Started By
Message

re: Connor O’Gara from Saturday Down South’s new article

Posted on 12/11/23 at 11:40 am to
Posted by Alt26
Member since Mar 2010
28745 posts
Posted on 12/11/23 at 11:40 am to
quote:

Jordan Travis indeed outplayed him in the second half of the season opener in Orlando,


Did he?

TWO plays changed the entire game. Neither of which were on Daniels.

In a 17-17 game LSU faced a 3rd down in FSU territory. Daniels threw a great pass to Lacy on a slant. Lacy dropped it. Had he caught it, LSU, at minimum, picks up the first down deeper in FSU territory. At most, Lacy has open space to run and turns it into a TD. Instead, LSU had to punt and FSU quickly marched downfield to go up 24-17.

The next drive LSU is on the move again. On the final play of the 3rd quarter Daniels hits Thomas down the sideline on a deep ball that would have set up LSU inside the FSU redzone except...Thomas drops the ball. The very next play Daniels throws a perfect comeback route...except Nabers stumbles and falls down, thus allowing an easy INT. In what would soon become the norm for the season, FSU would score again to go up 31-17, and would not stop scoring TDs until the clock struck zero.

That would be Daniels's "worst" game of the season. A game where he would generate 410 yards of total offense (346 + 64)

It's blasphemous to some to say this, but you can make a strong argument Daniels had a better regular season than even Burrow because Daniels had to carry more of the load himself. Even Burrow had the luxury of one "sub-par" game (Auburn). Daniels didn't. He had to be dynamite on almost every single drive to give LSU a chance to win because it was very likely the defense wasn't going to get more than 1-2 stops per game.

Don't get me wrong, Nabers and Thomas were outstanding and made Daniels look even better. But so did Chase and Jefferson for Burrow. But even though LSU's defense in 2019 wasn't good for most of the season, you rarely got the sense LSU had no margin for error (absent the 2nd half of Texas and Alabama, plus the Florida game). With Daniels you felt like he had to score every time out or LSU had no chance to win. I can't imagine how much pressure that puts on one guy. Pressure that probably cracks 99% of players...except for the one guy who seemed to be immune from immense pressure and never seemed to overreact...ever!
first pageprev pagePage 1 of 1Next pagelast page
refresh

Back to top
logoFollow TigerDroppings for LSU Football News
Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to get the latest updates on LSU Football and Recruiting.

FacebookTwitterInstagram