CFB Play-Off: LSU: Tiger Walk or Tiger Upset?
The College Football Play-Off is upon us on Saturday, and we’re all quite excited. After arguments over neutral site bowl games, losses to South Carolina/Arizona State/Kansas State, it’s all set in place, and 4 winners of 4 conferences are in the four semi-finals. As usual – it seems – the best team is being left out in Oregon, but that’s due to their self-shooting at Arizona State, so no sympathy there.
But we’re here now, and it’s LSU, Ohio State, Clemson and Oklahoma who will battle it out for the National Championship on January 13th.
On December 28th LSU will face off with Oklahoma and Ohio State will play Clemson.
The one that’s being talked about offensively is the LSU vs Oklahoma game. It features two gamechanging quarterbacks in Heisman Winner Joe Burrow, and Oklahoma QB Jalen Hurts. There is also a ton of receiving talent, but ‘feature film’ guys J’Marr Chase (LSU), Justin Jefferson (LSU) and Ceedee Lamb (Oklahoma). Burrow has excellence out of the backfield in Clyde Edwards-Helaire, although there are some who are worried about the decision to play him come game-time. On Oklahoma’s side they’ve got Kennedy Brooks, who’s an ample-enough running back but still not in the league of Tre Sermon, who went down in the Iowa State game with a knee injury and will never return.
On the other end of spectrum, Oklahoma is suffering- particularly with news that DE Ronnie Perkins has been suspended. However, first-round junior Kenneth Murray, who has led the team with 95 tackles, is still a star that LSU should be looking out for. If Cedee Lamb is covered up – which could very well happen on Saturday – then Hurts could face a gaunlet of an every-improving secondary, featuring future first-rounder Grant Delphit, who is fit again.
The biggest key to the game, if we’re honest, isn’t Burrow. We’re confident that Burrow will happily put up big numbers backed up by the insanely good offensive strategy put forward by Joe Brady. Oklahoma – despite its improvement under Alex Grinch – aren’t a particularly great team. The biggest key to the game is Jalen Hurts.
Hurts is incredible at changing games with his feet (he’s quicker than Burrow), and his escapability has accounted for 1,255 yards and 18 trips to the end-zone. He’s also thrown for 32 touchdowns and only given up 7 interceptions – a big reason why he was second in Heisman voting this year.
All that is good, right? Well…..the only way that Oklahoma can keep up with LSU if Hurts doesn’t do something stupid. He has a capacity to turn over the ball, and there has been at least one of his efforts in the red-zone that have missed his own player and gone into a grateful defender’s arms. If he does that against LSU, then this one will get ugly. Quickly.
Anyway, here’s the prediction:
LSU 41, Oklahoma 21