What did we learn Week 3

Johnny Football, you can love him or hate him, he is a dynamic player that will lead his team to wins. The only real problem is the offense can not keep up with the woefully inadequate defense at Texas A & M. A broadcaster on the Rice game proclaimed that TAMU was an SEC caliber defense, not even close. I will grant you that Alabama is good but do we really know. They themselves left a lot of plays on the field. Never the less, both teams will be in the hunt for the chance to represent the SEC West division in Atlanta.

Here we go with some observations;

1.   Coaches hot seat list;

          Bo Pelini was hired to resurrect the "Black Shirts" at Nebraska - failed so far.

          Dan Mullen is losing the recruiting battle to in-state rival Ole Miss. MSU will be looking soon.

          Lane Kiffen will only survive until USC can restock the shelves from probation (2yr max)

          Mack Brown - if he were a roast, you'd stick a fork in him at Texas.

2.    Nick Saban's next job, Texas! Can you imagine how he could lock up the talent rich state and build another dynasty.

3.    Senior QB's make all of the difference in an offense's production. Just look around the programs that are lighting up the scoreboard and in most of them there is a seasoned veteran.

4.    Auburn is better but there is night and day difference between Auburn and any of the top tier teams in the SEC. LSU, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Texas A & M all have strong enough defenses and balanced offenses that do not need to scheme you to be successful.

5.    Want to talk about a fast paced offense, Arizona St ran 52 plays in the first half Saturday night. I think they finished near 100. But because of this helter-skelter approach they often times look undisciplined and random. It must have worked, they won the game over Wisconsin.

Some quick thoughts on the LSU/TAMU game tomorrow

     I just wanted to post a few thoughts on tomorrow's game before I go to sleep. This game should be very exciting in my opinion.  In spite of the 11 am cst kickoff time, I have a feeling the crowd will be raucous.  I feel fairly certain that there will be plenty of Tiger fans crashing the midnight yell practice of the Aggies.  That will could make for an interesting atmosphere before and during the game.  Anyways, LSU will have to make some big plays early to take the home crowd out of it.  In particular, the LSU DE's, Mingo and Montgomery, must maintain containment on Manziel.  On top of that, I think Eric Reid must have a spectacular game like he did against South Carolina in order for LSU to contain the Aggie offense.  I found a great article that sums up the approach to stopping the Aggie offense here.  When LSU is on offense, they will need to establish the run game much like the USC game last week.  Also the receivers need to continue to catch passes and move the chains on third downs.  Mettenberger had a much improved game last week and I would like to see him build on that.

     Two hidden keys that I think will give great insight as to how this game will end up are:  1) if you see Les Miles with a play chart in his hands on the sideline and 2) the play calling on offense of the second series for LSU.  If you see the first item and the second item seems to flow/feed off of the first series then LSU will cruise to a victory over TAMU.  However, if you don't see number 1 then be warry.  And if you don't see number 2 then it will be a long day for the Tigers.

     I have a feeling we will see both of those things listed tomorrow and LSU will rack up another impressive performance stat wise, the scoreboard may not indicate that same. My prediction:

LSU 24  TAMU 17  (late td by TAMU makes it close)