re: We missed 21 tackles Saturday night. Previous high this season was 12.

quote:

---

Not trying to pile on you but I think you just kind of made up that out of thin air or completely misinterpreted something.

---

I don't make things up out of thin air. I 100% heard those words over the weekend. I have watched a lot of different videos from different commentators, and it's possible someone else may have made the comment, if it wasn't Pate. The most likely candidate would be Moscona. But my take on Pate remains the same. The guy is capable of some pretty good commentary, but he has a tendency to preach at people and turn the story away from the game and condescend upon fans for whatever he thinks they're too uninformed or naive to understand. It gets old.

quote:

---

Still can't believe so many were putting this loss on the offense. They deserve some blame but the majority is definitely on how bad the defense was

---

The offense only had three true drives in the first half because the defense couldn't get off the field. They were moving the ball without much resistance.

First half:
Receive kickoff - get to the 50 Lacy drops easy 3 and 5 pass
Second drive - TD
Third drive - FG. Lacy drops what most likely was a TD.
Fourth Drive - not much time to work with. Still, at least a FG attempt taken away due to a picked-up PI flag.

Second half:
First drive - TD
Second drive - Fumble. This one hurt. You had A&M on the ropes here. Had JD read the play properly and given to Emery, it's probably a 20+ yard gain, and the offense keeps churning.
Third drive - dogshit holding call kills what would have been first and 10 inside the A&M 30.
Fourth drive - worst of the night. JD injured + holding call. Third and 25 from the 10.
Fifth drive - TD
Sixth drive - Jenkins TD drop

LSU's offense as a group had two bad drives all night. The killer was not getting more opportunities with the ball. 32 minutes of possession for an A&M offense that was struggling coming into the game. Force a couple of punts in the first half and LSU probably goes into the locker room with 20 points.

I'll say this about the offense. It's lack of explosive plays, especially in the passing game, makes it susceptible to mistakes and penalties. If it takes me 6 plays to get 40 yards, that's more opportunities for shite luck to happen. Going into 2023, the offensive brain trust has to find a way to get more chunk plays.

quote:

---

t was terrible technique.

catching tackles and blockers, why there was so many yards after contact.


Im still worried about a good line and RB running right at LSU.

---

I can't stomach going back and watching the film, but my recollection was that Achane bounced a lot of plays outside and we had poor control on the edges. Either BJ and Gaye got stuck inside or rushed too wide and were kicked out. After that our LBs and safeties did a poor job filling and were out of position.

quote:

---

it may have actually been because of Jimbo’s antiquated offense. We just hadn’t seen much old-school 22 personnel all year and weren’t able to handle it.

---

Can you break that down for me a little more?

quote:

---

The offense only had three true drives in the first half because the defense couldn't get off the field.

---

So true, but it wasn’t a “3rd and Chavis” (Pelini now) type of not getting off the field where they were converting a bunch of 3rd and longs. I think their 1st 5ish 3rd down conversions were 3rd and 1s.

And you allude to this later, but even our offense couldn’t get off the field on its 1st scoring drive. I think it was 15-plays and like 9 minutes. Which was an impressive response at the time, and the optimist in me focused on that and the fact that it allowed our defense to rest after having been in the field so much prior. BUT…

quote:

---

Third drive - FG. Lacy drops what most likely was a TD.

---

This is when I started to get scared. I cussed that drop and MF’d that FG more than my casual buddy could understand. I was watching with my usual LSU buddy and my casual LSU (Tulane grad) buddy.

Hot Carl: JFC! MF, Lacy! That’s 2 GD drive killing drops that could have cost 11 MF’n points!!! frick!!

Casual Bud: “What’s the big deal, man? It’s still tied. We’re fine.”

Usual Bud: “Naw, man. That wasn’t good.”

Casual Bud: “Why?”

Hot Carl: “Because we’ve only had 3 MF’n possessions, we can’t stop them, they’re about to get the ball at the end of the half, and they get the ball to open the 2nd half. We have no room for error. We’re one potential turnover away from not having enough time to catch up.”

Not that I’m some savant that was seeing things everybody in here wasn’t either. You could just tell early it was gonna be one of those games of few possessions, and we had already put ourselves behind the 8-ball by receiving the ball 1st and not scoring. I remember at the end of the 1st quarter when Joe Tess was talking about how fast it went, my Usual Buddy and I looked at each other and were like “I don’t have a good feeling about this.”

And I thought we should have gone for it on 4th after Lacy’s 1st drop on that 1st drive. I didn’t realize until this year with all the analytics talk and Kelly talking about his strategy to take the ball 1st just how important it is to not get the ball 1st, not score, then let the opponent score a TD on their 1st drive. It’s hard to quantify, but it’s bigger than just being down 7 points.

quote:

---

Fourth Drive - not much time to work with.

---

This is the most pissed I think I’ve ever been at Kelly. If I have even been at all. And I haven’t heard anybody mention it. But why didn’t we call timeout on defense after 1st down on A&M’s previous drive? They had the ball inside the 10 with 3 timeouts and just under 2 minutes left. Time was not going to be a factor for them. But it was for us, and we had all 3 timeouts and didn’t use one after 1st down and let over 30 seconds run off for no reason. I was screaming “Call fricking timeout!!! What the frick are we doing?!!!”

Of course we called one after 2nd down, so why not 1st? Then they scored and instead of having a minute and a half to answer, we had a minute, and that made a huge difference in how rushed we had to be. I think with 30 extra seconds, we can probably score a touchdown there, but at least a FG even without that terrible call. I thought the coaches really dropped the ball on that, and unless Kelly provided an explanation I didn’t hear, can only assume was simply not being prepared in the moment. Which was so frustrating to me, because I had already seen how precious every single possession was gonna be by the way the game was going and knowing they got the ball back to start the 2nd half.

So yes, Daniels fumble was huge and the obvious turning point in the game. And we tackled like shite. But I could argue that we lost the game in the 1st half on Lacy’s 2 drops and not calling that timeout after 1st down inside our 10. Because it put us in a position where we had zero room for error in the 2nd half, and we made errors, and that was that.

I know this post is getting obnoxiously long, but it’s my thread, so kiss my arse. But I come here to PRAISE LSU, not bury them. I love this team. It’s one of my favorite LSU teams ever, I think. We are a good—not great—and flawed football team. (I think our SEC scoring margin was like 220-something to 208 or something like that.) We had no business going 9-3 because we have played all season with no room for error. Yet, somehow, we’ve managed to answer almost every time we’ve had to, we’ve never quit, managed to only make those very few errors, and somehow pulled out 9 wins, a few right out of our purple and gold asses. Maybe, just maybe, we can dig a little deeper Saturday, and figure out a way to pull out 1 more.

Now. Who’s coming with me?