re: Would 2012 LSU football have won the SEC if honey badger didn’t get suspended?

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Turned out differently when Saban had a month to prepare.

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CLM had a month to prepare as well but with the apparent confusion with clock management he lost count in regards to which month.

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Oh, come on now

I get the "let's bash Les" sentiment, but be real: those two teams were very evenly matched. Bama completely destroyed Lee the first game, he was reverting back to the Pick 6 guy we'd seen in the past. Heavy pressure and no time to throw. We were going backwards with him in.
Our defense held, but they moved better. They got into a lot of long field goal situations, which they missed. But they'd get 30 or so yds per drive, and we'd go 3 and out, and punt well if we don't turn it over first.

Les found the one answer in that game, which was running JJ. That tipped it to our favor, we got yards, and eventually wore them down. We should have punched in the TD in OT, which we would have done.

But leading up to game 2, Saban had time to counter the one thing that worked for us, JJ running. Nothing worked for them the first time, nothing for Les to counter. And let's look at Bama's scoring drives:
1) 49 yd punt return, got to the 26. They drove 20 yds and kicked a FG.
2) drove 58 yds, their longest of the night. Got inside the 20, kicked a FG.
3) drove 52 yds to get to the 24, kicked another FG to end the half.
That's only a hair better than game one, where they drove to the 27, the 33, and the 31 and missed, and made one from the 17 in the first half.


In the second half, they drove 50 yds to get to the 18, made a kick.
Intercepted at the 27, moved 4 yds and missed from the 23.
Drove 20 yds to get to the 27 and made the kick.

At this point, we have zero offense against their defense, but it's still a 2 score game in the second half and they can't move much at all. The 3 differences between those two games, is:
1) a big punt return to give them a chip shot, something they never did in game 1.
2) Remove that score, and their kicker made 4 FG in 5 drives, instead of 2 like in the first game.
3) JJ moved on them when he came into the first game, he didn't in the second. So, we have 0 pts instead of 6 on 2 FG.

They had 300 yds of offense in the 1st game, and just over 400 in game 2. We had 230 in the first game, and just over 100 in the 2nd. They really should have won the first one, but couldn't kick the ball.