Behind the Box Score: Ole Miss Gets Run Over

It was a record breaking night in Oxford for LSU, in one of the more gradual skull draggings you will ever see. It was a blowout win, but a remarkably slow developing one. Ole Miss never really felt like that could come back in this game, but it was always close enough to be nervous. Then, suddenly, it was a three-touchdown game.

Of course, the big story is the running backs running wild and putting up literally historic numbers. Derrius Guice looked like himself for the first time all season, and Darrel Williams was a devastating second option. It was a simply relentless attack.

276. Derrius Guice became the first player in SEC history to have three 250-yard rushing games. You may have heard, there’s been some decent running backs in this conference over the years. Five times an LSU running back has cleared 250 yards rushing, and Derrius Guice is three of them. What makes this performance even more impressive is that its not really bolstered by a ton of outlier runs. It’s not like he went 3, 2, 4, 80. He was picking up 10 yards a clip all night, and his longest run was 59 yards.

208. Darrel Williams’ all-purpose yards. The 100/100 thing is more of a statistical quirk, but it is still pretty cool. It’s hard to believe he’s the first LSU player to ever rush and receive for 100 yards in the same game. But it does make sense it happened in a Matt Canada offense. There are plenty of contenders for it to happen again.

3. Ole Miss interceptions thrown. Shea Patterson showed us his bad side without any of the accompanying yardage to go with it. Throwing against DBU is always dangerous, but I’ll be honest, I thought he’d throw for a lot of yards and a lot of picks. Well, we got just one part of that equation. He threw the three picks, but only 116 yards to go with it. Jordan Ta’amu was more effective in relief, but they combined for 194 yards on 17 of 34 passing.

7. Combined field goals made. The thing which kept this game close was that early on, neither team could find the end zone, settling for field goals all night. Actually, there was some bizarre symmetry with the two kickers, as Connor Culp hit one field goal every quarter. Gary Wunderlich kept the same pace, but failed to make an attempt in the fourth. So close. More alarming for the two offenses is that only one of the field goals was from beyond 40 yards, a 47-yarder by Culp in the fourth. These were field goals of an offense that should have scored a touchdown.

L16. LSU’s average starting field position in the first half. LSU’s offense spent nearly the entire first half needing to drive the whole field to get points, a big part of why LSU only had 13 points at the half. LSU had five first half drives, only one starting outside their own 20 (it was L25). LSU went three-and-out just once, and their final two drives each went for over 10 plays and nearly 100 yards combined, but resulted in just three points. Field position matters. As LSU enjoyed slightly better field position, it scored more points. Honestly, so did Ole Miss, as they had outstanding field position for nearly all of the second half. It’s still LSU’s biggest issue.

9. Grant Delpit’s tackles, 8 of them solo. Usually, it’s a bad sign when a defensive back has this many tackles, but Delpit was everywhere on Saturday, making huge play after huge play. A good thing, too, as Devin White had an uncharacteristically quiet game. It was good to see someone else pick up the slack.

0. Receptions by an LSU wide receiver. Danny Etling was an efficient 9 of 13 and the running backs went wild, so it is hard to complain about this, but come on. Sullivan and Gage both dropped balls, so it’s not entirely on Etling, but Captain Checkdown essentially abandoned going downfield. That won’t work against our next opponent. Who is that, anyway?