Mississippi State upsets defending national champion LSU in Mike Leach’s SEC head-coaching debut
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It would have been completely unrealistic to believe that LSU would just pick up where it left off after winning the national championship last year.
After all, so many of the faces that made that LSU team one of the best college football teams ever have moved on. If you’re Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Joe Burrow and his 13 draft pick teammates, you moved on to the NFL. Or if you’re offensive assistant wunderkind Joe Brady and defensive coordinator Dave Aranda, you moved on to bigger coaching jobs.
What was left behind was on display on Saturday in the season opener against Mississippi State. Let’s just say the results were mixed.
Mississippi State, in Mike Leach’s debut as an SEC head coach, upset the sixth-ranked Tigers 44-34 in Baton Rouge. It marked the first time a defending national champion lost its opener since 1998, when Michigan lost 36-20 to Notre Dame.
The Bulldogs, running Leach’s famous Air Raid scheme, put up a whopping 632 yards of offense on an LSU defense full of new faces. K.J. Costello, MSU’s prized graduate transfer quarterback from Stanford, made some rough mistakes in the fourth quarter but emerged with an SEC single-game record with 623 passing yards.
Not bad for a debut.
Speaking of debuts, Myles Brennan’s first start for LSU after the departure of Burrow was an up-and-down affair. He threw for 345 yards and three touchdowns, but often was late with his decisions — especially in the first half. He looked overwhelmed by pressure from the MSU front, and did not have the fluidity to elude that pressure like Burrow did throughout the 2019 season.
Brennan seemed to have his best chemistry with Terrace Marshall Jr. Their 33-yard scoring connection cut Mississippi State’s lead to 34-31 with 11:01 to play. And after LSU’s defense forced a Costello fumble, a field goal tied the game at 34-34 a little more than a minute later.
From there, though, Costello took control.
First, he led a field goal drive that put the Bulldogs back ahead, 37-34 with 7:27 to play. And after the defense forced a three-and-out from LSU, Costello methodically picked apart the depleted LSU secondary like he had all afternoon. On third-and-9 from the LSU 24 — with the Tigers defense desperately needing a stop — he lofted in a beautiful 24-yard touchdown pass to Osirus Mitchell down the right sideline to put the game out of reach.
It was the fifth touchdown pass of the afternoon for Costello, the throw that put him over 600 yards for the afternoon and the score that officially spelled the end of LSU’s 16-game winning streak.
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