Thursday, September 10, 2009

Vanderbilt at LSU: Can We Make It #60?

Let's go ahead and get the reasons why people say we can't win this game out of the way. LSU has had top five recruiting classes in 3 of the past 4 years. LSU won a national championship two years ago. Since 1960, LSU is 209-59-4 in home night games. Every analyst/sportswriter in America is picking the Tigers. The Commodores are getting 14 points from Vegas.

Now, let's look at why we can. LSU's defense was unimpressive last week to say the least, allowing 478 total yards, with almost 400 of those yards being accounted for by Jake Locker (Washington's lone bright spot). That's the Steve Sarkisian effect for the most part, as I have always thought that Locker could be an absolute stud in the college football world with good coaching. Regardless, LSU was flat defensively and did not convince me that they can defend an offense run by a shifty QB (and one that finished 116th in the nation in Total Offense last year, one spot above our beloved Commodores).

There's a simple point here. If the Commodores are going to make this upset happen and chalk up number 60 in the loss column for the Tigers, they're going to need the old Vanderbilt upset M.O: control the clock, play flawless on special teams, and get one or two big turnovers on defense. Having a terrible offense against this team ain't going to cut it. We need to be sufficient at best, not perfect, but sufficient. At least sufficient enough to hold onto the ball for longer than they do.

Defensively, in order to control the clock, you've gotta force third and longs, and this is where our veteran front seven is going to have to shut down LSU's run game. If they can't run the ball and become one-dimensional, then we've got a decent chance at winning this game. The less that Jordan Jefferson and his two light-speed running velcro mats touch the ball the better, because at least one of the duo of Tolliver and LaFell is going to make a big play, Myron Lewis or not.

Finally, we're going to need LSU to look at this game and yawn. If they come in fired up and ready to put a beat down on somebody, then we might stay in this game for a while, but their depth will take us out of it. But if they come in unprepared and lack focus, well that's how Vanderbilt wins ball games. We may not be the most talented, but we'll be the most prepared.

It's not the most optimistic prediction, but I'm not optimistic about this game. A team's home opener is usually when they have the most passion, and Les Miles probably had some choice words for their defense on the long trip back to Louisiana from Washington.



3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree, control the clock and you guys can win this game. With Chavis coaching the defense and Vandy having a mobile qb....anything is possible.

Steve said...

I did not see the LSU game last week. So if any of you have insight that would be awesome.

Like you all said in the post, LSU's defense left much to be desired. Do you guys @VSL think there is any chance the defense simply looked bad because LSU's coaching staff refused to dip too far into the defense's playbook by keeping the schemes simple and playing basic defensive packages?

Anonymous said...

Great blog! I found this blog by clicking on a link from the LSU vs Vanderbilt Football blogsite: http://lsuvsvandy.blogspot.com/
a site solely dedicated to this year's match up between Vanderbilt and LSU this Saturday.