re: 247: SEC football: Projecting every team's final record for 2022 season

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You guys gotta take the P&G glasses off. I like the optimism but Pate and Vegas are looking at variables here. There's too many question marks on LSU's team for it all to come together on top of an absolutely brutal gauntlet schedule. If it all comes together? Sure, we'll see a big surprise season. How many times do you see an NCAA team with the amount of questions put it all together like LSU currently has? 7-8 win team is reasonable anything above it it is overachieving this season. Vegas is not influenced by emotion like Tiger fans are. They look at everything from data and they see LSU has too many question marks to be a high win team. They'll answer some of the questions but probably not all and if they do answer all, team is going to surprise. It's just highly unlikely to happen.

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FSU is the "swing" game for me. Lose, then 7-5 is likely. Win, and I lean more towards 8-4.

You talk about the "absolutely brutal gauntlet schedule". But is it really? Florida and Auburn will likely be favored because they are at home. But are they really in a better postion than LSU. Arguably no one had a worse offseason in the SEC than Auburn. Their HC barely survived a coup and goes into only his second year very much on the hot seat. Auburn was picked to finish last in the West for a reason. There's not a lot to be optimistic about there. Florida is kind of the mirror image of LSU. A team with too much talent to have the poor season they had last year. Now, like LSU, they have a new HC. The game being in Gainesville gives UF the edge. But give the choice between Kelly and Napier who would REASONABLE fans choose? Plus, LSU is 4-2 in Gainesville since 2010. So it's not like winning there would be a shock.

The Mississippi school aren't the pushovers they have been in the not to distant past. But both games are in Tiger Stadium. For Tennessee fans there is reason to be optimistic...but that game is also in Tiger Stadium.

Arkansas snuck up on a lot of people last season. They won't have that luxury this year. They got A&M with A&M's QB making the first start of his career. Georgia completely out-classed them. They played well against Alabama, but never really threatened. A very average Auburn team housed them in Fayetteville. The LSU game was a coin-toss...with LSU playing a QB who had never started a game (Nussmeier). But for the stupid wild-cat play when LSU was in position to maybe go up 14-3, LSU may have left with a win. Point being, while Arkansas is much better than they were under the last few HCs, I'm not ready to believe a loss in Fayetteville is a given.

Alabama is Alabama. Nothing more to say there. But I've watched A&M struggle (and lose) vs. the two worst LSU teams in two decades. Yes, Jimbo has a pretty talented roster. Yes, the game in in Texas. But the single biggest reason for LSU's struggles the last two years, the clapping platitude bot roaming the sidelines, is not longer there. If Jimbo struggles to be LSU at its most incompetent, what happens when LSU appears to be competent once more?

Beat FSU and all LSU has to do to get to 8-4 is go 4-4 in SEC play. That's not unreasonable. Even with this schedule.

How's those variables 30-60 days old when LSU hasn't played a single game to see if those questions are answered?

While Vegas does absolutely get it right much more than they get it wrong, they also get it WAY wrong when they get it wrong. That’s because they don’t take lots of variables into account when they pick. They pick safe, which is why they win a lot. BUT picking safe can also make you look like you actually don’t know anything about many teams who’ve made significant changes that they don’t know about or take into account. I’m not betting anything so I can say LSU might be that team that makes Vegas look foolish this year. It also doesn’t bother me at all to be wrong. My hopes stay the same no matter what I believe. I also know anything can always happen so it doesn’t affect me if I believe we’ll have a surprise season. 7-5 is NOT happening unless everything goes wrong at the same time. That’s not likely to happen. Even then I have a hard time believing we’ll go 7-5.

Our record last year was horrible but our games could have went either way with some good calls or better QB play or a little bit better defense from game to game. What’s the chances of anyone of those things happening this year or all 3 happening? I think the chances are pretty good. So those swing games can swing back our way. If we win half of those games, that’s 9-3. That’s where I’m at.

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How do you figure that?

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Because that fan base won't be able to handle another 8-4 season with what they're paying him.

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How's those variables 30-60 days old when LSU hasn't played a single game to see if those questions are answered?

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There are certain known commodities on LSU's roster, and simply by looking at the current depth chart you can read floors into certain positions that were complete unknowns at the start of camp (particularly offensive line and defensive back).

For instance, I think we can say with a decent amount of confidence that the offensive line will be, at minimum, ok, simply because Campbell has solid control of the LT spot. And my reasoning has nothing to do with Campbell's hype as a player, but is instead based on the fact that Shorts, Frazier, Dellinger, and Wire have all previously played tackle in the past, albeit with mixed results, and the LSU coaches have decided that Will Campbell is not only better than all of them, but is so much better at it than all of them that we haven't used any snaps this fall to even test anyone else there. So we've got four guys who have previously played left tackle and were expected to fight it out to be our LT this year who aren't even in the running for left tackle and are being tried at other spots along the line.

Same thing with defensive back. Foucha, Garner and Banks have all played a lot of football and are regarded as D-1 level DBs. Any defensive back running even with or ahead of any of the three must be at minimum serviceable, therefore we can say with relative certainty that LSU has more serviceable defensive backs than feared. The fact that the first, second and third string corners on both sides are players who were not on the roster last year certainly confirms that concerns were real, but the floor is now much higher.