BATON ROUGE, La. – There is no doubt about LSU's new offense four games into the 2019 season and the team just got a week off to recharge and correct the few issues around the team. The sixth-ranked Tigers will take their FBS-best offense back to the field against another high-scoring attack when they host Utah State on Saturday.
TV: Noon, ET, SEC Network. LINE: LSU -27.5
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LSU leads FBS in scoring (57.8 points) behind Heisman candidate quarterback Joe Burrow, who is completing 80.6 percent of his passes with 17 touchdowns and two interceptions, but believes it can improve in other areas and spent the bye week fine tuning. "What we found is, first of all, the way we were running the ball, what we're running, how we want to run it, how we want to practice it, that was a big thing on offense," Tigers coach Ed Orgeron told reporters of studying his own team during the bye. "On defense, it was about tackling and causing turnovers." Orgeron described practicing against "warp speed" in preparation for the Aggies, who run a similar spread offense but are impressed by what they see on film from LSU. "You're throwing that film on and basically, the offense starts the game and all of sudden it's like 35 to nothing, or whatever," Utah State coach Gary Andersen told reporters. "They score really quickly. They score awful fast. You have to be able to, hopefully, find a way to try and confuse the quarterback a little bit. He's a very talented player."
ABOUT UTAH STATE (3-1)
Junior quarterback Jordan Love is already drawing interest from NFL scouts and carried the team to a 34-24 win over Colorado State before the bye despite throwing a pair of interceptions. "We thought he played well, and definitely gave us an opportunity to win the game," Andersen told reporters. "Jordan is our guy, and as he goes, we go. It's going to be like that, especially with the type of offense we run. He made some big plays to, again, allow us a chance to win." Love threw for 32 touchdowns and six interceptions during the 2018 campaign and is already up to five INTs to go with six scoring passes in 2019.
ABOUT LSU (4-0)
Burrow set a school record with six passing touchdowns in the 66-38 win at Vanderbilt before the bye and has already topped his 2018 total of 16. "I think we're starting to see that we can do this every game against every team," Burrow told reporters after the performance against Vanderbilt. "This is who we are as an offense. We're gonna go try to score every time, we're gonna throw the ball around. And we're going to throw it to open up the run. So, I'm happy with where we are right now. But you always like to get better." Burrow is spreading his passes around to a trio of receiving putting up huge numbers with Ja'Marr Chase (20 catches, 397 yards, five TDs) Justin Jefferson (21 catches, 392 yards, five TDs) and Terrace Marshall (20 catches, 304 yards, six TDs) taking turns having big games.
EXTRA POINTS
1. LSU OL Ed Ingram (suspension) was reinstated and could make his season debut on Saturday.
2. The Aggies scored 20 or more points in 21 straight games.
3. The Tigers are 27-for-27 in the red zone.
PREDICTION: LSU 56, Utah State 17