After Monday morning’s film session, Lane Kiffin described an LSU football team that seemed to feel worse about the loss in Oxford than it had immediately afterward. Having watched the opportunities they squandered to win that game, each player could see how many individual plays might have changed the score in their favor.

That should have provided no impediment to moving forward emotionally, however, because whatever revenge factor Ole Miss played off of last weekend, LSU has its own this weekend.

And despite the media’s not covering it as much, it is bigger than the media-driven Lane Kiffin story.

It wasn’t that long ago that a small halftime lead over Texas A&M in Baton Rouge became a second consecutive ambush by a program against which the Tigers have enjoyed consistent success. Everyone watching that game remembers the stadium emptying, with Aggie fans occupying even the LSU student section and the guests from College Station celebrating during and after the game as if they owned the place.

Everyone remembers watching Brian Kelly walking off the field and thinking there’s no way he survives this.

And he didn’t.

A hypothetical 34–31 Aggie victory in late fall 2025 might not have gotten Brian Kelly fired the following day. The 49–25 humiliation, however, accompanied by everything Aggie did inside that stadium, essentially embarrassing LSU on a national stage, certainly helped finish the job.

The money that flowed out after that night is evidence that the big donors at LSU were saying, “never again.”

But LSU can’t enter tomorrow night hoping to manufacture some last-minute motivation any more than Ole Miss could have relied exclusively on its emotions, or the piped-in music, last weekend.

Ole Miss is a good football team. No. 4 in the nation good? Maybe, given NIL and today’s football parity. But LSU is a good football team too, and they must show that they acted like it all week.

The time to get psyched was Monday morning and Monday afternoon, then Tuesday, then Wednesday, then Thursday, then Friday. Every practice, every drill, every film session offered an opportunity to turn the memory of that embarrassment into thoughts of another one that occurred not twelve months ago at the hands of your next opponent

As we discussed after the Clemson game, everyone isn’t Allen Iverson. Whatever anyone takes from that famous practice speech, these young men in white, gold, and purple cannot assume they can traipse through preparation and suddenly play championship football once the lights come on.

Of course, that decision should have been made long before the writing of this article.

Did they have revenge on their minds every day this week, or will they have simply depended on a Clemson game-type atmosphere from the home crowd to get their juices going? More precisely, did that thirst for revenge not just rev up their heartbeat but also make them more attentive, more disciplined, and more willing to correct an issue their coaches emphasized?

If it did, LSU has a great chance to win tomorrow night.

The Right Reed

Tiger fans are already salivating over the possibility that Marcel Reed will play as poorly as he did against Kentucky. But as we warned before the Ole Miss game, and commented on after the Ole Miss loss in Monday’s Mike Check, LSU fans seem to forget every week that the game is not played on paper or in a maze of stats.

This is the type of thing I’m talking about. I hope he’s right, but man, the emotional risk one takes in going here with it…

College football fans in general can have remarkably selective memories.

By the way, that article on Monday earned me an invitation from a Facebook LSU group “LSU Tiger Gold” to be a “Group Expert.” Pretty cool. I invite you to follow their page.

If the proverbial luck thing holds for LSU sports, Reed will play every bit like the Heisman candidate LSU helped introduce to the country two years ago.

Remember College Station that game, perhaps the pivotal moment in the season for both Garrett Nussmeier and LSU? The Tigers led 17–7 at halftime before Reed came off the bench, ran for three touchdowns, and helped turn victory into a 38–23 Aggie whooping.

That dangerous version of Reed should have been the player in LSU’s preparation this week, not the one who has struggled a bit recently, including an abysmal performance against Kentucky last Saturday. For Tiger fans interested in preserving their sanity, it should be the Marcel Reed we expect to show up to Tiger Stadium as well. Kentucky’s victory should have no bearing on either Blake Baker’s defense or on fans’ expectations.

Again, because sanity is what we work on in this space.

The Strategics

Regarding the X’s and O’s of the game, there are two on-field priorities LSU should have emphasized this week, as well as one intangible that everyone attending the game can help provide.

First, although Kiffin has the final say as head coach, I’d like to see Baker given room to make this defense as aggressive and attacking as he likes it, as we saw in the second half in Oxford.

That doesn’t mean an all-out blitz on every snap like so many fans want. It does mean disguising intentions, applying disciplined pressure, and making Reed process decisions quickly while the space around him closes.

Remember the brilliant play design that created the pick-six by 2-9 Jordan Ross in the Clemson game.

Think of a cage, but one whose bars are pressing inward. LSU cannot afford a passive enclosure that leaves a mobile quarterback like Reed comfortable enough to study the field like it’s a test for ag class. Too often against Trinidad Chambliss, as everyone knows, the Tigers appeared caught between preventing a big play on a scramble and impacting a pass that would go for a big play.

The challenge is to do both—and the Tigers have the scheme and the athletes to do it.

That is, of course, if they can either replace or scheme around the loss of Dashawn Spears.

And they must be willing to stay with an aggressive approach through an occasional successful play. Reed is talented enough to beat a good defense sometimes. That’s just the way of college football today. Don’t expect an Alabama-type domination from the 2012 BCS National Championship Game. One completion or one productive scramble can’t frighten Kiffin into retreat, although admittedly repeated breakdowns would demand adjustments before halftime, rather than waiting until halftime as they did last Saturday.

Second, the offensive line has to play better.

There isn’t much reason to explain that, because even my wife could have come up with that one. Better protection gives Sam Leavitt a better chance to become the quarterback LSU is paying him to be, while more consistent blocking can strengthen a running game that has already shown it can dominate a game against a worthy opponent.

If LSU can sustain possessions with 15-plus-play drives they’ve already shown they can handle, and actually finish drives in the redzone, thus making A&M defend for extended stretches, it can also reduce the number of opportunities Reed gets to reignite an old fire. Keeping him on the sideline will likely be a good complement to the defense figuring out how to attack him, and it would buy them more time, combined with the cupcake game next week, to develop a more permanent answer to the Spears loss before the October slate gets hot.

The Intangible

The next part belongs to the fans.

There is a symbiotic relationship between a team and its stadium, and tomorrow night Tiger Stadium needs to live up to the reputation—the myth—everyone enjoys invoking.

We saw what that could look like against Clemson. And man was it fun to watch.

If Vaught-Hemingway could affect LSU the way it did last weekend, Tiger fans should come ready once again to show what 100,000 people can do to an opponent when they remain involved.

Come out roaring from the start. Continue to roar between plays (yes, I know, the music). Stay involved when something goes wrong (remember the famed “L-S-U, L-S-U!” after the Georgia touchdown tied it in 2003). Make the Aggies work to communicate between snaps, particularly when they’re trying to recover from a penalty or a negative play.

The crowd can’t execute an assignment, no, but it can make the opponent’s assignment considerably more difficult.

Ag tests don’t have to be gimmes.

There is another responsibility here, an emotional one, and it belongs to the version of the LSU football team that represents the university and the state.

In my opinion, tomorrow is a must win not for the CFP necessarily, but more importantly for what another loss at home to this team might symbolize considering how many resources it took in the aftermath to place LSU football on a different track.

As we discussed two weeks ago, Mike Elko compared the SEC’s challenge of LSU, or what the media was presenting about LSU let’s say, to a parent intervening with a wayward child.

“This is a little bit like the son figuring out where the limits are until dad comes home and raises his voice, and then the son goes, ‘I was just kidding, I didn’t mean any of that.’ I think that’s what you’re seeing…. This is just a little bit of parenting going on right now.”

We wrote up a fun little bit on it two Fridays ago, and we invite you to read it here.

THE TAIL OF 2 MIKES: Elko Volunteers to Decorate LSU’s Football Building

We closed that one by saying, “LSU still has to prepare, and prepare for the preparation at that, which is precisely why Kiffin should appreciate Elko’s gift…. Then we can properly thank Aggie for singlehandedly helping to bring Lane Kiffin to Baton Rouge last season.”

It’s true. There is no Lane Kiffin without last year’s Aggie. You don’t get the roster you have now without him either.

LSU needed no fresh motivation to prepare for Texas A&M. The players’ preparation this week should have been laser-focused, and they must do whatever it takes tomorrow night to win at home.

And that isn’t even getting into what the media would do with an LSU loss.

The Pick

I’m tempted to follow my heart and say LSU, 38–17.

But I’ll rein that in out of respect for an A&M team that reached the playoffs last season and comes in with its own back against the wall. The Aggies have spent this week stewing over their mistakes, too, not to mention their own hopes of reaching the CFP.

An LSU loss would not automatically end the season. This remains Kiffin’s first year, and injuries are already exposing the importance of depth. But acknowledging those realities doesn’t require pretending that every game implies the same significance, from a contextual standpoint, anyway.

Still, if LSU expects to even resemble a playoff contender—or even live up a little bit to those “The Difference” films I’ve been seeing on ESPN—this is a game it must win. At home, after what happened last year, with the memory of the Kelly collapse still fresh, the Tigers have every reason to produce a complete and resounding response.

It could very well look like Clemson. It could. But I’m not fueling that hope today.

This is one of those college football Saturdays when the home team needs to show that its preparation has caught up with its intentions, with its talk during interviews for documentaries.

I like what Ty Benefield likes to say, the cliché of it all: “Actions speak louder than words.”

Indeed they do, and I’m picking LSU to act in accord tomorrow night.

Tigers 31, Texas A&M 23.

Thank you for reading The Hayride!