There's a common theme in sports where teams coming off a big, emotional win like the one LSU had against Ole Miss two weekends ago, always seem to come out flat the next week and either play a team much closer than they should or outright lose to an inferior opponent. Just look at Alabama, they beat Georgia in last-minute fashion before turning around and losing to Vanderbilt the next week (and nearly losing to South Carolina after that).
This isn't just a thing in football either. It happens in every sport at every level across the world, and no matter how many times it happens, the trend continues. It's easy to say that after a big win, teams will underestimate their next opponent because they think they're unbeatable, but at this point, coaches understand what a trap game is and how to prepare their teams for it, and yet we see team after team fall victim to them every week.
LSU on Saturday was one of the few exceptions to this trend. After a wildly emotional finish to the Ole Miss game in which the Tigers won in overtime after not leading for a single second, they had to travel to Fayetteville to play a pesky Arkansas team who was coming off a bye week. This game had trap written all over it, but LSU jumped on the Razorbacks early and never looked back, eventually beating them 34-10.
"What I'm most proud of from our team is that they had to go on the road and match the intensity and the physicality of an opponent who was coming off a bye week," said LSU Head Coach Brian Kelly on Monday. "I thought we did that very well. That was really the mantra all week; we have to come off playing an emotional overtime game against Ole Miss and then regroup and go on the road in a hostile environment and play with an extra heartbeat."
If you look back at the Tigers previous two road games against USC and South Carolina, the Tigers struggled to get off to a fast start. They didn't score a single point in the first quarter of either of those games while their defense surrendered a combined 34 points in the first half.
When talking about their effort against South Carolina, their first true road game, Kelly called his team reactive, saying they waited for SC to hit the first. However, he thought they were the ones hitting first this weekend.
"I thought we were reactive against South Carolina," said Kelly. "We waited for things to happen, and as you know we got down 17 points. This game we didn't wait around, and that's how we need to play this weekend against an outstanding A&M team."
The Tigers have an even tougher road test this weekend when they travel to College Station to take on the 14th-ranked Texas A&M Aggies. LSU has to go into Kyle Field with the same mentality they had against Arkansas; punch them in the mouth first and make A&M react to what you're doing. They can't afford to have another slow start on the road in this battle for first place in the SEC. If they can strike first, things will become a lot easier on Saturday.
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