If anything, this 2019 LSU football team knows how to dig deep
At 6:31 p.m. Saturday night, all of Tiger Stadium, Baton Rouge and parts of Louisiana exhaled.
It’s when quarterback Joe Burrow took one last knee to run out the clock on LSU’s toughest opponent yet.
Itself.
No doubt the No. 2 Tigers were pushed to the limit by No. 9 Auburn in a 23-20 victory that sent LSU unbeaten into its open date week before Game of Century Part Deux at unbeaten No. 1 Alabama.
History has shown LSU-Auburn games are usually crazy down-to-wire affairs. Add Saturday’s nail biter, and the last 11-of-16 games between the teams have been decided seven points or less, including the last four by a combined 14 points.
Twelve penalties, Derek Stingley’s first lost punt fumble of the year, Burrow’s fourth interception of the season and a missed extra point might have derailed less experienced teams who haven't had to walk through the fire.
But LSU (8-0 overall, 4-0 SEC West) in winning its third game of the year over a top 10 ranked opponent?
“We know how to win a gritty game,” said tight end Thaddeus Moss, one of four LSU receivers with seven or more catches. “We know how to keep chopping wood. We know how to play team football. We know how to win football games.”
Even when the score is 10-10 at the half and your 50.1 points per game offense is trying to solve “a defense we haven’t seen from them or anyone else this season,” Burrow said. The answer came in the second half when LSU offensive coordinator Steve Ensminger combined a fast tempo pace with old school SEC slobber knocker mentality.
Though Burrow had career highs of 32 completions and 42 attempts in his 321-yard, one-TD passing day, it was running back Clyde Edwards-Helaire who flipped the game for the home team that finished with 508 yards total offense.
LSU saw its second and third possessions of the second half die respectively on a failed fourth-and-goal gamble at the Auburn 1 and Burrow being intercepted by Auburn’s Robert McCreary at the Auburn 2.
Then, word came down from Ensminger in the press box as LSU took over at the Auburn 45.
Run the damned ball.
“Knowing the main focus is running the ball and knowing there’s just one running back in the game,” Edwards-Helaire said, “I understood I needed to get the necessary yardage while being calm and reading my keys.”
In the next 55 seconds on four straight carries, he ran for 22 yards, 12 yards, 5 yards and crashed in the end zone on a 6-yard run that gave LSU the lead for good at 16-13 with 4:58 remaining in the third quarter.
“Understanding the time of game and the score, it’s a moment I grew up always wanting,” said Edwards-Helaire, a former Baton Rouge Catholic High star, who ran for 120 of his 136 yards in the second half.
LSU’s defense cranked up the intensity. It forced Auburn (6-2, 3-2 SEC West) to punt on six straight second-half possessions until the visitors scored a TD with 2:32 left.
LSU’s eventual winning margin was on a 67-yard possession that immediately followed the “Clyde Ride” drive.
On third-and-two at the Auburn 7 with an empty backfield and LSU receivers flanked from sideline to sideline, Burrow caught Auburn’s defense with its pants down scooting up the middle for the TD and a 23-13 lead with 13:29 left in the fourth quarter.
“It (the Auburn defense) just parted like the red sea,” said Burrow, who earlier bounced up from a brutal first-half on a scramble for a first down.
From there, LSU somehow staggered to the finish line a winner, especially after Derrick Dillon recovered Auburn’s onside kickoff with 2:31 left.
Auburn had no timeouts remaining. LSU, thanks to a first down play that was nullified by a holding penalty but ran off valuable seconds, was able to kill the rest of the clock.
“A lesser team would not have won that game,” LSU coach Ed Orgeron said. “Auburn came to play. Adversity hit us. We weren’t playing well in the first half, but you should have seen this locker room. They (the LSU players) were calm. There was confidence. We felt we were going to win the game.”
Which is why after eight straight losses to Alabama, this LSU team is the best equipped to beat the Tide since its 9-6 overtime win in the first field-goal filled Game of the Century in Tuscaloosa in 2011.
“We’ve got a great team, man,” LSU defensive end Rashard Lawrence said. “You can see it on the outside looking in. We bond together and really love each other.”
The next two weeks are going to be a looooonnnngggg 14 days.