LSU’s loss to Florida State is one that will linger in the minds of the fans for a long time. It didn’t have many expectations heading into 2022. It’s the first year of the [autotag]Brian Kelly[/autotag] administration, and we knew this was going to be a rebuild.
This team is full of transfers and young guys. Even players that do have experience, like offensive lineman [autotag]Garrett Dellinger[/autotag], found themselves in a new role and position.
[autotag]Jayden Daniels[/autotag] had never played a game with these wide receivers. The defenders are still developing chemistry and learning how to communicate with one another.
There’s a lot that’s new here. New pieces can be cause for excitement, and in this case, many still are. Things needed to change, new players needed to be brought in. That doesn’t mean a transition is going to be easy.
We didn’t expect much, but that’s still a loss that hurts.
Optimism built throughout the summer as LSU gained momentum on the recruiting trail and we heard good thing after good thing about how players looked in camp.
After dropping the season opener in 2020 and 2021, this looked like a time where LSU might be able to start the year on the right foot.
With the way that game ended, what’s important here can become blurry. There’s so much to think about here and the blame doesn’t belong at the feet of any single entity. This was as much of a team loss as a loss can be.
Every unit had their good moments and their bad and the same can be said for individual players. Jayden Daniels legs kept LSU in the game, creating big first downs when LSU needed it most. He also marched LSU the entire length of the field to set up that final touchdown.
Daniels struggled in the first half, though. It’s hard to tell how much of his struggles were his own doing, the offensive line, the playcalling or the wide receivers. In the first half, nobody on offense really stepped up.
Daniels showed enough to keep the job moving forward. LSU doesn’t need to play musical chairs at quarterback right now. The Tigers need consistency, and it needs to allow someone to get comfortable back there.
It shouldn’t be lost on us that LSU did not quit. This team crawled back into this game and made some big plays in some big moments. The heartbreaking way in which it ended can make that easy to forget, but this was a one-point loss where a lot of the underlying numbers were solid.
Going forward, my opinion of this team has not changed much. It’s going to take some time to fix some of these issues, it always was, but they showed enough to where I think a fix is possible.
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