Coach Ed Orgeron has harped on accountability since last week’s drubbing at the hands of Mississippi State. The LSU Tigers committed nine penalties and lost 112 yards of field position because of those penalties and he has let his team know it in the lead up to this week’s game against the Syracuse Orange. Coach O hasn’t been this upset after a performance for a long time now and it will be interesting to see how the team responds to his fire.
Watch this regular season Week 4 matchup live on Saturday, September 23, 2017, at 7 p.m. ET at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. This game will be broadcast on ESPN2.
College Football Opening Odds at BookMaker.eu
Syracuse +23
LSU -23
Over/Under 56
Odds Analysis
This line has barely moved since it opened. Oddsmakers made the Tigers a 23.5-point favorite and a trickle of money has come in on Syracuse thus far.
Syracuse is in its second year under Dino Babers and the defense has showed massive improvement thus far in the season. The Orange are still scoring a good amount on the offensive end, but are winning games with defense. All three games this season have sailed under the total by at least a possession and that has oddsmakers continuing to drop their totals.
The Tigers were dominant in their first two games of the season, routing BYU and Chattanooga, but last week’s game against Mississippi State raised alarm bells throughout the Bayou. LSU couldn’t get anything going on the offensive end despite Matt Canada’s schemes and motions and that was a huge letdown after what this offense did the first two weeks. No LSU game has had more than 55 total points this season.
Matchup to Watch
The most shocking thing about LSU’s loss last week was how bad the performance was in the trenches on both sides of the ball. The Tigers couldn’t stop Mississippi State’s running game all night long, allowing them to rip off 5.9 yards per carry. This figure wasn’t even skewed by one or two big runs, but instead the Bulldogs were able to consistently move the ball on this defense. That really hasn’t happened in Baton Rouge and is something to watch for here.
Additionally, the Tigers couldn’t run the ball. Derrius Guice had some nice runs, but all told LSU picked up just 133 rushing yards. That’s an issue for a team that has the problems in the passing game that the Tigers do.
Syracuse isn’t a power team, but has a lot of finesse and Babers is great at finding weaknesses. Although LSU should be able to run on the Orange this week, Syracuse might be able to find some success on the ground too.
Player to Watch
In the past, Babers’ teams have taken off in their second year and Syracuse might be primed to do just that. Eric Dungey has looked really sharp as the pivot man for this offense and has been able to move the ball down the field in a hurry in this lightning fast attack.
To be fair, he has had success against teams that aren’t anywhere as talented as LSU along the defensive side of the ball. The best defense this team has faced has been Middle Tennessee State and no one will confuse them for the big boys along LSU’s front seven.
Free ATS Pick
Call me crazy, but it feels like this game is going to be high scoring. I don’t think that Syracuse is going to be able to stop LSU’s power running game and the Orange are going to have more success on this Tigers team than they did last year. In fact, I expect this game to go over by a considerable margin with the Tigers emerging victorious.
College Football Odds: Tigers 48, Orange 31
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