DiderotsGhost
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Earlier this week, I had a dream about Hendon Hooker throwing a deep TD pass to Cedric Tillman against LSU. Tillman didn't get to suit up, but the exact play in my dream happened in the game; except it was Jalin Hyatt instead of Tillman. And it was the opposite side of the field, but whatever ... my dream was close enough! This was a fun game and it was nice winning one big for a change. No stress. All fun!
Quick thoughts this week:
The defense showed up. Best performance by the defense all season. To be sure, LSU's offense is no world-beater, but neither was Florida's before they played us. Our secondary has been awful for much of the season and they looked so much better yesterday. Still far from perfect, but they did not give up nearly as many big plays this week and forced Jayden Daniel to make more 'perfect passes' to move the ball. While we put up 40 points this week, I felt like the offense caught a lot of breaks, and this win was the first one where you could say the D played a bigger role than the offense. And we finally got a lot of critical 3rd down stops; something we failed to do much against Florida.
Sacks and TFLs. Byron Young had 2.5 sacks. We had 5 sacks total. Roman Harrison 1.5 TFLs. That defensive front is looking great!
Special Teams! We've also had some Special Teams miscues this season, but not yesterday. Special teams played great. Other than a very slight miss on a 50-yard FG by Chase McGrath, special teams had a great day.
Bru McCoy and Jabari Small. Bru McCoy also showed up big time. McCoy had a career day and bullied LSU defenders around with 7 receptions for 140 yards. Jabari Small had one of his best showings ever with 22 carries for 127 yards.
Hendon Hooker had a "B" game. Hooker played well, and came through when it mattered as always, but did struggle mightily in that 2nd Quarter after getting clobbered by an LSU defender. Felt like he was off after that and started making a lot of mistakes, but got it back together in the 2nd Half. Not complaining, Hooker played a good game, and it's actually encouraging that he didn't have to be Superman this week for us to win big.
Penalties cleaned up. Think we had a false start early in the 2nd half, but I can't remember any others; we shot ourselves in the foot too many times early in the season, but we're getting better.
Heupel outcoached Brian Kelly. And it wasn't even close. Heupel coached an "A" game and stayed one step ahead of LSU's defense throughout the game. If we didn't have quite a few execution failures in the 2nd Quarter, this would've been an even bigger blowout; could've easily been a 54-13 game. Brian Kelly was bad. That 4th and 10 call was one of the worst I've seen. What did they have to gain from that? Even if they convert, they still might be outside of FG range. A completely dangerous decision that served no real function. Just punt it and try to make Tennessee drive 90 yards with 0 timeouts in 30 seconds. Even with our O, we're probably just taking a knee and going to halftime. Instead he gave us 3 points and he's lucky we didn't get 7 there.
We caught all the breaks. This was an impressive win, but let's not get carried away. Unlike the Pitt and Florida games where the luck went against us, we caught all the breaks in this one. LSU fumbles the opening kickoff, which lets us jump up 7-0. Then we have two very bad fumbles, but recover both of them. Both of those fumbles could have been disastrous.
Game was closer than score indicated, but we were better team. Take away LSU's blunders and our good fortune (recovering some bad fumbles) and this is a much closer game, but I still think we were the better team. We controlled the line of scrimmage, took advantage of their defensive weaknesses, put the kibosh on their offense. While we caught some breaks, we also played far from a perfect game and the score could've been even more lopsided.
We did it all without our #1 Receiver. Every team has injuries, but losing your #1 WR is pretty big for most teams. We've managed to pull off 2 big wins in spite of it.
Where should we be ranked? I know some people on here want us higher. I'd probably put us at #7. The LSU win was impressive, but everyone above us currently, with the exception of USC, has just as impressive wins on their resume. And USC's schedule is paper-soft this year; out of the top 10 teams, they feel like the least proven.
We have a shot. This is the best I've felt about our odds against Bama in 15 years. This will be our toughest game this season, especially if Bryce Young is back. I am, by no means, predicting a win. But for the first time in forever, it feels like we have a chance. If we clean up our mistakes and play like we did yesterday, we have a legit shot this year.
5-0! Win or lose next week, I'm enjoying a 5-0 start and a blowout win over LSU!
GBO!
Quick thoughts this week:
The defense showed up. Best performance by the defense all season. To be sure, LSU's offense is no world-beater, but neither was Florida's before they played us. Our secondary has been awful for much of the season and they looked so much better yesterday. Still far from perfect, but they did not give up nearly as many big plays this week and forced Jayden Daniel to make more 'perfect passes' to move the ball. While we put up 40 points this week, I felt like the offense caught a lot of breaks, and this win was the first one where you could say the D played a bigger role than the offense. And we finally got a lot of critical 3rd down stops; something we failed to do much against Florida.
Sacks and TFLs. Byron Young had 2.5 sacks. We had 5 sacks total. Roman Harrison 1.5 TFLs. That defensive front is looking great!
Special Teams! We've also had some Special Teams miscues this season, but not yesterday. Special teams played great. Other than a very slight miss on a 50-yard FG by Chase McGrath, special teams had a great day.
Bru McCoy and Jabari Small. Bru McCoy also showed up big time. McCoy had a career day and bullied LSU defenders around with 7 receptions for 140 yards. Jabari Small had one of his best showings ever with 22 carries for 127 yards.
Hendon Hooker had a "B" game. Hooker played well, and came through when it mattered as always, but did struggle mightily in that 2nd Quarter after getting clobbered by an LSU defender. Felt like he was off after that and started making a lot of mistakes, but got it back together in the 2nd Half. Not complaining, Hooker played a good game, and it's actually encouraging that he didn't have to be Superman this week for us to win big.
Penalties cleaned up. Think we had a false start early in the 2nd half, but I can't remember any others; we shot ourselves in the foot too many times early in the season, but we're getting better.
Heupel outcoached Brian Kelly. And it wasn't even close. Heupel coached an "A" game and stayed one step ahead of LSU's defense throughout the game. If we didn't have quite a few execution failures in the 2nd Quarter, this would've been an even bigger blowout; could've easily been a 54-13 game. Brian Kelly was bad. That 4th and 10 call was one of the worst I've seen. What did they have to gain from that? Even if they convert, they still might be outside of FG range. A completely dangerous decision that served no real function. Just punt it and try to make Tennessee drive 90 yards with 0 timeouts in 30 seconds. Even with our O, we're probably just taking a knee and going to halftime. Instead he gave us 3 points and he's lucky we didn't get 7 there.
We caught all the breaks. This was an impressive win, but let's not get carried away. Unlike the Pitt and Florida games where the luck went against us, we caught all the breaks in this one. LSU fumbles the opening kickoff, which lets us jump up 7-0. Then we have two very bad fumbles, but recover both of them. Both of those fumbles could have been disastrous.
Game was closer than score indicated, but we were better team. Take away LSU's blunders and our good fortune (recovering some bad fumbles) and this is a much closer game, but I still think we were the better team. We controlled the line of scrimmage, took advantage of their defensive weaknesses, put the kibosh on their offense. While we caught some breaks, we also played far from a perfect game and the score could've been even more lopsided.
We did it all without our #1 Receiver. Every team has injuries, but losing your #1 WR is pretty big for most teams. We've managed to pull off 2 big wins in spite of it.
Where should we be ranked? I know some people on here want us higher. I'd probably put us at #7. The LSU win was impressive, but everyone above us currently, with the exception of USC, has just as impressive wins on their resume. And USC's schedule is paper-soft this year; out of the top 10 teams, they feel like the least proven.
We have a shot. This is the best I've felt about our odds against Bama in 15 years. This will be our toughest game this season, especially if Bryce Young is back. I am, by no means, predicting a win. But for the first time in forever, it feels like we have a chance. If we clean up our mistakes and play like we did yesterday, we have a legit shot this year.
5-0! Win or lose next week, I'm enjoying a 5-0 start and a blowout win over LSU!
GBO!
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