The Tigers on Tigers battle down on the bayou was anything but a battle. It was a good-ole-fashioned slaughter in favor of LSU, and that was mostly because of the dominating running game led by #7 Leonard Fournette. If you haven't seen the highlight of Fournette running through guys while he sheds tacklers like a snakeskin, go ahead and check the internet. I'm sure you'll see it, as it's everywhere.
Fournette will get all the talk, all the Heisman projections, all the discussion about why he's still being forced to play at the college level when he's obviously ready for the pros right now. Because that's what we do in college football. We blow up good performances and make them into world-beating projections for all time. And why wouldn't you in this case? Fournette is a 6-1, 230 pound wrecking ball who can ramp up to ramming speed like he's about to blow open the door on a police raid. But also remember, he's done this before against teams that can't protect against the run, and Auburn sure as hell can't guard the run at all.
Besides Fournette going off, the thing that jumped out to me about LSU's offense was how great their blockers were in the run game. My favorite guy on the team now has to be their stout fullback #44 John David Moore. For starters, Moore is a walk-on. He's also an architectural major. There's no reason he should be as good as he is springing open holes for Fournette, but he looked amazing against Auburn. Whenever there was a big run, you could be sure that it was Moore leading the way and laying the key block that opened up whatever daylight Fournette needed. 228 yards with of daylight for that young man.
The one takeaway I have from watching Auburn defend the run was that it's even more horrifying than it seemed from the box scores. Why? Because Auburn was putting 8 guys in the box and at times 6 guys on the line before the snap. Not even in blitzes, they were actually lining up that way and showing full line stacking before LSU even tried to run. AND LSU STILL DUMPTRUCKED THEM. Part of that is LSU being great, have no doubt. The other part is that from a pure hat-on-a-hat game in the trenches? Auburn is flat wretched. And what's worse, they looked like they gave up. At one point even Gary Danielson called out a safety on one of Fournette's TD runs. You could actually see #23 for Johnathon Ford for Auburn quit on a run as he slowed up and half-assed waved his hand at Fournette as he went by, bowling over one of Ford's teammates. That kind of thing shows exactly what kind of team Auburn has. They are a me-first bunch soft bunch of slackers. And in the SEC that will get you killed.
Once again, if you were forced to watch this blowout, and by my guess most people checked out when it got to be 24-0 at the half, you saw another great example of how far QB play has fallen in the SEC. You will hear me harp on this a good bit this season, and there's a reason. This crop of QB's mostly sucks. They can't make changes at the line, they don't read defenses at the snap, and they don't know how to check off safeties with their eyes. It's a stare-down league, and the two QB's playing in this LSU-Auburn match were no different.
While the running games went off, the passing games were cringe-worthy. Let's start with the winning QB Brandon Harris. He went 12-17 with 1 TD and 74 yards. Most of you would say he didn't have to throw with the way the running game was going. That's true, but when he did it was very little down the field. Much of it was sweeping touch-pass plays where he only had to complete a pass that was essentially a forward hand off. Against MS State, Harris only had 71 yards on 14 attempts. As we get deeper into the season, and they play better teams, LSU is going to have a problem. I would say against Texas A&M they will likely have a BIG problem, because you can't run forever. At some point you have to catch up, and I'm not sure Harris has the skills to do that. However, he can run and make defenses pay if they leave somebody ridiculously wide open.
But if Harris is questionable, Jeremy Johnson was downright abominable. I heard how great Johnson was going to be by pundits everywhere. Here's a bunch of those articles that look absolutely absurd right now.
http://www.teamspeedkills.com/2015/4/24/8488493/jeremy-johnson-heisman-candidate-auburn-tigers-football
http://www.al.com/auburnfootball/index.ssf/2015/07/jeremy_johnsons_heisman_trophy.html
http://flywareagle.com/2014/12/16/auburn-football-quarterback-jeremy-johnson-2015-heisman-trophy-candidate/
Yeah, I've written articles before where I said something dumb, including picks on this very blog. But what I've never done is tell you a guy in the preseason will win the Heisman, because that's NEVER the way it goes. And it's not going that way for Johnson right now. Allow me to paint the picture of how bad it got.
Johnson's first mistake was actually throwing the ball backwards. Yep. As in the ball completely slipping out of his hand and flying backwards. Remember when Jameis Winston tossed a ball backwards in the playoff game against Oregon? It was like that, except nobody was chasing Johnson, which makes it even dumber. But it got worse! Next, he threw into double coverage down the field after staring at his receiver, and got picked off. Then, he should have gotten picked off again for the same thing in the second quarter, but the DB dropped the ball. Finally, he was sacked and fumbled and LSU recovered inside Auburn's own 10 yard line. Johnson went 11-19 for 100 yards passing, 2 passing TDs, and 2 turnovers. But the numbers don't tell the story and most of that was in garbage time. If not for the long running TD Johnson had, it would have been a complete disaster.
Which leads me to talk about Auburn's offense. They are completely built around getting to the edge with jet sweeps and pitch plays, they can't really throw the ball down the field, and the QB running game comes into play when the defense abandons the middle to guard the edge. If a team is solid on the edge with the DBs, and the linebackers don't overpursue? Auburn's dead in the water. That's it, that's all they have. An offense that was once so potent is frankly simple to completely shut down, and that's a shame if you're an Auburn fan. For the rest of the league, it's easy pickings.
It's not all sunshine and farts for LSU either, despite the score. Even though Fournette running over people gave me chills, I've seen this before. He did it against every bad team he played last year, before struggling hard against the 4 teams in the SEC with a solid defense. Auburn USED to be one of those, but now the hardest defenses LSU will face against the run are Alabama, Florida, Arkansas, and possibly A&M or Ole Miss. And two of those teams are currently inept on offense. I want to see how Fournette and the lack of passing attack fare against a better defense, but we'll have to wait until the second half of the season since LSU has 3 easy mow-down teams before they get to Florida in mid-October.
Overall, if you're playing either team, defensively you shouldn't put any of your defensive backs outside the 10 yard box until they can prove there's a threat down the field. Also, offensively I'd stay outside of the middle against LSU early, instead opting for a solid screen and tight end passing game, then switch to up the middle runs later as the defense lineman get tired of running around chasing their tails. If you're facing Auburn offensively, just line and hit them in the mouth. They'll give up eventually.
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