In defense of a season-opening win
by uberschuck on Sep 7, 2009 1:24 AM CDT
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PrintI have a few points to make that may counter the depression that has engulfed the ATVS page since we beat Washington.
No, it wasn't pretty. This game may have been played in the Twilight Zone. We won by 8 despite the fact that UW outgained us 478-321 yards. They ran 83 plays to our 48. They held the ball almost 14 more minutes than we did. Our longest possession was 4:31. We only had two possessions longer than 3:30. Why? We had 5 drives go 3 & out. One of those was killed by a fumble, another was killed by a sack on a second &1 play. The scoring drives were short because of one long pass play in each to pick up most of the yards. In a feast-or-famine offense, we either scored quickly or gave the ball back quickly. UW, on the other hand, had three third down conversion of greater than 10 yards (plus another that led to a 4th & 1 that was converted). The bottom line is, an accumulation of small things led to UW running ridiculously more plays than we did.
I don't like the defensive strategy of playing so soft. I think that directly led to UW's knack for third down conversions. Also, the coaches stepped in it by calling timeouts on UW's last drive of the first half. OK, calling a time out after a short gain on first down is excusable, but we stopped the clock again before a 3rd &1 with 40 seconds remaining. That was dumb, and it cost us 3 points.
Jefferson was actually, awesome at QB. Nine yards per attempt, no turnovers, one sack, and 3 TDs. Toliver had a drop, and so did Dickson (maybe two?), otherwise Jefferson's numbers would have looked even better. A few of his incomplete passes were good decisions to throw the ball away. Mistakes by Jefferson: zero. Only once did he seem unable to get the play started in time (maybe that pace led to our time possession problem).
Peterson was beyond awesome.
Yeah, there are a lot of things that need improvement. We simply can't have our defense to go 80 plays, and we've got to sustain drives longer. But, really, stop your whining about how bad this game was.
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I agree with this whole heartedly. Honestly, I believe that the LSU that plays UGA in October will look almost nothing like this LSU. Miles is notoriously paranoid and secretive, and I think the coaches knew they could beat UW without showing any of their cards. They obviously were relying on the pure talent on the field, and the players seemed lethargic because they knew they weren’t playing the way they were capable of. And the plan worked. Good game experience, a respectable win on the road against a BCS opponent, and no secrets given away. I mean, Shep didn’t see the field. If that doesn’t tell you right there…
It's Because of Last Year
I don’t think any LSU fan would be panicking if the Tigers had gone 10-3 last year. But we saw some of the same problems (cough, the defense, cough) that led to 8-5 last season. It just leads to some worrisome thinking.
That’s illogical. If we had been 10-3 last year, then we could reasonably have higher expectations for this season, and the lack of a woodshed beat-down at Washington would be more surprising.
I think we can reasonably expect a better record and better team this year compared to last year, if only because of better QB play and and a better coordinated defense. But it’s not reasonable to expect national championship caliber from this team at this stage. Last season may have been unpleasant, but it was real, and the team we have now has more in common with last year’s team than it does with the champs of 2007, 2003, or the really awesome team of 2006.
Actually I can see the logic.
Had we been 10-3 last year then our trust in les/coaches/team would have been higher than what it is right now. Therefore had the first game not been a dominating one , it would have been written off as jitters and too much excitement over playing in the west coast, pac 10, new coaches, championship dreams etc…
Since it was not 10-3 and just 8-5 we have an irrational(because it is too small a set) fear that the team/coaches/school/food sucks instead of having an irrational exuberance :)
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