The "we were this many points away" illusion

Almost every time things about LSU don't go in our favor, we as fans chime in and talk about how close we are to being right there. I'm not going to get into, "well we were this close to being 7-5, 6-6 etc" but the fact is we really weren't that close. Yes, LSU plays alabama well every year and every year we are close to beating them, if we don't just beat them straight up. All in all though when you take into account the whole body of work of a season, we are not that close. I'm not going to make this an alabama thing, but the fact is more teams(particularly them) are dominant throughout the season and don't just play to their potential for one game.

LSU 9 times out of 10 plays down to their opponent and doesn't have the killer instinct to just put inferior teams away yet alone teams that are of similar talent level. Last year was the exception. We had a once in a generation turnover machine/spark plug that caused some serious game changing plays that would get us rolling. I guess my point is, y'all need to start realizing that we're not as "close" as we think to being a dominant/dynastic football team as we believe. Whenever y'all accept that, the fact that we were "close to being undefeated" will not hurt as much.