida: McElwain Vibes
If you didn’t actually watch Florida’s 24-11 loss at Utah, the box score tells a very different story than the grim post-game vibes. In fact, if you were really determined to, you could almost convince yourself the Gators were the better team, betrayed by just a couple big swing plays. On paper, they outgained Utah overall (346 yards to 270) and on a per-play basis (5.3 to 5.1). They gained more first downs (17 to 14), and had 5 trips in the red zone to Utah’s 1. The defense consistently got the Utes off the field on 3rd down, and held them to their lowest rushing total (105 yards) since 2018. Even the evening’s most obvious goat, transfer QB Graham Mertz, completed 70.5% of his passes for a career-high 333 yards in his first outing as a Gator.
If you did watch, the silver-lining version reads like a lame joke. In real time, Florida was outclassed from the jump. Compared to the Utes — playing without their face-of-the-program quarterback, Cam Rising — the Gators looked sluggish, unprepared and disorganized, and never within the margin for error.
The first of the big “swing plays,” a 70-yard bomb on Utah’s first snap, caught Florida on its heels and set the tone for the rest of the game. The second was a purely self-inflicted gaffe early in the 2nd quarter, when the Gators gifted Utah a fresh set of downs via penalty for having 2 players wearing the same jersey number on the field at the same time on a punt return; the Utes promptly capitalized with a touchdown to go up 14-3. The third, a tip-drill interception in the 3rd quarter that set up Utah’s offense at the UF 11-yard line, was effectively a knockout blow; the Utes punched in a quick touchdown to extend the lead to 24-3, after which Florida spent the rest of the game racking up empty-calorie stats in comeback mode. The Gators didn’t touch the ball on offense with the deficit within single digits after the midway point of the 2nd quarter.
The offense, especially, set off alarm sirens that only grew louder as the night wore on. The running backs, ostensibly the strength of the team, were a nonfactor; Montrell Johnson Jr. and Trevor Etienne combined for 31 yards with a long gain of 8. Mertz, who arrived from Wisconsin with a reputation as a check-down machine, largely lived up to that — and largely out of necessity, as he faced blitzes on roughly half of his 51 dropbacks, per PFF, and was sacked 5 times. (Mertz’s Total QBR rating of 30.4 was the worst of the weekend among SEC starters, albeit in the most difficult circumstances, by far.)
Those 5 red-zone trips referenced a couple grafs back yielded just 1 touchdown, the result of a 13-play, 98-yard march in the 4th quarter that drained nearly 7 minutes off the clock; the other 4 ended in a field goal, a missed field goal and 2 turnovers on downs. The offense as a whole was 1-for-13 on 3rd down, the lone conversion coming via penalty.
On its own, a tough road loss against a top-20 opponent on a weekend when most of the rest of the conference is in cupcake mode does not qualify as an emergency. There’s a whole season to go. The nagging issue for Florida is, well, there’s a whole season to go, and even before the opener there was little reason on the heels of last year’s 6-7 finish to expect this one to turn out any better. It’s early still in Billy Napier’s tenure, as we’re reminded often, but the slow-motion rebuilding narrative is a hard sell at a program less than 3 years removed from a division title and its 3rd consecutive trip to a New Year’s 6 bowl. Ideally, the 2nd year of a new coaching administration should be the one when the long-term vision is beginning to come into view. Fourteen games in, what have Billy Napier’s Gators given their notoriously impatient fan base to look forward to?
The one thing the ’22 team had going for it in the optimism department was Anthony Richardson’s potential to grow from a tantalizingly gifted basket case in his first season as a starter into a full-blown star in Year 2. Instead, with his early departure for the NFL, there is no payoff in sight. Mertz — pretty much Richardson’s exact opposite on all counts — is in no danger of breaking out in his 5th year on campus, has no proven weapons at his disposal outside of the good-not-great Ricky Pearsall, and can’t trust a rebuilt offensive line. (Not yet, anyway.) If the Gators can’t run the ball, either, the debacle in Salt Lake wasn’t just a slow start: It was a very depressing glimpse at the status quo.
Superlatives
The week’s best individual performances.
1. Alabama QB Jalen Milroe. Nobody’s anointing Milroe as anything other than the Tide’s presumptive starter until further notice, but he aced his first test. Next one counts for significantly more on the grading curve.
2. Texas A&M QB Conner Weigman and WR Evan Stewart. The Aggies got exactly what they wanted to see from a couple of 5-star sophomores in a 52-10 pasting of New Mexico. Nearly half of Weigman’s 236 passing yards and 2 of his 5 touchdown passes went to Stewart, who had 8 catches on 11 targets. The other 3 TDs also went to an emerging wideout from the massively hyped class of 2022,Noah Thomas.
3. Texas A&M DB Josh DeBerry. DeBerry, transfer from Boston College, shone in his A&M debut, finishing with a team-high 10 tackles, 2 TFLs, and an interception that essentially iced the game in the 2nd quarter.
4. Tennessee EDs Tyler Baron and James Pearce Jr. Baron had high expectations for his senior campaign after playing a rotational role the past 3 years, and got off to fine start Saturday with 2 sacks in a 49-13 win over Virginia. Pearce, on the other hand, was a revelation: A true sophomore who was limited to garbage time in 2022, he took full advantage of his promotion to the regular rotation, abusing the Cavaliers’ overmatched right tackle for 2 splash sacks in the 1st quarter.
Sophomore Tennessee Edge defender
James Pearce Jr looks the part. pic.twitter.com/7e4qw5lx2y— Coach Schepps (@CoachSchepps) September 2, 2023
Both of Pearce’s sacks came on 3rd-and-long, which was not a coincidence: 17 of his 24 defensive snaps were pass-rushing snaps, per PFF, delineating his role as the resident pass-rushing specialist at the “LEO” position. Opposing offenses in obvious passing situations can expect to be dealing with him all year long.
5. Kentucky WRs Dane Key and WR Barion Brown. Kentucky’s offense as a whole underwhelmed against Ball State, but its sophomore wideouts were on point. Key finished with 5 catches for a career-high 96 yards and a touchdown, while Brown hit paydirt on a 99-yard kickoff return that effectively put the game on ice in the second half.
?️? @BarionBrown to the ?
? – @SECNetwork: https://t.co/3aG0GGb6M5 pic.twitter.com/QryBUP1RiL
— Kentucky Football (@UKFootball) September 2, 2023
Although the Wildcats scored 44 points, take that number with a grain of salt: Besides the standard caveats that apply to MAC opponent, 3 of their 5 touchdowns came courtesy of Brown’s kickoff return, a scoop-and-score fumble return by the defense, and a garbage-time TD with seconds to play that served no other purpose except to cover the spread.
Honorable Mention: Ole Miss QB Jaxson Dart and top receiver, Tre Harris, who connected 6 times for 113 yards and 4 TDs against Mercer, 3 of them coming in the game’s 1st quarter … South Carolina WR Xavier Legette, who set career highs for receptions (9) for and yards (178) vs. North Carolina. … Mississippi State RB Jo’Quavious Marks, who accounted for 186 scrimmage yards and 2 rushing TDs on 8.1 per touch against Southeastern Louisiana. … Mississippi State LBs Nathaniel Watson and Jett Johnson, who combined for 14 tackles, 3 TFLs and 3 forced fumbles on a dominant afternoon for the Bulldogs’ defense. … Auburn DB Donovan Kaufman, 2 TFLs and a forced fumble vs. UMass. … Kentucky RB Ray Davis, who racked up 112 yards and 2 TDs on 8.0 per carry in his first game as a Wildcat. … Georgia TE Brock Bowers, who had 5 receptions on 5 targets for 77 yards and a rushing touchdown in a 48-7 win over UT-Martin. … And LSU QB Jayden Daniels, whose 411-yard performance against Florida State was the closest thing to a silver lining in a losing effort.
SEC Power Rankings
Updating the food chain.
1. Georgia (1-0). Routine burial of UT-Martin is in the books. I’ll probably say some version of this every week, because it’s true: If the Dawgs find themselves in a 4-quarter game before mid-November, then something has gone very wrong.
2. Alabama (1-0). Jalen Milroe’s performance against Middle Tennessee State put minds at ease, but the defense did, too: Only 1 of MTSU’s first 9 possessions ended in Crimson Tide territory, resulting in a missed field goal. Most of the Blue Raiders’ 133 total yards came on a 68-yard, garbage-time TD drive with Bama leading 42-0.
3. Tennessee (1-0). Jury’s still out on the Vols for a few more weeks, at least, but all lights are green after one of the weekend’s best outings against a (more or less) real team.
4. Ole Miss (1-0). How many different ways are there to write “dominated an inferior opponent”? Let’s find out together.
5. Texas A&M (1-0). High marks across the board for Bobby Petrino’s debut as offensive coordinator. Degree of difficulty ramps up significantly this weekend at Miami.
6. LSU (0-1). If we’re setting No. 6 as the over/under for where the Tigers will finish the season, I’ll still take the over.
7. Kentucky (1-0). The starters played all 60 minutes against Ball State, including a final offensive possession in which the Wildcats attempted 4 passes and scored on a 30-yard touchdown run that covered the spread with 6 seconds left in the game. (Takes courage to bet on college football.)
8. Arkansas (1-0). You’re Western Carolina linebacker Va Lealaimatafao. You’re 6-1, 235 pounds, you’re an entrenched starter, and you’ve spent all offseason lifting, studying, and psyching yourself up for your team’s season opener at Arkansas. Midway through the first quarter, Razorbacks quarterback KJ Jefferson drops back to pass, and everything aligns perfectly: You read the protection, wait for an opening, and find yourself with a free run at the QB in front of SEC Network cameras and pro scouts alike. You seize the moment, close in for the kill, deliver one of the cleanest, hardest hits of your life, and …
https://t.co/mS93hTIxrP pic.twitter.com/Mmkp2PjpEr
— WarMachine2013 (@WarMachine2013) September 2, 2023
Ah, well. Nevertheless. The Razorbacks went on to win 56-13.
9. Mississippi State (1-0). The Bulldogs promised more balance under new offensive coordinator Kevin Barbay and kept that promise against SE Louisiana, running for 298 yards vs. 227 passing — the first time Mississippi State’s output on the ground has exceeded its total through the air in any game since the 2019 Egg Bowl.
10. Auburn (1-0). The Tigers didn’t need RB Jarquez Hunter in a 59-14 rout over UMass, but after months of speculation over his status Hunter was conspicuous Saturday in his absence. Rumors abounded over the summer that he was one of multiple Auburn players facing a suspension from the university due to a leaked sex tape in which he allegedly appeared; in May, Auburn confirmed multiple suspensions for violations of athletic department policy without specifying who was suspended or why, and has remained cryptic on the subject. (Asked specifically about Hunter last week, Hugh Freeze deflected, telling reporters “I don’t discuss who’s playing and who’s not.”) Hunter missed the first 2 practices of preseason camp for unspecified reasons, but suited up thereafter and is apparently healthy. Eventually, you’d assume a giant question mark looming over the team’s best player would give way to some answers, but the season is in full swing and we’re still waiting.
11. Missouri (1-0). Encouraging start for WR Luther Burden III, who quenched the sophomore hype against South Dakota with a career-high 96 yards and 1 touchdown on 7 catches. More encouraging: He hauled in his only downfield target (for 30 yards) after finishing a dismal 1-for-17 on targets 20+ yards downfield in 2022.
12. South Carolina (0-1). Unusually in the age of the transfer portal, Carolina has 2 former blue-chip QB recruits playing prominent roles at other positions: 6th-year senior Dakereon Joyner, who accounted for 36 yards and a TD against North Carolina as the starting running back; and redshirt junior Luke Doty, who had 3 catches for 41 yards in his debut as a wide receiver. Neither is the star Carolina fans once hoped, but Shane Beamer managing to keep both of them in the fold as upperclassmen says something about something.
13. Florida (0-1). Fine, here’s one thing to look forward to: The Gators’ 2024 recruiting class currently has 2 commitments from 5-star prospects, per 247Sports, matching the number of 5-stars they’ve signed in the past 8 recruiting cycles combined. Assuming they actually get them in campus, they should start to see results on the field in 2, 3 years, tops.
14. Vanderbilt (2-0). The Dores handled their business against Hawai’i and Alabama A&M. Now, can they Take the Next Step? If they dare to dream of bowl eligibility, an upset this weekend at Wake Forest is mandatory.
Moment of Zen of the Week
Why bro got a feather on his helmet? pic.twitter.com/4Lu1WIaLNb
— CHRIS P BACON (@ChrisPBacon300) September 2, 2023
(Because he “loves nature.”)