The Eye Test: A Bruin Goes Down to the Bayou
Less analysis, more travelogue.
I will tell you right off the bat that this Eye Test will be a little different.
As I’ve gotten older and become more stable in my life, I’ve tried to start going to one road game a year. Sometimes it is easy, like last year when I made the drive down to San Diego State with my brother. Sometimes it’s more difficult, like getting out to College Station almost a decade ago. But ever since LSU came to play at the Rose Bowl a few years ago I’ve had this game circled on my calendar, knowing I was going to make the trip out to Baton Rouge no matter how good or bad UCLA was at the time, simply because I did not know when the opportunity to see a game in one of the great stadiums in college football was ever going to present itself.
This Eye Test is going to be more of a travel blog than a review of the game. I’ll put little bits here and there for you, and there will be grades, but I wanted to get my thoughts on the experience out there while I can.
Offense
I do not think it is possible to prepare for the humidity of New Orleans.
We had been told the week prior to our trip that it was going to be especially humid and that we should start drinking water as soon as possible to better acclimate, but that statement does not do the humidity justice. It is oppressive, weighing heavily on you the entire time you are in the state. Every morning I would step outside and immediately have my glasses fog up. When you walk in the French Quarter, you tend to walk as close to the doors as possible just to get a whiff of air conditioning and a momentary reprieve from the weather; honestly, if you told me the humidity was the result of a voodoo pact signed to get more people walking into businesses, I would believe you.
I can’t imagine the thought process that led to putting this game at 2:30 PM local time. LSU in general does not do day games, with many locals commenting that it was maybe the third in the past 20 years for them. Yes, I know TV is dictating all these days and with a primetime slot being taken up by Tennessee and Oklahoma, these two teams were at the mercy of ESPN deciding whether to put them on ESPN or use one of their few prime ABC spots on this game. But it ultimately led to a bad situation for fans having to sit in a stadium that felt like 110 degrees, and even for an LA kid like myself that had to endure a wild heatwave just the week prior, this was ridiculous.
Thank god there was copious amounts of alcohol to cool you down.
Overall: C-
(Actual quick analysis: Ethan Garbers is a gamer but is nowhere near a top-tier quarterback, and asking him to try and overcome a ridiculously bad offensive line for an entire game with no run support is just asking too much of him. LSU played UCLA very tentatively in the first half, but at halftime they realized that they did not have to respect the UCLA rushing attack or offensive line in the slightest, and spent the entire second half sending an extra defender or two and overwhelming the offensive line, sending Garbers scrambling for his life. UCLA did some new clever things in this game early like moving the pocket to try and limit the impact of the line, but at the end of the day that unit is so bad it is going to limit whatever ceiling this group has.)
Defense
So there were a few reasons I knew I was going to come to this game in particular. Seeing a game in Death Valley was always high on my list, even if this was not ultimately a night game. I’d also never been to New Orleans before, so I got to cross off something from my travel list (quick recommendation: go see the National World War II Museum if you’re in the area. It is excellently done, and I could have spent eight hours here pretty easily).
But on a more personal level, this trip was a chance to cash in on a good deed. We’ve picked up a lot of new readership here at The Mighty Bruin, but many longtime readers know we started out as a blog on SB Nation called Bruins Nation, and back in those days we had a sister site covering LSU called And the Valley Shook. The group of writers who worked on that site are some of the best people on college football internet, and we had a friendly relationship with them. In fact, back when LSU came out to the Rose Bowl, I had multiple members of their writing crew crash at our tailgate (we made them gumbo, it seemed only fair). In the run-up to this game, the old ATVS crew was very keen to make sure I was coming out for the return game, because they had to pay back that hospitality in kind, and I was not going to deny them that opportunity.
The thing you learn about LSU right away is that these people know how to tailgate. The entire campus is filled with people finding a place to put up a tent, set up a grill, and crack open a cold one or three. Getting anywhere on campus on a Saturday involves walking through at least eight tailgates, and each one of them is filled with people happy to greet you and offer up some food or alcohol. There was not the wide variety of food options that you might see at a UCLA tailgate - most tailgates I saw had some combination of jambalaya, shrimp and grits, and something fried - but you would be forgiven for believing it was the best food you had ever tasted.
Unfortunately, you would also be wrong, because the best food at the LSU tailgate belonged to the former ATVS crew and their DVA tailgate. Zrau’s food is the stuff of legend, and I am proud to say that it lives up to that and more. No, I am not exaggerating here; we stayed in New Orleans through Monday and the entire time my mom would not stop talking about the shrimp and grits she had on Saturday and was begging me to get the recipe (spoiler: I did get the recipe and I am guarding this thing with my life). And I cannot go on without thanking our host, the incomparable PodKatt, who greeted us with beer and proceeded to act as our sherpa through the rest of the tailgating experience, taking us to see the band march in, all of the history on display, and of course, taking us to see Mike.
(You’ll have to excuse the vertical videos. I may be young but even I still forget to turn my phone sideways.)
Overall: D-
(Actual analysis: UCLA’s pass rush is theoretical at best, which means any competent offense can quickly and easily figure out how to exploit the defense and score at will. UCLA’s defense did not hold up so much as LSU played with its food, and if you think that is an unfair read of what happened, consider that the Tigers got the ball four separate times in the second half and never punted, instead going on three scoring drives of 6:33, 5:15, and 3:37 before killing the final 4:26 of the game. At no point did UCLA feel even close to getting a defensive stop.)
Special Teams
If you’ve ever seen a Bengal tiger, you know that they’re one of the more stunning and deadly animals on the planet. They move with a grace that is almost paralyzing in how majestic it is, especially once you realize that only a small amount of plexiglass or some netting separates you from almost certain doom.
LSU is not unique in having a live mascot, but they are unique when it comes to having a live mascot that doubles as a ruthless killing machine (your mileage when it comes to Bevo may vary). The history of Mike dates all the way back to 1934, the brainchild of an athletic department trainer for whom Mike is named. The history of Mike is fascinating in and of itself, with one instance of a tiger burial in the middle of the night with a replacement tiger brought in without telling anyone, and a few escapes. The school has not bought a new tiger since the 1950s; instead, it is going to animal rescues to bring in the next Mike. They also go to great pains to make sure Mike is well taken care of; the head of the LSU veterinary school acts as Mike’s personal caretaker while there are four students selected every year to join LSU’s tiger conservation program. LSU wants to keep having a live tiger mascot, but they also have recognized that they need to shift the focus to conservation.
The school does not put Mike in a cage and parade him around the stadium before football games. It’s for the best, especially on a day as hot as this one was.
As we walked up to Mike’s enclosure, it became clear the reverence that LSU fans have for Mike. Mike’s enclosure is massive and ornately detailed, with memorials on display for all of the Mikes to come before. The habitat itself is on the level of something that might be seen at the San Diego Zoo, with a large pool and multiple rock formations that allow Mike to roam to his heart’s content. Fans ignored the heat to crowd around the glass, hoping to catch just a glimpse of Mike VII; our guide PodKatt had a spot along the side that he knew was one of Mike’s favorites whenever it gets too hot outside, but even that seemed like a far shot. And then Mike came out.
Mike VII just turned eight years old a few weeks ago and has easily reached the size of a fully-grown tiger. He moves with a deliberateness and gracefulness that beguiles you into forgetting the raw power he possesses. Yet at the same time, you can’t help but think of him as a really big cat that deserves a nose boop for being so good. I cannot overstate how much I wanted to enter into the habitat and give him a big hug.
And then he roared about five feet away from where we were standing, and suddenly a primal fear washed over me. You can hear a tiger roar as many times as you want, but there is nothing like having one roar in your immediate vicinity, of being that close to death at the hands of one of the more gorgeous creatures on this planet.
My mom may have the tailgate shrimp and grits as her favorite memory of the tailgate. I have Mike.
Overall: A
(Actual analysis: UCLA has a solid punter in Brody Richter who absolutely launched one of his punted while pinning a few deep as well. Shame the UCLA defense couldn’t do anything with that. Mateen Bhaghani nailed his single kick, and Keegan Jones figured out he doesn’t have to run every kick out. An actual good performance here.)
Coaching
I think it is possible to build something up to be some amazing thing in your head, only for the final product to fall well short of expectations. Hell, you all are UCLA sports fans, you’re all well aware of building something up just to watch it fail to meet the moment.
Tiger Stadium did not fail to meet the moment.
It isn’t the size of Tiger Stadium that stands out, though it is incredibly big - the capacity of 102,321 sits as the seventh-biggest in the world - but how it was constructed. The stadium has essentially grown with the program, adding seats on top of the previously existing ones in a way that, to an outside viewer, would look like nothing more than an attempt to touch heaven. There are apocryphal stories surrounding its construction, including my favorite involving former Louisiana governor Huey Long ordering that dorms be built into the side of the stadium so that state funding could be used to expand the seating (the actual history is that the idea came from the athletic department and Huey Long made sure no one in the Louisiana government fought the idea).
You can see attempts at modernizing the stadium; there are suites in the south end zone constructed back in 2014 as part of an expansion. The dorms are no longer in use due to being dangerously out of date, and the school has simply chosen to build around the dorms to continue expansion. Yet the stadium has a timeless quality reminiscent of the Rose Bowl. This is not a high-tech NFL stadium; you can literally walk down to field level and stand against a railing while the teams warm up, having conversations with players and coaches while doing so. There is no net to stop kicks in the south end zone, but there’s no need for it, as the fans throw the ball back to the field afterward.
The thing they always tell you to look for in Tiger Stadium is the sound, which I did not understand until I sat in the bleachers during the first half. The sounds of the stadium are almost muted; the band is not mic’d up, and the PA announcer seems almost understated given the surroundings. But that’s just window dressing because at some point in the past LSU officials realized that the thing they could be known for is the sheer noise generated by the fans. Bear Bryant once described Tiger Stadium as being louder than the inside of a drum, and that holds to this day. Even in a halfway-filled stadium on a blisteringly hot Saturday, LSU fans made sure to make their presence felt after every big play and at every moment. Much like Mike, the roar from the crowd raises the hairs on the back of your neck, and their silence at times in the first half was deafening.
Tiger Stadium has a nickname plastered throughout the stadium: Death Valley. It’s a clever name, along with their saying that Death Valley is where opponent dreams go to die. It creates a weird dichotomy for a visiting fan, because on one side you have a fanbase that is nothing less than one of the most welcoming ones I’ve ever encountered at an away game, and on the other, you have an inhospitable bastion of strength that your team will likely flail against before losing. But that doesn’t take away from the experience. Death Valley stands as one of the great cathedrals of college football, and now I’m stuck here trying to figure out how to get back for a night game.
Overall: D
(Actual analysis: the only reason this isn’t an F is that the offense tried some new things in the first half like moving the pocket to try and protect Garbers, but by the second half they reverted to the same failed systems that doomed them against Indiana. What’s more distressing about the offense is that LSU is not great against the run yet they could not run the ball in the slightest. The Tigers gave up 150 yards on the ground to Nicholls State a few weeks ago, and South Carolina ran for a disgusting 243 yards the week prior, yet the Bruins could only manage 55 sack-adjusted rushing yards. It’s frankly embarrassing that UCLA is this bad running the ball.
On defense, yeah, the staff is crippled by a lack of talent at the defensive end, but at some point, you have to try everything to generate a pass rush and it feels like they are running out of ideas. The trickle-down of this problem is that the linebackers, generally the strength of the defense, are being asked to do too much, which let LSU tight end Mason Tyler have a monster day just abusing them in space.
Yes, the roster is not very good, but it is hard to look at what is happening on the field and be able to say with a straight face that the coaching staff is maximizing the talent available. For a staff that was sold to fans under the idea of continuity, this should be damning all on its own.)
Trend
Trending: Up?
You know how the game went by this point: in the first half, a combination of improved play from UCLA and disinterest from LSU led to a tied game at the half, at which point LSU made the necessary adjustments to win this game in a walk. It is a pointless exercise to try and break down the minutia of the game, so I will not even try.
That said, I did get one cathartic moment of joy from the game that made the whole trip worth it. Late in the first half, UCLA was driving toward the south end zone, hoping to score a game-tying touchdown. Thanks to some moments of individual brilliance from Ethan Garbers and especially Kwazi Gilmer, the Bruins were able to score in front of the visiting fans, who all went berserk. As the teams were running to the locker room a few seconds later, they could not help but wave to the crowd that was roaring their approval. That’s not the moment that will stick with me.
No, what will stick with me is what happened next. As the entirety of the visitor’s section funneled into the cool safety of the concourse at the start of halftime, a curious thing happened. Out of nowhere, the familiar chant of “UC-LA” rose in the concourse, scattered at first, until it was overpowering and all-consuming.
You’ll excuse me for not taking a video of the event - I was too busy participating with every man, woman, and child wearing UCLA blue.
At that moment, the results of the game did not matter. LSU could have won by 40 points in the second half, and it still would not have mattered. UCLA fans, perhaps suffering from a pique of blissful defiance of the natural order of the football world, decided to make Tiger Stadium their own, and remind the world that even at our lowest moment as a program, UCLA fans will still support the team. The fact that UCLA fans have suffered through 25 years of the wilderness and are still showing up in support speaks volumes about how passionate this fanbase is.
Final Composite
Offense grade: C- (1.7)
Defense grade: D- (0.7)
Special Teams grade: A (4.0)
Coaching grade: D (1.0)
Trending: Up?
Final grade for LSU Tigers: C (1.9)
And as a reminder, here are the scores from other games this year:
Hawai’i Rainbow Warriors: C (1.9)
Indiana Hoosiers: F (0.6)
I have nothing else. See you next week for what will probably be a more standard Eye Test.
Go Bruins.
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Good to see our sissy blue make a respectable showing vs LSU.
Great read about the experience, Dimitri. Less said about the game the better. I love our Joe, but Mike is magnificent!