re: The other issue, "Prevent Defense"

Someone said it before, CBs playing WAY off of the line...letting the opposing offense/WRs nickel and dime them down the field

Most of them would have been put away with a first down or two. But at times you need your defense to make that critical stop. I agree with comment above, opposing coaches know what we are going to do defensively at the end of the game.

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We've had success, we've had failures. We've definitely won our share, though. That's what happens when you are in close games.

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True Dat!!!

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Making up a bunch of BS about how a corner blitz failed or how a QB picked the defense apart is just that: BS. If the coaching goes soft, the players go soft - they start playing not to lose instead of making plays to "WIN!"

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This isn't a unique problem to LSU. It's innate to the game of football. Assuming even talent, an offense that has a reasonably good passing game typically can march down the field on a defense when they play with a 2-minute-drill mindset. What you're seeing is playcalling optimized: no inefficient running plays, and passing plays called to be as high-% as possible because there's no margin for error. In most cases where a defense beats an evenly-matched offense, it's because the offense is calling plays inefficiently.

There's a pretty simple way to see how this is innate to the game. The fact that we even acknowledge "prevent defense" or "end of game drives" as unique entities separate from the rest of the game should say something about the phenomenon I'm talking about here. If end-of-game drives weren't any different from regular drives, why is it that we talk about them as being different? Why do several teams (LSU included) play great defense all game and then mysteriously collapse at the end?

Instead of reducing it to an arbitrary "clutch" factor that, evenly applied, doesn't make sense (why is a team not "clutch" for playing great defense for 58 minutes out of 60?), let's look at the underlying dynamic of end-of-game drives. EOG drives are optimized for gaining the largest amount of yards in the shortest amount of time, it's no surprise that a team should struggle with them the most.

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I did. Read your (own) notes. None of them say it was the final possession of the game. That's why I asked.

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You can't be fricking serious? The OP is about last drive defenses. Each note describes the last defensive drive of each game (except where noted). Even a passing knowledge of LSU over the last three years would identify all of those games as one possession victories. The fact that you couldn't put the context together, google all of them, google a representative game from the list, or extrapolate this information from the Auburn example is troubling. Just the same, I assure you they are all one possession games and describe the last defensive series except where noted.

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I don't think you know what a prevent defense is.

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he doesnt

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You guys can split hairs all you want over what you 'term' the defense. Bottom line is we've blow our share of games in the last drive.

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It's pretty baffling.