Mississippi State just blew out Ed Orgeron’s LSU, years after ending his Ole Miss tenure

Mississippi State upset No. 12 LSU on Saturday night in Starkville, and the Bulldogs ran up the score to make it a 37-7 blowout in addition to an upset.

QB Nick Fitzgerald and running back Aeris Williams tortured the Tigers to lead a balanced MSU attack. Fitzgerald finished with 266 total yards, and Williams ran for 147 and a touchdown. It was a total smackdown against a talented opponent.

In 2007, when now-LSU coach Ed Orgeron was the boss at Ole Miss, a Starkville rout at the hands of MSU got him fired. This won’t do that, but it badly hurts LSU’s chances in a brutal SEC West this season.

LSU coach Ed Orgeron will be in Davis Wade Stadium at Mississippi State Saturday for the first time since the last day he was Ole Miss’ head coach 10 years ago, and he could not be happier now that he lost then.

His No. 11 Tigers (2-0) open Southeastern Conference play against Mississippi State (2-0) at 6 p.m. on ESPN.

“Yeah, I thank the good Lord every day,” Orgeron said on the subject of time travel this week while laughing. “It’s just been a great journey.”

This wasn’t an upset of historic proportions, but it was be a big one, and the lopsided final is especially notable. The Tigers were 7.5-point favorites on the road, and they’re drastically more talented, according to recruiting rankings of the players on both teams. LSU has the sixth-most talented roster in the country, per the 247Sports Team Talent Composite, and MSU has No. 26.

Dan Mullen’s teams have been consistently good enough that few wins by them are surprising, but this is a bit unexpected because of LSU’s talent advantage. The Bulldogs avoided getting torched by LSU’s star running back Derrius Guice, who ran 15 times for 76 yards. LSU quarterback Danny Etling struggled, and when LSU loses, underwhelming QB play is a consistent theme. It stayed the course on Saturday.

LSU might still have a great season. But the Tigers were already underdogs to beat Alabama in the West, and now they’ve got a conference loss on their record. The manner in which they fell — getting absolutely destroyed by a non-Alabama conference opponent — is especially discouraging.