Initial Impressions: LSU 7, Texas A&M 20

Of all the football games that have been played that was certainly...one of them.

The LSU football team (3-4) laid an egg in College Station Saturday getting bullied by the Texas A&M Aggies (6-1) in a rainy, miserable night where the offense was well...offensive.

The LSU offense had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad first half. The Tigers could only muster 135 yards of offense, 28 on the ground. Those 28 yards came on 14 carries and those numbers are actually inflated by TJ Finley and Max Johnson. Ty Davis-Price and John Emery combined 16 yards on nine carries in the first half.

But it wasn’t limited to the first half, no sir. No the offense continued to flounder into the second half. The offense had 17 drives: 11 ended in punts, two ended in interceptions, one in a missed field goal, and the other, the first drive, ended on a failed fourth down attempt.

The frustrating thing about LSU’s showing was the Tigers had their chances to steal this game from A&M, but got nothing but bad breaks. In the second quarter, on their own 15 TJ Finley hit Terrace Marshall for a 54-yard completion. On the ensuing snap it appeared LSU would get on the board with a 31-yard touchdown pass to Kayshon Boutte but that was overruled.

I mean...okay. Bad call goes against LSU, whatever. These things happen. But the very next snap Finley was intercepted. The LSU defense, to their credit, forced a three and out, and on LSU’s ensuing possession, Cade York yanked a 34-yard field goal, his first miss inside of 40 yards in his LSU career. It was just that kind of night.

The LSU offense was horrendous Saturday in College Station. Finley was 9-25 with two interceptions before getting yanked after throwing a pick-six in the third quarter. TDP averaged one (1) yard per carry, while John Emery led the Tigers with 13 yards. The offensive line certainly has to shoulder plenty of blame, the unit allowed free rusher after free rusher to get after Finley and Max Johnson.

In a cruel twist, the LSU defense played its best game of the season by far. The defense held Mond to under 200 yards passing and at one point Mond was completing around a third of his passes. The unit busted one time, a 52-yard touchdown run by Isaiah Spiller, but the unit played well enough to win the game and the offense failed them. The defense sacked Mond one time, grabbed seven tackles for loss, held Texas A&M to 2-16 on third downs and forced 12 punts.

Everything about this game was ugly. The most offensive thing is A&M didn’t play well offensively either. There were nearly as many punts, 23, as points. I’m not sure how to track this, but I feel like Texas A&M is the worst No. 5 team in college football history.

The suffering is far from over. A long month of December is staring LSU in the face. Next Saturday the Tigers will host Alabama; the week after that they’ll travel to The Swamp. The worst is yet to come.

At least they weren’t shutout.