LSU defense still top-rated

In more good news regarding the upcoming Tulane-LSU showdown, the Tigers retained their position as the nation’s top-rated defense after suffocating South Carolina last Saturday. LSU currently leads the college football nation in four defensive categories: scoring (5.75 points per game), rush defense (26.75 yards per game), total defense (161.5 yards per game) and pass efficiency defense (67.69 rating). LSU is also fifth in sacks (5.25 per game) and seventh in pass defense, allowing an average 134.75 yards per game. The rest of it you know, i.e. LSU has shutout two teams already, including MSU, who the Tigers, like the Green Wave, faced its opening game, albeit it with—ahem—slightly different results (the Tigers steamrolled ‘em, 45-0). The stat the Flooded Nation needs to worry about is this one: LSU IS ALLOWING LESS THAN ONE YARD PER CARRY. How, again, did Tulane tame the essentially DII Lions last week? It certainly wasn’t quarterback heroics… Matt Forté may be Tulane’s bionic man, or at least its Hail Mary—one Toledo threw again and again to struggle past SLU, but the most running yards allowed by the Tigers this season were the 71 gained by No. 17 Virginia Tech. Matt Forte was gaining that many yards each quarter (on average) against SLU, and the Wave only won 35-27. Not exactly a typhoon—call it high tide. So it looks bleak, but, according to Coach Toledo, the Wave is going with the flow, ready for whatever trickery LSU Coach Les Miles has in store. Scratch that; call me unconfident at least in Miles pulling another fake field goal stunt this week. For the rest of it, well, stranger things have happened, and to a Toledo squad no less.

Said Toledo, at his weekly press conference Tuesday:
"I was telling our players that last night. When I was at Pacific, we played Iowa State and we had to bus from Stockton to San Francisco to catch a commercial plane. We had to leave at 4:00 in the morning, and I only had 50 guys. I told our players that if you are afraid, don't show up, so our starting tailback missed the bus and didn't show up at four. So we left, and I was going to start this little guy about 5-7 you know John Moorehouse from Tracy (Calif.) and sure enough, my tailback gets in his car and meets us at the airport. `Coach I am sorry I'm late' (he says) and then I say, no you are too late, you're not playing and you're staying home. Well we go with 49 players and Donny Duncan, who used to be the head coach of Oklahoma, he was there and they come out. They have like five strings and they run plays in pregame warm-up and we just keep backing up and up. We are about at our 15-yard line running plays and so the game starts. It is really windy and they kick off to us. We move the ball down the field and kick a field goal. So then we kick off to them and their first play, they fumble. We kick another field goal. Then all of a sudden things start happening. We are up 6-0 and then we score a touchdown and they score a touchdown. Moral of the story is with 49 guys and a little tailback name John Moorehouse and a quarterback who emailed me yesterday, who by the way was the freshman leading passer in the nation that year, No. 2 was Dan Marino. The point is, is that we won the football game and nobody gave us the chance to do that. I have had some of those things.”

Oh, wait—leading freshman passer in the nation? No matter, stranger things have happened! As for me, I prefer to think of it as an immensely difficult boss fight—pity there’s no way to re-load.