re: Tell me why I shouldn’t be excited about the 2021 football season?

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Only 1 QB gets to play.

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The odds are that more than one will play this season, then learn from each other and continue the tradition going forward.

LSU is returning a ton of production from last season to go with, what is now, the third straight top recruiting class. In addition, it is an odd-year schedule, which seems to favor LSU (03, 07, 11, 19). The odd years mean LSU gets 3 of their 4 generally toughest opponents (Auburn, Florida, Alabama, A&M) at home. The only road game in which they won't be favored is Alabama. And frankly, LSU hasn't done anything vs. Bama in Tiger Stadium for a decade.

Simply put, all the reasons that foretold a good 2019 season are in place, which is the complete opposite of all the reasons that foretold a regression going into last season.

You should be excited about the season because after many years of lurking and seeing where TD came up short, I finally decided to make an account and will be your eyes and ears on the Score Board. I am basically a Coach's All-Access viewpoint stuck behind a keyboard and will finally fill the gap of a true expert commentator. You're welcome.

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I’m very excited like I am for every new season of LSU football. But I have to say that I didn’t pay enough attention to the red flags last year that I definitely should have. This year their are a lot of red flags as well. We have serious issues on this team like no proven RB, no proven receivers besides Boutte, 2 new starters at linebacker, one real TE that we actually recruited at TE. A QB battle that if won by MJ could leave us with only a true sophomore and true freshman in the QB room. An O line with 5 decent starters and maybe one solid backup in Bradford now that Wire has to start. Should be great at d line and corner, concerned about Safety because we have an injury prone Todd Harris, and Jay Ward who is new at the position. Half of our on field coaching staff is brand new and our OC and DC have never called plays. Yes, if everything goes right we have the talent to be really good, but we are a few injuries away from having a very lackluster season.

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You could have found some of the the same issues going into 2019:

LSU had no proven RB. They lost their starting TE and 4th leading pass catcher (Moreau). All Americans Devin White, Greedy Williams and Cole Tracy were gone. The OL didn't look like it had a ton of proven depth behind the starters. They needed to replace a starting safety (Battle). The OC in 2019 was the same who produced a very average offense in 2018. He was joined by a 29 year old guy whose only on field coaching experience was one year as a LB coach at William and Mary.

Yet, despite the losses and "concerns" in 2019 LSU was returning ~76% of their production from 2018 (15th in the nation)

In 2020 LSU returned only 42% of their production from 2019 (127th in the nation). And that was BEFORE the opt outs of Vincent, Chase, Shelvin. Hubris and the glow of the "perfect season" caused fans to ignore the red flags

In 2021 LSU is returning roughly 80% of their production from 2020. (Slightly) second only to Ole Miss in the SEC.

No stat is 100% accurate in predicting the future. But returning production has been pretty good at projecting how good a team will be. Everything that pointed to regression year in 2020 points the opposite way in 2021