Garrett Dellinger has been integral part of LSU's offensive line for the past four seasons. He's played 300+ snaps each of those years, and in over 1,200 career pass blocking snaps, he's allowed just six sacks and 24 hurries. He's been a cornerstone of this offensive line, but has been outshined by Will Campbell and Emery Jones in recent years.

We all know that LSU's run game has been horrible this year, which has partially been due to the offensive line. They have not been great as blockers in the run game, probably because they never really had to do it for two seasons with Jayden Daniels, but either way, it has not been good thus far.

Out of all the linemen on the team, Dellinger ranks second in run blocking PFF grade with a 72.3. The only guy higher than him is Campbell with a 72.9. As we've documented multiple times this year, LSU is much more efficient when they run the football to the left side of the offensive line than they are rushing right. When going left, the Tigers average over 6.0 yards per carry, but when they go right, they average just over 3.0 yards per carry. In fact, when running behind Dellinger (LG), the Tigers RBs are averaging 6.66 YPC, which is by far the most of any linemen on the team.

You can see LSU's rushing numbers when rushing behind each lineman here (ML is between C and LG, so I counted that with the LG numbers to get the 6.66 average).

Needless to say, he is an important piece of their rushing offense. Unfortunately, Dellinger suffered a high ankle sprain during the A&M game, but LSU Head Coach Brian Kelly says he'll use this bye as a recovery week and hope he's ready for next Saturday when Bama rolls into town.

"He had a high ankle sprain, so we're hoping this week becomes a recovery week for him." said Kelly on Tuesday.

LSU can ill afford to lose Dellinger for this game. He's missed 1.5 games this year, and their rushing numbers dropped drastically when he was out. The first game he missed was week two against Nicholls, and in that game, LSU rushed the ball 21 times for 68 yards (3.2 YPC). No disrespect to Nicholls, but that's just unacceptable against a team like that. Then, against A&M, LSU actually had some success running the football before Dellinger went out. They rushed it just five times in the first quarter and gained 22 yards (4.4 YPC). Over the next three quarters, when Dellinger was out, LSU ran it 14 more times for just five yards to end the game with 19 attempts for 27 yards (sacks removed).

As you can tell, the Tigers desperately need Dellinger to get healthy during this bye week. They need to have some sort of run game against Alabama if they want to win. If the Tide can make them one dimensional like A&M did, they should be able to force Nussmeier into some mistakes.

Stay up to date on all the LSU news with your premium subscription

Talk about this story and more in The Quad

Make sure you're caught up on all the latest LSU news

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel for video and live streaming coverage