If it comes down to any one game, the SEC West will come down to the meeting between Alabama and LSU on Nov. 3 in Baton Rouge. The Tide are college football’s best team until further notice, but LSU’s worked into a position to win the West with an upset that day.
Few expected Alabama-LSU to be *ALABAMA-LSU* in 2018, yet here we are
The Tigers were supposed to go 7-5 this year. Well, they’re 7-1.
John David Mercer-USA TODAY Sports
Saying Bama-LSU is huge and could decide the SEC West feels like old news and something we’ve said every year for almost a decade. But every few years, LSU really has to work to make this moment even happen. In 2018, the Tigers were not expected to be in this position.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. LSU was supposed to lose lots in 2018.
Before the season, Las Vegas had the Tigers’ over/under win total at seven. They’d won at least eight games every year of this millennium, but that wasn’t the point. Their schedule looked brutal, including all of the following:
- In Week 1, a neutral-site meeting with preseason No. 8 Miami, which looked like a bad matchup on paper before the Tigers dominated it
- In Week 3, a visit to preseason No. 10 Auburn
- In Week 6, a visit to Florida, which figured to be better under Dan Mullen and was, in fact, ranked No. 20 by the time of LSU’s visit
- In Week 7, preseason No. 4 Georgia
- In Week 8, preseason No. 18 Mississippi State
- In Week 10, all-time No. 1 Bama
- In Week 13, a visit to Texas A&M, another team that figured to get better as the year wore on under a newly established head coach
The headline of Bill Connelly’s big Tigers preview was “2018 LSU might be underrated, but with this ferocious schedule, it might not matter.” S&P+ projected a 7-5 record, with none of those games above expected to be any better than a tossup for LSU.
Well, so far, LSU’s 4-1 against that anticipated murderer’s row. Add Auburn’s quick fade to irrelevance, and the West should come down to Bama-LSU. Again.
LSU’s win against Mississippi State on Saturday means the Tigers will control their own destiny when the Tide roll into Baton Rouge. Both teams head into a bye before that.
Alabama’s chances of winning the division are overwhelmingly high. If the Tide beat LSU, that’ll become pretty much a dead certainty. Alabama is likely to be about a 11-point favorite, going by the teams’ pre-Week 8 S&P+ ratings and giving LSU a 3-point bump for having the home field.
Everyone else in the West is out already, according to these calculations:
- Texas A&M: already lost to Bama, thus requiring Bama to lose two SEC games, something that’s not going to happen even in a fantasy universe
- Mississippi State: already had two conference losses before LSU gave it a third
- Auburn: next
- Arkansas: next
- Ole Miss: postseason-banned, but also: next
LSU beating Bama wouldn’t guarantee anything.
The Tigers would have to run the table elsewhere. But let’s pretend the Tigers do that.
The best case for an LSU win isn’t that the game’s in Baton Rouge. It’s that LSU might have the defensive backs to slow Bama’s passing game.
(Maybe. If anyone in the country does. Maybe.)
LSU’s actually beaten Bama more often since 2000 in Tuscaloosa than in Baton Rouge (five times to four), including its last win in the series, in 2011.
The LSU secondary’s really good, though. The Tigers have had some big-play problems, but they force incompletions on more than half of the passes thrown against them. They entered Week 7 ranked 24th in FBS in DB Havoc Rate, a measure of how often the secondary breaks up or intercepts passes, forces fumbles, and gets tackles for loss. The unit’s loaded with four- and five-star talent who could at least challenge Bama.
It probably won’t matter. Tua Tagovailoa and his friends are probably too good. But stranger things have happened than LSU knocking him out of a rhythm for a half or so and scoring enough points to win in Death Valley against a Bama defense that isn’t quite Bama-like.
Or maybe Tua will throw for 900 yards. I don’t know.
At any rate, college football’s more fun when this game means something.
The teams’ identities have changed, especially as Bama’s gone toward a more spread-out offense. This is no longer the Manball Christmas it used to be.
But it remains a fiery rivalry, and Nick Saban coaching against the team he led to a title 15 years ago gives it extra intrigue each year.
Still only a month and a half removed from a lot of people thinking LSU was doomed to mediocrity in 2018, it’s good to have a high-stakes Bama-LSU game back ... as almost always.
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