Welcome to the Audible.

I'm Stuart Mandel, joined as always by Bruce Feldman.

Let's talk LSU, Alabama.

Saturday night's game, I found it very entertaining despite the fact that it was zero zero going into the

fourth quarter. Some people were comparing it to the game five years ago, the nine to six game.

Now I remember a lot of complaining about the nine to six game. I didn't hear that so much now. I wonder

if five years later, with all the bad defense that we see in college football,

the people are a little more appreciative when we do see that rare defensive showdown.

Yeah, you know, for me, obviously, there's all kinds of things that make up great college football.

I mean, earlier in the day, we had that Navy Notre Dame game, which was very different from any A&M, you know, any, usually game you see in Texas right now, which is kind of a shootout, and that was a different style. And I thought, to me, people can go, well, was it bad offense or really good defense? I think it's a lot more of really good defense. That's not to say Danny Etling didn't miss a few throws. He definitely should have made. They looked like they were relatively easy throws. Easy for me to say it. I wasn't going to be in pressure. But, you know, when you look at it, what stood out to me, Stu, was that you watch any game on Saturday where there's like over a thousand yards of total offense and you'll see

all these mistackles. You just didn't see a lot of mistackles at all, especially for the first

three quarters. And, you know, it's not like there weren't really good dynamic skill guys out

there. Linden Fortnet is as talented as any running back in the country. Alabama's got a lot of

firepower. And there just weren't a lot of big plays to be at.

So oftentimes when you have a game like this, people are, you know, especially outside the SEC, was it good defense or was it bad offense?

Well, in this case, I think we know the answer because for two reasons.

Alabama's offense has been very good all season.

So the fact that it took them until the fourth quarter to score that Jalen Hertz made some

mistakes that he hadn't been making during the season, I think. I thought LSU's defense was

phenomenal. And in terms of the other side, you know, this showed that, yes, this showed that

LSU is still very one-dimensional,

but at the end of the day, every other team Leonard Fournett plays, he has a lot of success.

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