LSU finished 3rd in the SEC this year and concluded a 9-3 season and an upcoming trip to the Capital One Bowl.  A very successful season on the face of it and a definite improvement over last years results, but many of us have still felt uneasy about how the team looked getting to the end result.  I was curious where we ended up in offensive and defensive statistics this year.  The stats were pulled from here and the rankings from here if you want to double check my numbers.

Overall Special Teams were great, with the curious exception of kickoff returns.  We have the unusual distinction of ranking 110th in kickoff returns, but our kickoff coverage ranked 3rd in the country.  The Defense was improved but not by as much as I thought, Scoring D was much better, 12th vs 56th last year, but Total D only improved to 29th from 32nd last year.  The offense we all know about.  No major offensive category ranked in the top half of Division 1 and the offense was ranked 108th ranked total offense (out of 120 teams).  We were outgained by opponents on the season in rushing, passing, first downs and total offense. 

I also looked at scoring by quarters.  The announcers in the Arkansas game mentioned that we had outscored our opponents in the third quarter this year.  This surprised me, because in the game threads and post-game comments many of us complained about how the team would go into long funks in the 3rd quarter.  I expected to see us outscored in the third quarter and then coming back and outscoring the opponents in the 4th for some of our comeback wins.  We dominated the 1st quarters and outscored all opponents by a pretty big margin in the 3rd quarter, but were tied in 4th quarter scoring.  It's worse if you look at SEC opponents.  While we still maintain a 3rd quarter edge, it's only 6 points, less than a point a game.  Even worse, our SEC opponents owned the 4th quarter, outscoring us 62-40.

So how did we end up with a better record than last year?  22nd ranked turnover margin vs. 67th last year, 12th ranked scoring defense vs. 56th, spectacular special teams (except KO returns), and relatively efficient and effective Red Zone Offense and Defense.  The good news is that the team found ways to win with those formulas. The concern is that turnover margin, scoring defense, and special teams tend to be somewhat more variable year to year than total offense and total defense.

There are opportunities for improvement in specific areas to get back to the types of dominant Tiger teams we've gotten spoiled with earlier in this decade.  The offense has to get better at both scoring and ball control while still protecting the ball.  The D needs to hold their edge in scoring D but needs to get off the field quicker.  Third and Chavis wasn't as bad as we've heard from our Tennessee brethren, but it's worrisome that our opponents had an almost equal 3rd down conversion to ours.  To win the West next year these areas will have to improve.