I think that’s all we could have ever hoped for out of the Rebels. They took a hard beat last week at Vandy, and came back this week with a good game plan and played hard. I don’t even think it was WAOM at the end; I just think it was our lack of depth showing up.

To illustrate that point; here is the success rates.

We beat them pretty bad in the 1Q and had some big plays which led to a 14-7 lead. After that, each quarter got progressively worse as we wore down. In the final quarter, LSU creamed us and that does not even count their punt return. Our one score in the 4Q was from two big plays, not from a sustained drive.

PLAYCALLING

I thought play calling was much better this came. I was pretty hard on Freeze last week after we not only seemed to run it every first down, but ran the exact same play with the same back that hadn’t worked all game. This game there was more variability both from “run vs pass”, but also where we were attacking with the run.

We were even more likely to run the ball on standard downs than LSU and last year’s national average of 66%, but it seemed like we were keeping LSU on their toes. On 1st downs, we ran 20 times vs passing 12 times.

TARGETS

Moncrief had a big game, but I couldn’t be as excited about it due to the big drops.

INTs are not counted in the stats as targets, so he really had 1 more ball thrown towards him. A catch rate of under 50% isn’t good enough and approaching Markeith Summers territory. That said, he still made some big plays that no one else on our team could have made.

For the year, Moncrief’s catch % has fallen. He has kept his yards per target as one of the top on the team though due to his big plays. Having a catch rate of 62% is not bad, especially when he’s getting 27% of our passes.

Check out the year Mackey is having.

OL YARDS

The OL redeemed themselves a little bit Saturday. They averaged 2.5 OLYPC. It’s not great, but it’s much better than recent weeks and against a very strong DL.

Wallace’s big run fueled much of our highlight yards. Mackey did a little bit more than Scott. I really like the fact that we rested Scott a little and gave Mackey some carries and also brought Devin Thomas in to spell them a few snaps. We also did a little more rotation on the OL – I know I saw Junen in at RT a lot. I think that helped to improve our overall performance.

PASSING

Wallace had an ok day. The INTs obviously hurt, but one was not his fault at all as he hit Moncrief in the hands. I think his shoulder is bothering him more than we know and it’s affecting his accuracy and power.

He didn’t have a great completion %, but had more big plays than normal. I guess we thought that the high % screen stuff wouldn’t work against LSU’s speed.

One more game – hope we have enough gas left in the tank to pull it out.