It’s LSU week, Everydayers, and Wednesday’s show was all about flipping the script on who’s actually sweating this one. Three days out from a top-10 showdown in Oxford, I laid out why the most expensive roster in college football history is the team carrying the pressure — then broke down the one LSU player who can wreck our Saturday, and why the dumbest storyline of the week says more about Baton Rouge than it does about us. Hotty Toddy.
The Pressure Is All on Kiffin — and It’s Not Close
Let’s start with the receipts. LSU is ranked 7th, we’re 8th. The Tigers are the favorite — FanDuel has them right around a field goal, and the money line has drifted from -130 to -144 since Sunday, which means the market is getting more confident in LSU, not less. Add in the most expensive roster in college football history — north of $40 million, as high as $55 million depending on who you ask — and every bit of that is set up for Ole Miss to take advantage of.
Here’s the math on the pressure. Kiffin walked away from a 13-win program to chase a ceiling somewhere else, and Saturday is the first invoice on that decision. Paul Finebaum was asked flat out if it’s a must-win for Kiffin and answered in three words: yes, yes, yes. If LSU loses to the team he left — on ABC, with College GameDay parked in the Grove — that follows him all season. If we drop a one-possession game between two top-10 teams in Week 3, we’re still in the playoff conversation Sunday morning and we get ready for Florida. That asymmetry is the whole week, and it’s why Pete Golding — who’d be 4-1 against ranked teams if we win this one — gets to just coach while the other guy has to explain himself.
The LSU Player Who Decides Saturday Isn’t the Quarterback
If we account for one Tiger on every snap, it’s the tight end, Tre’Dez Green. He’s 6-foot-7, wears LSU’s legacy No. 7, and led every tight end in the SEC last year with 433 yards and seven scores. Last week he lined up in six different spots — wide, slot, inline, in the backfield, even at quarterback in the Wildcat — and a national film crew independently named him the one guy who decides this game.
Here’s what should keep our staff up at night: the way they use Green attacks discipline, not talent. Motion him across the formation, run zone the other way, let your edge defender crash on the run fake — then slip him into the flat with nobody within ten yards. And Golding has told us twice in the last week that his defense has angle and gap-control issues that aren’t fixed yet. It’s not Green versus a safety — it’s Green versus our discipline. Suntarine Perkins is the guy I’m watching to stay home and do nothing on the play built to make him do something.
The Dumbest Storyline of the Week
Somewhere this week “safety in Oxford” became a national talking point, and both head coaches volunteered it before anybody pushed them there. I’ve been to enough raucous Ole Miss games to tell you there’s no real safety problem this weekend — if you come to Oxford looking for trouble you’ll find it, same as anywhere, but that’s not a story, that’s a Saturday.
What actually matters is buried inside Golding’s answer. He didn’t ask the crowd to behave for feelings — he asked for noise, because noise breaks LSU’s helmet-to-helmet communication and forces 20-year-olds to make their own calls instead of running the sideline’s. Be the loudest building in America, make them false-start and burn timeouts, and let the only postgame story be the atmosphere. Be loud, be early, be Oxford.
Also on the Show
Ole Miss legend Bill Flowers stopped by for LSU week and made the case that the Rebels actually know their own defensive soft spots better than LSU knows theirs — that the whole thing comes down to our secondary staying disciplined and not chasing the bait Kiffin loves to dangle on the perimeter. Establish the run with Kewan Lacy, force the safeties down, then take the top off with a shot to Deuce Alexander.
His prediction? 42-27 Ole Miss — and if it stays tight, he’s taking the Rebels. “If it’s close, the advantage goes to Ole Miss,” Flowers said, pointing to how Kiffin has handled the big moment before.
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