By TODD HORNE, EXECUTIVE EDITOR
The final horn at Bryant-Denny Stadium on Saturday night rang out like a starting pistol for LSU’s offseason autopsy to begin, sealing a 20-9 thud against Alabama that concluded what’s been obvious since August – the Tigers’ offense is the culprit in a $18 million paper tiger.
The Crimson Tide, now riding an eight-game win streak behind a defense that swarmed like yellow jackets, limited LSU to 232 total yards — a stat line more befitting a FCS snoozer than an SEC slugfest.
Ty Simpson, Alabama’s poised senior signal-caller managed to dent LSU’s secondary for two touchdowns with surgical efficiency about four deep chunks, while the Bama ground game managed just 56 yards.
Kalen DeBoer’s defense hardly broke a sweat in the second half, content to let LSU’s impotence do the heavy lifting.
But this wasn’t an Alabama symphony. It was LSU’s silence — a roster flush with NIL and revenue-sharing cash, starved for spark.
How does a program drop $18 million-plus on its roster through NIL collectives and revenue sharing — a hefty outlay, and emerge with an offensive line that pass-protects like it’s allergic to contact?
It’s the riddle that’s bedeviled Baton Rouge since August, and after this prime-time embarrassment under interim leadership, it’s now an indictment.
LSU’s offensive trenches, a patchwork of high-pedigree transfers and blue-chip freshmen, coughed up three sacks for minus-34 yards, drew false-start flags like magnets, and transformed every drop back into a dodgeball drill.
Garrett Nussmeier, the fifth-year vet who lit up scoreboards for 4,052 yards and 29 scores last fall, spent the evening like he has every game save one this season (Southeastern) — evading phantoms more than threading needles. He hit 18 of 21 early… for 121 yards. Quick screens. Dump-offs behind the line. It’s not orchestration; it’s osmosis — whatever air the o-line allows before collapsing.
LSU’s offensive line isn’t just bad, it is ground zero for the gangrene.
LSU’s O line room reads like a recruiter’s scrapbook: A freshman class hyped as saviors and returners scrambling to fill the voids left by NFL departures. Yet injuries and inexperience have spun it into a left-tackle lottery — Tyree Adams sidelined, Carius Curne slotted in, Weston Davis sliding from the right, with Ory Williams and DJ Chester trying to duct-tape the gaps.
Brian Kelly preached portal-fueled depth all summer, but Saturday laid bare the farce once and for all: This group can’t hold a pocket worth a damn. Nussmeier absorbed hits on 42% of dropbacks (PFF’s tally), and when he wasn’t turf-surfing, his blockers were hopping offsides. It’s not merely subpar; it’s stupefying. You funnel that NIL and revenue-sharing fortune to fetch five-stars, and your QB’s rolling into the rush on third-and-long because the bubble bursts in 2.3 seconds flat.
How Brad Davis survived last week’s bloodletting at the Ponderosa is beyond me.
Scheme compounds the crime — a holdover from the axed regime that called the shots until two weeks ago.
As former LSU great Jacob Hester pointed out on the LSU Radio postgame show, a football field spans 53⅓ yards wide — 160 feet of canvas screaming for creativity. College hashes already tilt the odds toward offenses, funneling plays toward the flanks. But LSU? They’re finger-painting in the margins. The ousted duo of Brian Kelly and Joe Sloan (with Alex Atkins tweaking the dials now) herded everything hash-to-sideline, broadcasting blueprints like a neon sign. Alabama’s D devoured the film: Clog the boundaries, scoff at the seams. LSU’s retort? Avoidance.
In their last three losses in a row (four defeats in five games), LSU once powerful offense uncorked just two throws beyond five yards dead center. That clanked fourth-quarter slant Saturday (one of the two drops Trey’Dez Green had on the night)? Third such flirtation with the middle of the field in a month. Tide DBs gawked like they’d spotted Sasquatch, the incompletion hanging like a bad joke. It’s tactical treason. Talent’s there — Zavion Thomas snagged five grabs for 49 yards amid the mayhem, Harlem Berry ignited a 37-yard burst when the dam didn’t rupture. But engineering a Maserati for cul-de-sac cruises? Futile.
LSU’s 32 passes went 23-for-173 in a checkdown seminar: Target depth averaged 4.2 yards. Completion percentage over expected? Minus-12%. The rush attack? Comical. Twenty-six rushes netted 59 yards total, with Berry’s 12 carries good for 66 yards (his long the game’s lone highlight). The leftovers? Effectively stuffed, dragging the average to 2.3 yards per tote.
No breadth, no verticality, no menace — defenses rush just three while dropping eight into coverage, but those three linemen blow up the pocket almost every snap, the line folds, and you’re punting from deep in your own end.
Cue the QB swap, the evening’s scripted drama. Nussmeier opened crisp — that 18-for-21 flurry — but it was chaff, chaff to cheat the collapse.
Third quarter, down 17-6, red-zone rituals reduced to field goals and fumbles, the interim staff mercifully yanked him for sophomore Michael van Buren.
Overdue?
Yes.
Essential?
Absolutely.
Van Buren, legs for days (compared to Nuss) and grit in spades, finished only 5-for-11, 52 yards (there were at least two drops, though) — but his wheels flipped failures into first downs. Gift-wrapped field position from a Harold Perkins strip-sack? He bolted for eight when the pocket vaporized. Nussmeier lacks that gear; he’s a pocket prince in a pauper’s court.
Hot take chill: Spare Nussmeier the pyre. He’s no messiah. His reads have rusted, freezing under fire like frostbite. But indict the infrastructure.
Last season, shielded by All-SEC anchors like Will Campbell and Emory Jones, along with Garrett Dellinger, and Miles Frazier, he authored LSU’s second-best passing year ever with no rushing. But at least they could pass block. This campaign? Zero rush juice (98th nationally), zero sanctuary (2.8 sacks/game, SEC basement), a blueprint that bottlenecks the battlefield.
Rib-racked virtually every drop back this season, he’s weathered a carousel of coaches (Orgeron, Kelly, now Wilson’s steadying hand) and coordinators galore (Peetz, Denbrock, Sloane, Atkins). A Louisiana native who clearly loves LSU, he captained from the bench Saturday night when he was pulled late in the third quarter, no sulk in sight. Pro path? From predicted first rounder at the season’s start to a likely mid-rounder, buoyed by his NFL-coach pops, but viable. Just not viable here. Not with the sieve he has for an offensive line.
Van Buren injects arrhythmia — elusiveness to camouflage the line’s lapses, a post-bye wrinkle Alabama couldn’t cram. Pencil him in for the stretch run. Why? Nussmeier’s upright archetype is napalm with this LSU offensive front.
One SEC evaluator’s halftime text: “It’s blindfolded darts. Hand him wheels, or harvest the Ls.”
At 5-4, LSU’s still eyeing bowl eligibility but battered — 92nd in yards, 96th in points (23.3/game). The NIL and revenue-sharing avalanche acquired atoms, not alchemy. No unity. No schematic shift. No field-filling fire.
Interim HC Frank Wilson’s spin room? “Proximity to progress. Tweaks inbound.” Fine words, but the real test looms next Saturday at 11:45 a.m. CT in Tiger Stadium, where Arkansas — averaging 35.4 points per game in a pseudo throwback to LSU’s own 2023 fireworks factory — rolls into Death Valley. To snap this skid, dodge a fourth straight L, and snag that Golden Boot for the fifth consecutive year, the Tigers may need to erupt for at least 40 on the scoreboard. And against a Hogs defense that’s been a colander all season — 123rd nationally in total defense, coughing up 35+ in four straight and ranking dead last in the SEC against the run — this could be the soft landing LSU’s offense desperately needs.
Van Buren’s spark plus Fayetteville’s pitiful defense might finally light the fuse.
But leaving Nuss back their driving the bus throwing only screens and outside-the-hash dinks and dunks probably won’t even work against Arkansas’ defense – the worst one in the SEC this season.
Be the first to comment