Idaho may not be LSU’s scariest matchup, but the Vandals present a rare chance at history for the Tigers.
With a win against the Vandals on Saturday, LSU can become the first school in NCAA history to win 40 straight non-conference regular season games.
The Tigers tied Kansas State’s record of 39 consecutive non-conference regular season victories with last week’s 41-3 dismantling of Washington.
The Tigers can also eclipse the school record of 19 consecutive home wins in Tiger Stadium. The last team to best the Tigers in front of their home crowd was No. 1 Florida with a 13-3 win in 2009.
If the Tigers are going to stamp their place in the history books on Saturday, they will have to shut down a pass-happy offense for a second straight week.
The Tigers dominated Washington’s pass-heavy attack last week, holding the Huskies to under 200 total offensive yards.
Idaho brings a similar attack to Baton Rouge with the bulk of its offensive production this season coming in the passing game.
The Vandals tallied 521 passing yards in losses to Eastern Michigan and Bowling Green this season, but suffered in the run game.
In its first two games, Idaho struggled to move the ball on the ground, collecting a meager 94 total rushing yards.
The Vandals might want to pick another week to kick-start their running game.
The LSU defense suffocated North Texas’ and Washington’s running attacks, allowing only 102 net rushing yards with a 1.7 yard-per-rush average.
The Tigers’ stable of running backs, on the other hand, has had no such problems moving the football.
The Tigers have racked up 558 rushing yards and currently boast the No. 2 and No. 3 leading rushers in the Southeastern Conference — junior Alfred Blue and sophomore Kenny Hilliard.
The Tigers’ passing attack will look to erase the memory of multiple dropped passes that plagued an otherwise efficient game from quarterback Zach Mettenberger on Saturday.
“If we don’t have five drops, we probably add 50 to 70 yards and another touchdown,” said LSU coach Les Miles in his Monday press luncheon. “Simply put, if we want to do some of the things that we want to do, we need to fix that.”
Sophomore wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. said he wants to forget his performance against Washington ever happened.
On Monday, Beckham tweeted, “Sept 8 is a dead day in history.”
“You just have to erase it from your memory,” Beckham said Tuesday. “You can’t keep looking at it. There’s nothing you can do. You can’t go back in time, so you just have to move on.”
The passing game is lagging behind the Tigers’ rushing attack this season, but Miles said this week should present opportunities to open up the playbook and throw the ball more.
“We’ d like to have the same balance we had offensively and to throw the ball better,” Miles said. “A part of that is to not mishandle well-thrown balls.”
While the offense is focused on increasing its passing output, the defense is focused on repeating its dominance in the passing game.
Junior linebacker Kevin Minter said the pass-heavy approach of Washington and Idaho forces the Tigers to run more nickel packages than they are usually accustomed to.
But the Tigers seemed to excel in nickel packages last week, holding Washington to an under 50 percent completion percentage.
Minter said the fact that Idaho can force the Tigers out of their defensive comfort zone is what makes them a potentially dangerous team.
But Minter also acknowledged that in a week like this one, with Auburn and the grind of the SEC schedule looming, it is hard not to overlook a winless Idaho team.
“To be honest, you’ll see people not taking it as seriously, but we can’t do that. We have to take it seriously,” Minter said. “You can’t just take it for granted. We have to go out and play every week because if we go out and lose to them, our national championship hopes are out the window.”
