Moving on

Yesterday was a travel day, and I actually didn't get on the internet at all yesterday after oversleeping. Hence my lack of a post. No, I'm not on any kind of hurt-myself-watch.

It's time for the LSU fans, and even moreso the players and coaches, to move on from this loss. There is still much to play for, such as a conference championship against a pretty good but beatable Tennessee team. Yes, it was a very disappointing loss, but at the risk of rationalization, it doesn't appear in hindsight like we were playing championship calibre football for most of this season. We just kept winning, barely pulling out wins against teams many thought we should be beating convincingly.

We finally lost one of those again. Much has been said in analyzing why that happened, for which my contribution is simply this. We haven't had both the offense and the defense playing well at the same time since the Virginia Tech game, and Friday we saw that even within the game. The defense was very good in the first half, but the offense stunk. Then the offense started playing well just in time for the defense to collapse.

And no, I don't understand why we never blitz anymore.

But we move on. We get Tennessee this weekend, and once again we'll have to play them with key players at well below 100%. It is in this game where we will see, once and for all, the character of this team. Can they make the turnaround from the disappointing loss to come back and play in the next one? This next game, literally, is the entire season. And by "literally" I of course mean "figuratively". Lose this one, and ALL of our goals are lost. Win this one, and we are champions. Not national champions, but conference champions, and deservedly so. Say what you want about this team winning by luck, but we DID win all those games. We did not lose them. Those other teams, had they won those games, could also have been described as lucky. They didn't. We did. As a result, we still have a season.