Three years ago, LSU opened the season with a 52-point blowout against Georgia Southern before following it up with a huge win over No. 9 Texas.
The program hasn’t won an opening game since.
In 2020, the secondary was torched by Mississippi State, surrendering 623 passing yards to a quarterback that would lose his starting job three games later.
In 2021, Coach Ed Orgeron insulted an opposing fan and immediately paid for it, with both sides of the ball imploding in the fourth quarter, allowing UCLA to go up by three scores with six minutes left in the game.
Now, in 2022, here’s all that went wrong in LSU’s opening loss against Florida State.
Third Down Battle
While the Tigers managed to have success on third downs later in the game offensively, the third downs they didn’t convert in the first half were costly. Despite having the ball in goal-to-go situations twice in the first half, they managed just three points total from those possessions, settling for two field goals and having one blocked.
Instead of having a 14-7 lead heading into the break, they trailed 7-3.
While the offense managed to fix things, the defense could not. Florida State converted 11 third downs, which is 11 times the defense couldn’t get off the field. That’s taxing, especially for a defense playing in its first game of the season.
Kelly stated that LSU’s inability to get off the field on third down came down to a variety of reasons, including poor tackling and the quarterback they were facing. He gave a lot of credit to Florida State quarterback Jordan Travis, claiming he was incredibly difficult to get down.
“We had them dead to rights on two or three occasions,” Kelly said. “When you don’t get that kid on the ground, he makes some really good impromptu plays.”
Slow start
In terms of total yards, the teams finished the game close to even, but that certainly wasn’t the case throughout three quarters. While the Seminoles looked sure of themselves from the get-go, the LSU offense seemed jittery and unprepared, especially the offensive line.
Jayden Daniels was consistently forced to run, and while he had success statistically, it did not lead to points. The Tigers had just 10 points at the end of the third quarter, and seven of those were scored with eight seconds to go in that period.
They scored more points in the last four minutes of the game than they did in the first 56, struggling immensely to find their footing until it was too late. Well, almost too late.
Special Teams
While Nabers’ muffed punts ultimately resulted in zero points for the Seminoles, despite giving them the ball in the red zone twice, that doesn’t completely bail the special teams unit out.
When it comes to special teams, the blame tends to fall on either the kicker, punter or return man whenever things go wrong. That was not the case in this one.
The first play of note occurred in the second quarter, as the kicking team came out on the field to attempt an easy 30-yard field goal. But Florida State’s Jared Verse easily got through, as the offensive lineman who was matched up against him missed his block and blocked the field goal.
A bad punt gave the Seminoles good field position on one of their scoring drives as well, but the biggest play occurred when the clock read :00 at the end of the game.
The Tigers had just scored the supposed game-tying touchdown as time expired, they just needed to make the point-after to advance the game to overtime. Surely, adjustments would be made to keep the same travesty from occurring twice, right?
Well, adjustments were made, but it didn’t mean anything. A Florida State defensive back slipped through on the left side of the line, blocking the extra point and crushing the spirits of excited LSU fans everywhere.
The Tigers face Southern at home Saturday, before facing their next true test and first conference opponent in Mississippi State.
We’ll get a better idea of what this team is made of then.
