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BATON ROUGE, La. — Perfunctory is not what most of the 102,000-plus observers at Tiger Stadium had in mind on Saturday night, but it’s what they got. A 20-10 win by No. 3 LSU over Florida was equal parts auspicious and concerning, underlining that the program got some offseason questions right — while asking others that maybe nobody saw coming.
The Tigers weathered multiple personnel losses on defense but relied on homegrown talent and much improved depth on that side of the ball to hold off the Gators. It was needed, too, given another week of hit-or-miss production on offense. Hard to imagine that it’s a paralyzing worry with Heisman Trophy favorite Garrett Nussmeier running the show. But it doesn’t look satisfactory, either.
Not that Brian Kelly was willing to countenance the subject when it came up early in his postgame news conference.
“What do you want me to tell you? I just laid it out for you — we played the game to win the game,” the LSU coach said. “We played the game to win the game. … You’re looking at this from the wrong perspective. LSU won the football game. Won the game. I don’t know what you want from me. What do you want, for us to win 70-0 against Florida to keep you happy?
