On the final Saturday in September, the Kentucky Wildcats gave college football fans a “Wow” moment by upsetting Ole Miss. There was turmoil in Tuscaloosa on Saturday night as Alabama nearly blew a 28-0 lead, only to score a late touchdown to beat Georgia.
But in Death Valley it was a good ole fashion dominating performance by an SEC school over a team from the Sun Belt as the LSU Tigers routed South Alabama 42-10.
Getting off to a fast start has been a priority for this LSU team and they did just that with a swing pass to freshman running back Caden Durham who raced 71-yards for a touchdown.
“We were expecting three deep and kind of that configuration,” Coach Brian Kelly said of South Alabama’s defense on that opening play, “so I thought (offensive coordinator) Joe Sloan did a great job of play-calling in that situation to get him out, because that was a play we hadn’t run before.”
The defense followed up that quick touchdown with a three and out and then Durham was off to the races again. The track star in high school who is expected to run track at LSU, ran 86 yards right up the middle of South Alabama’s defense to set up a one-yard touchdown run for quarterback Garrett Nussmeier.
LSU finished the first half with 429 yards of total offense, the most yards by the Tigers in a half since the 2019 CFP semifinal versus Oklahoma.
And the defense did its part too, holding an explosive Jaguars offense to 124 yards in the first half.
Linebacker Greg Penn led the way with 14 tackles and two quarterback hurries.
“He (Kelly) was saying, ‘everyone’s going to be talking about this game for like two weeks, so make sure it’s a good one.’ So we went out there and just tried to put on a good show,” said Penn.
The Tigers showed no signs of missing their start linebacker Harold Perkins, who is out for the year with a torn ACL. Linebacker Whit Weeks was all over the field with nine tackles, including a helmet popping tackle on the goal line in the third quarter.
“Penn and Weeks that combination are very active, there assignments, they were all over it” Kelly said. “Those two guys played very well.”
Kelly also liked the job of the defensive line, which didn’t allow any gaping holes for South Alabama’s rushing attack.
Kelly said it was the type of performance you wanted to see as LSU faces SEC teams the rest of the way.
“The bottom line is that we gotten better over the last five weeks and that’s what we needed to be going into this off week and as we get ready for an SEC schedule,” Kelly said.
There were some negatives.
Durham left with a foot injury. But Kelly said it’s not serious and we’ll see if the extra week off enough time for him is to be ready for the Ole Miss game.
Garrett Nussmeier threw for a career-high 409 yards and two touchdowns. But he was also intercepted twice, the second interception resulted in a tongue lashing by Kelly.
“Those are plays that he knows better,” said Kelly of Nussmeier’s second interception. “You’re moving to the right. You have better options there. I think he probably got caught up a little bit in the game in that situation. It was late (and) we were up pretty big.”
“It was just a normal conversation between a coach and a player that should happen,” Nussmeier said. “He expects a lot of me, and that’s how I would want it to be. The worst thing I would want is to throw an interception, come up on the sideline and nobody says anything to me. That would mean no one has belief in me to not do what I did.”
Kelly is also still searching for better play from his safeties, there were a few missed tackles by those guys. They also struggle in pass coverage.
The coach is asking them to be technically better, especially in run support. The coaches are still trying to figure out who are the two or three guys they should count on.
All in all, this was the type of performance you wanted to see from LSU.
But the Tigers are not taking their foot off the gas.
Kelly said they plan to have a work week, more of a focus on getting better than recovery.
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