Lane Kiffin believes LSU could compete with anybody in college football if it were healthy. After Saturday’s 31–0 shutout of Mississippi State, he made clear that he still feels that way. “This team was built to be a championship team,” Kiffin said, adding that it could “match up with anybody if we were healthy.”
But LSU isn’t healthy, and it isn’t going to get everybody back. Several important players are out for the season, Sam Leavitt is dealing with a hamstring injury, and the Tigers lost Princewill Umanmielen and Jackson Harris during Saturday’s game. Kiffin has five SEC games left and probably needs to win every one of them to make the College Football Playoff. He has to do it with the players he has now, not the team he planned to have.
Three of those five games are on the road, where LSU hasn’t won an SEC game since beating Arkansas, 34–10, on October 19, 2024. Eight straight conference road losses have followed. If Kiffin is going to make a playoff run in his first year, that streak has to end next Saturday at Auburn.
And Auburn isn’t the soft landing it might have appeared to be a week ago. The Tigers just beat No. 1 Georgia, 27–24, in Athens. Tennessee, another LSU road opponent, beat Alabama, 26–10, on Saturday. Florida beat Texas, 27–24, in Austin, while Kentucky followed its overtime win over LSU by beating Oklahoma, 21–13. LSU still gets Alabama and Texas at home, but Saturday’s results didn’t make its remaining schedule any easier.
Kiffin knows LSU has already used up much of its room for error. He kept coming back to last week’s 35–34 overtime loss at Kentucky during his postgame news conference. “We screwed that fricking game up so many times,” he said. “Just handed it away.” Injuries have hurt LSU, but Kiffin wasn’t blaming the Kentucky loss on injuries. His team had chances to put the game away and didn’t do it.
Against Mississippi State, LSU finished the plays that mattered. The Bulldogs crossed midfield on seven of nine possessions and got inside LSU’s 40 five times. They gained 291 yards and outgained the Tigers on the ground, 170–90. But they scored no points. Mississippi State went 0-for-5 on fourth down, including a goal-line stand late in the first half that kept LSU ahead 21–0.
“0-for-5 on fourth downs was obviously really critical,” Kiffin said. He credited Blake Baker for an aggressive plan on third and fourth downs, and the players for executing it. Jordan Ross disrupted the Bulldogs’ backfield, Dylan Carpenter stepped in after Umanmielen went out, and the secondary made several important stops. LSU’s backups helped preserve the shutout in the fourth quarter. It was LSU’s first against an SEC opponent since 2007, a span of 154 conference games.
There’s a fair question about how much the result tells us, though. Mississippi State played without starting quarterback Kamario Taylor and running back Fluff Bothwell. Taylor had thrown 17 touchdown passes coming into the week, and his ability to run gives Jeff Lebby’s offense another problem for defenses to solve. With both starters available, the Bulldogs might well have turned at least some of those trips into LSU territory into points.
Kiffin wasn’t interested in making excuses for Mississippi State. “I know people are going to talk about injuries and that will be a storyline,” he said. “But there ain’t a team in America that has more significant players standing on the sideline than us. So, not a lot of pity there.” He’s right that LSU has had more than its share of injuries. But his own claim about what a healthy LSU could accomplish is a reminder that missing players matter on both sides.
What Saturday showed is that LSU can adjust. Baker moved people around and kept making stops after losing his top pass rusher. On offense, Leavitt had his best game at LSU despite a hamstring problem Kiffin said he aggravated during practice. He completed 31 of 38 passes for 289 yards and four touchdowns without an interception. He had thrown eight interceptions in the first six games, at least one in each.
Without his usual mobility, Leavitt stayed in the pocket and took what the defense gave him. He connected with nine receivers. Harris caught two touchdown passes before leaving injured; Eugene Wilson III and Malik Elzy caught the other two. Kiffin said the staff spent the week talking to Leavitt about trusting his receivers. He finally looked comfortable doing it for an entire game.
Kiffin also wanted to see LSU finish a game. At halftime, leading 21–0, he told the players to act as though they were down ten. “That was really a challenge to complete the game, play a complete game,” he said. After what happened at Kentucky, he wasn’t going to let the score become an excuse to ease up. LSU added ten points in the second half and never let Mississippi State score.
That’s a good start, but it isn’t proof LSU has solved everything. The Bulldogs were missing their starting backfield, and LSU played at home. The next five games will tell us more about the offense, Baker’s defense and how well Kiffin can manage a roster that keeps losing people.
LSU goes to Auburn on October 24, then gets an open date before Alabama and Texas visit Tiger Stadium on successive Saturdays. The Tigers finish at Tennessee and Arkansas. Arkansas is struggling despite its win at Vanderbilt, but LSU hasn’t earned the right to overlook any SEC road game. Win all five and LSU is 10–2, with a serious playoff case. Lose another and the Tigers will need help.
Kiffin says he tries not to discuss the playoff with his team. “I don’t ever talk about playoffs,” he said. “I don’t ever talk about that because that’s just outcome.” But he admitted that Friday night, before Mississippi State, he made an exception. “We have to win tomorrow,” he told the players. “There is no, there’s no other option, but winning this game.”
He got the response he wanted Saturday. The defense made the stops, Leavitt protected the ball and LSU put away an opponent it was supposed to beat. Kiffin believes the team he built could compete with anybody when healthy. The team he has now is beginning to play better, but it faces a much harder question: Can it win five straight, including three on the road?
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