LSU football fell to 5-2 on Saturday after losing to Vanderbilt for the first time in 17 matchups across 43 years.
It ultimately came down to LSU’s inability to play complementary football.
“I think I’ve said it more than once that we haven’t played that complementary football where both sides are hitting on all cylinders,” head coach Brian Kelly said. “We just haven’t hit that point yet, so we’ll continue to prepare our football team and work on the things that can help us get to that level.”
Tiger fans are used to hearing about complementary football this season, but not how it was manifested on Saturday. LSU found themselves scoring on five out of six drives with about nine minutes left in the game.
But the defense had allowed scores on five of Vandy’s six drives as well.
So for one of the first times this season, the offense gave the defense the type of efficiency needed for complementary football. Despite that, LSU’s defense failed to show up in a crucial high-pressure moment.
“We want positive outcomes just like our fan base wants, but our last nine quarters of offense have been trending to where we need to be: we’re running the football with effectiveness and we’re targeting the receivers that we need to,” Kelly said. “And then defensively, we need to continue to play like we have played in the first half [of the season].”
LSU’s defense got the stop it’d been searching for all day when it gave the offense the ball back with 8:55 left on the clock in the fourth quarter.
LSU would run three plays and record -12 yards and then punt.
The defense then again stopped Vanderbilt and gave the offense the ball back with 4:40 seconds to play.
LSU would run three plays again and record 2 yards before punting the ball back to Vanderbilt, where it would drain the clock and win.
It felt like two good things couldn’t happen at the same time for the Tigers, and here LSU stands again, with a loss due to not putting complementary football out on the field.
LSU needs to play complementary football as it turns its attention to No. 3 Texas A&M on Saturday. The game will kick off at 6:30 p.m. in Tiger Stadium.
