Three Observations: Secondary making strides, running attack has best game yet and Burrow's historic season
LSU secondary making considerable strides
Jordan Love is not a bad quarterback. In fact he's a very good quarterback which is what makes the performance by the LSU secondary so impressive.
Saturday, the guy who coach Ed Orgeron called earlier in the week, a future first round pick, was held to 130 yards passing, three interceptions and no touchdowns.
The dominance wasn't always apparent in the first half as Love made some of those eyebrow-raising reads that makes a quarterback of his stature so good. One play seemingly changed the tone of the game.
With the Tigers leading 14-6 early in the second quarter, Love was driving the Aggies down the field and decided to take a shot to the endzone, right in the direction of freshman cornerback Derek Stingley Jr.
The freshman Stingley picked off his second pass this season to give the ball back to the offense, a drive that would result in a touchdown and a two score lead heading into halftime.
The Tigers would pick off Love two more times on the day, with Kary Vincent and Grant Delpit each picking of their first passes of the season. It was the defenses ability in the first half to bend but not break that ultimately made the difference.
Delpit said the defense heard the noise the last two weeks surrounding their performance, electing to use it as fuel instead of tearing them down.
"I think as a defense we played hard, we ran to the ball, made the tackles and made the plays when they came to us so I thought that was big," Delpit said. "I think we came and shut up a lot of doubters and now we have to keep it up."
Running game shows signs of potential with more carries for freshmen
Caught in the middle of the dominant performance from the passing game, the running attack has gone relatively unnoticed over the last two weeks but was effective Saturday.
In total, the running backs and Burrow combined for 248 yards on 51 carries, good for a 4.9 yard average. Clyde Edwards-Helaire ruled the day, going for 72 yards on 14 carries but the freshmen John Emery and Tyrion Davis-Price carried a much heavier load with the loss of Lanard Fournette.
Emery ran for 45 yards on eight carries while Davis-Price added 53 yards on 11 carries. With their performances today, it will be interesting how much work the coaching staff will trust them with moving forward as Florida, Mississippi State, Auburn and Alabama are up next.
It was an important day, Orgeron said, to establish the run game as the team has been aiming for more balance while also trying to control the clock.
"We wanted to run the football more," Orgeron said. "There will be some games where we will have to use that type of time management. It wasn't as fun, but it worked."
Joe Burrow's historic season continues, on pace to shatter school records
It was another sensational performance out of senior LSU quarterback Joe Burrow on Saturday as he threw for 344 yards, five touchdowns and ran for an additional score with 42 yards on the ground.
Yet Burrow wasn't pleased with his effort.
"I left some throws out on the field, turned the ball over way too much," Burrow said. "We can be as good as we want to be. The only team that can shut us down is us and as long as we don't turn the ball over in SEC play, we'll be fine."
With Saturday's game in the books, Burrow is now tied for fifth all time for touchdowns in a season by an LSU quarterback with 22 through five games. That's only six off the school record held by Jamarcus Russell and Matt Mauck.
In addition, his 38 career touchdowns as a Tiger are good for fourth best in program history with still seven games to go in the regular season.
