At 5-4 with three tough games left, Arkansas is no lock for a bowl. After the disappointment against Liberty, a win over LSU would go a long way for the program.
The opportunity might be there, as LSU is coming off a tough and emotional win over Alabama. There’s a good chance they’ll be flat for an 11 am road game. Arkansas needs to take advantage.
Of course, the Hogs have issues of their own. KJ Jefferson remains limited in practice, and it’s entirely possible that he doesn’t play. Even if he’s cleared to go, Sam Pittman is going to have to make a tough decision, especially if he starts as badly as he started the Liberty game.
Meet the Tigers
Confused by any of the advanced stats you see here? Be sure to check out the glossary.
Model pick: LSU by 7.
Our advanced stats have loved LSU all season, and only in the last few weeks have the final scores begun to reflect how good LSU is. The Tigers suffered a fluky loss to Florida State and a mistake-filled blowout loss to Tennessee, but there’s been nothing fluky about their wins over Ole Miss and Alabama that put them in the SEC West lead.
Arkansas has been remarkably consistent this year. Our numbers say the Hogs are basically a 7-5 team and have never looked any better or worse than that.
Scouting Report
LSU’s offense is the Jayden Daniels show. The Tigers are very pass-heavy in terms of playcalling, knowing that Daniels is one of nation’s best scramblers and he loves to take off. He’s a pretty good passer too, mostly taking safe, short throws to keep the offense on schedule. Daniels’s scrambling means he sometimes takes too many sacks, but it’s just so hard to get this offense behind the chains. Get ready for long, soul-draining drives.
The defense does have some issues. It is vulnerable to efficient run games and gives up too many big plays through the air. Opponents have been able to move the ball just fine… but LSU’s elite red zone defense has saved it many times this year.
When Arkansas has the ball
The LSU defense, elite during the height of the Les Miles era, slowly declined while Ed Orgeron was head coach, bottoming out with two bad seasons in 2020 and 2021 following the national title and the departure of Dave Aranda. This year’s defense is not elite by any stretch, but it is competent, and has been situationally good when the Tigers need it most.
LSU does two things really well: they don’t give up big plays, and they tighten up in the red zone. If you’re only going to be good at two things, those aren’t bad options! The Tigers have been gashed too often on the ground, and big plays against them tend to come through the air.
Arkansas’ numbers took a small step back after the disaster against Liberty, but the damage wasn’t too good, since advanced stats thought Liberty already had a really good defense.
Big runs are not easy to come by, as no team in the country allows fewer runs of 10+ yards than LSU. However, the Tigers don’t create a lot of negative runs (37th) and far too many runs are successful (64th). The Hogs were shockingly inefficient on the ground against Liberty due to a total inability to block some basic twists, but the good news is that LSU has been a bit less disruptive against the run all year.
One of the big message board and talk radio concerns this week has been ‘what if every remaining opponent watches film and just copies what Liberty did to the Hog run game?‘ Obviously, there’s a risk of that happening. In 2020, every opponent copied what Arkansas did to Mississippi State’s Air Raid and that’s basically the only defense Mike Leach and Co. have seen since.
But the Air Raid was a known schematic flaw, while what happened against Liberty wasn’t. For all the complaints about Kendal Briles, I think that Cody Kennedy is one who should be feeling the heat. The Hogs looked totally unprepared for a twist game that they had seen on film. Maybe it takes extra practice to prepare, maybe one or two of your run concepts don’t work as well… but to have to abandon your entire base run game because you simply cannot block Liberty is inexcusable.
So, yes, it’s possible that any of the last three opponents could decide that Arkansas can’t block twists and add that to their gameplan. Ole Miss would be the most likely, simply because LSU and Mizzou already have good defenses, and it may not be worth the risk to try something totally different. Plus, Arkansas eventually solved what Liberty was doing, even though it came too late.
I do think to have a chance Arkansas has to start faster on offense, which likely means going to the bread-and-butter inside zones earlier. That’s been Arkansas’ most effective run all season, but for much of the year, Briles has been reluctant to go right to it, preferring instead to use edge runs to get a better look at what the defense is doing. Those looks haven’t worked well, and the Hogs often don’t move the ball at all during their first couple of drives.
Any realistic chance of an Arkansas win will revolved around Jefferson’s health. If he’s close to 100%, the Hogs might be fine, as LSU’s pass defense is nothing special. If he’s limited in practice all week again, I don’t think the Hogs can live up to these numbers, and that will be an issue given the matchup on the other side of the ball.
When LSU has the ball
ESPN’s Bill Connelly quipped that he found it funny when a commentator said that new LSU QB Jayden Daniels “needed to learn the Mike Denbrock offense” (Mike Denbrock is LSU’s offensive coordinator). The reality, Connelly said, is that every offense Jayden Daniels plays in is the Jayden Daniels offense.
Denbrock, then, has learned to build everything around his quarterback, a transfer from Arizona State. Daniels is a decent passer, but he’s a prolific scrambler. On many of his dropbacks, he’ll take a peak at his first look and then take off if it isn’t available.
There are pros and cons to this, but for LSU, the pros overwhelmingly outweigh the cons. The Tigers are ultra-efficient (7th) and ultra-on-schedule (8th). Daniels has a very high completion percentage (70%) and never puts the ball in harm’s way (one interception, team is 2nd in turnover rate).
Soooo, how do you stop this? It’s not easy. You basically have to wait for them to mess up. They did it a ton early in the year, but as the weeks have passed and the team has gotten more comfortable, the mistakes have been fewer and fewer. This is a pretty terrible matchup for Arkansas’ defense, as LSU will happily go on long, soul-crushing drives if the Hogs try a 3-man front, while Daniels will just scramble 20 times if the Hogs go 4-man front and play man.
The Tigers are 86th in adjusted run rate, but they actually have even fewer called runs, as Daniels is usually good for anywhere from four to 12 scrambles per game that started as called passes. He does take too many sacks (SEC-worst 31), but many of them are for very short losses. He’s only been pressured on 16% of his dropbacks (2nd-best in SEC) and the ball is out of his hands in an average of 2.1 seconds on throws (3rd-best). Again, everything for LSU is about efficiency, and they’ll sacrifice big pass plays to do it. That’s been bad news for Kayshon Boutte, their star receiver who has had a disappointing year, but it’s been good for the offense as a whole.
LSU’s running backs don’t carry the ball all that often – starter Josh Williams averages under nine carries per game – but they’ve gotten much better as the season has gone on. Daniels will keep on some read plays, but again, a lot of the damage that LSU will do with the run is going to come from scrambles.
Keys to the Game
- Win the big play battle. LSU’s offense doesn’t create a ton of big plays, and their defense doesn’t allow very many. A few big plays can flip an otherwise close game.
- Find a way to knock of the Tigers off-schedule. LSU’s extremely efficient offense relies on Jayden Daniels making good decisions. Whether it’s pressure or good coverage, the Hogs have to find a way to take him off his game.
- Start fast. LSU is in high danger of a hangover performance after their huge win over Alabama. Arkansas has been very slow-starting almost all season, and if they start slow again, the Tigers might be able to settle down and find their groove. As mentioned above, I think going straight to the Hogs’ best runs is a good starting point.
Thanks for reading! Be sure to follow us on Twitter.
The latest from Fayette Villains, straight to your inbox
Enter your email to subscribe and receive new post alerts and other updates. You can unsubscribe at any time.