As expected, LSU played with fight, determination, and intensity against Alabama on Saturday night in Tuscaloosa, but in the end, the Tigers are not good enough to beat 4th ranked Alabama.
The Crimson Tide rolled to a 20-9 win over LSU as the Tigers fell to 5-4, 2-4 in the SEC. Alabama has now won 13 of the last 15 meetings played between these two teams.
Ten penalties and red zone failures led to this latest defeat to Alabama. The Tigers traveled into the red zone four times and only came away with nine points.
“When you are playing against a team like this and you have opportunities, you have to seize the moment, and we fell short on that,” interim head football coach Frank Wilson said.
After a red zone trip in the third quarter that only resulted in three points, Wilson made his biggest decision during his brief time as interim head coach.
He benched starting quarterback Garrett Nussmeier for backup Michael Van Buren.
It had to be done. During that failed red zone trip, Nussmeier failed to connect with Barion Brown on a touchdown pass, took a delay of game penalty, and lost 14 yards on a sack when he ran right into the defender.
This will go down as one of the most disappointing seasons in LSU football history, and one of the big mysteries of this season is what happened to Nussmeier.
A Heisman candidate heading into the year after throwing for 4,052 yards and 29 touchdowns last season. Nussmeier has only 1,806 passing yards this season, zero 300-yard passing games and 12 touchdowns.
No one could have predicted in August that Nussmeier would be benched in a game in November. And in that game, the game plan was screen passes, instead of pushing the ball down the field.
How did we get to this point? There was a preseason camp ab injury, but Tiger Bait’s Mike Scarborough has also heard from people within the LSU football program that Nussmeier did not work hard enough in the offseason.
He is also playing behind a bad offensive line, one of the worst in LSU history.
The Tigers only averaged 2.3 yards a carry and allowed three sacks to a defense that only had 15 sacks on the season coming into the game.
Wilson tried to make a change with this position group too. He benched starting right tackle Weston Davis for redshirt freshman Ory Williams.
True freshman Carrius Curne at left tackle had a rough game.
Freshmen tackles on the road in the SEC in November is a bad recipe.
Despite massive changes since the Texas A&M game that included a new athletics director, it comes down to the fact that this team is not good enough.
LSU fans were sold a national championship contender; instead, they got a team that will struggle to win seven games.
There are three more games left, two of which could be played in front of a half-empty Tiger Stadium, an 11:45 AM kick against Arkansas, and a non-conference matchup with Western Kentucky, are reasons, unfortunately, to keep Tiger fans away.
Wilson will now have to figure out who the starting quarterback will be for the rest of the season. An answer he was not ready to give following Saturday night’s loss to Alabama.
LSU fans would rather fast-forward three weeks past the last game against Oklahoma, so the coaching search can really ramp up.
So much hope and promise at the start of the season has turned into disappointment, and it will take more than replacing Brian Kelly and Nussmeier to turn this thing around.
It feels like a complete rebuild is coming, and LSU fans who lost patience with Kelly will need to give the new head coach some time.