Whit Weeks walked off the Tiger Stadium field in the third quarter Saturday night on crutches, in a walking boot, with LSU leading Texas A&M 28-6. He had four tackles and a quarterback hurry, and Lane Kiffin's postgame description was four words long: "Whit left. It looked really bad," with the foot/ankle injury still undiagnosed. A quarter earlier, Sam Leavitt had refused to leave the same game. Kiffin said he was ready to pull his quarterback, who was playing through a significant lower-body injury, and Leavitt told him "there was no way he was coming out" on the way to 17-of-23 for 312 yards and two touchdowns.
LSU won 35-6. It was the Tigers' best all-around night of the season, and it left them 3-1 and 1-1 in the SEC, with A&M falling to 2-2 and projected to drop out of the AP Top 25 after what the Houston Chronicle called the most lopsided loss of Mike Elko's three seasons. It also left two of LSU's best players hurt going into a stretch that gives them exactly one week of relief. They host McNeese on Saturday, then a road SEC game at Kentucky on Oct. 10.
That is the whole shape of this week. McNeese will not decide anything. The trainers' room might.
The A&M win answered real questions, and opened a new one
Two things Kiffin was hired to fix are now demonstrably fixed. The offense Charlie Weis Jr. runs, transplanted, along with eight of the 11 assistants Kiffin initially added from Ole Miss, put up 506 yards with one turnover and five penalties for 35 yards. And Jackson Harris broke the game open with two touchdown catches, the second a 57-yard touchdown off a fourth-and-short call Kiffin dialed up while sprinting down the sideline as he anticipated the touchdown.
Blake Baker, the one coordinator who stayed from the previous staff and is now in his third season running the LSU defense, produced the counterpart. A&M gained 197 total yards, Marcel Reed was sacked four times and finished 10-of-26 for 106 yards with an interception and minus-13 rushing yards, by far his worst day in three career meetings against a Baker defense. That happened without Dashawn Spears, lost for the season, whose replacement Ty Benefield put up seven tackles at the STAR spot.
So the defense can survive a quarter without Weeks. Whether it can hold up at Kentucky and through the October road games without him is the question that decides how the rest of this schedule feels.
What to actually watch against McNeese
LSU is a 99.8% favorite at home Saturday, 6:45 p.m. Central on SEC Network. McNeese arrives having already burned through its quarterback room. Starter Devin Lippold was ruled out for the season with a wrist injury, sending Jake Strong back into the lineup after his own shoulder problem.
Root for all of this to be boring and over early. The useful version of Saturday night is Leavitt handing off, leading by four scores at halftime, and watching the fourth quarter in a baseball cap. Same with Weeks, whatever his status turns out to be. There is no version of this game worth risking him for.
Elsewhere in the SEC
LSU's own conference title odds sit at about 14% entering the week. Three games Saturday nudge them by a couple of points each. None is season-altering; all three are worth having on in the background.
Alabama at Mississippi State: root for Mississippi State
11 a.m. Central on ABC. Mississippi State wins about 28% of the time, and it is the biggest single swing on the board. LSU's chance of reaching the SEC title game sits near 15.7% if the Bulldogs win and near 13.1% if Alabama does. A 2.5-point spread in the conference standings race. Alabama also visits Tiger Stadium in November, so a loss on their ledger is worth something twice.
Florida at Missouri: root for Missouri
2:30 p.m. Central on ABC. This is the closest game of the three, with Missouri at about 52%, and the same 2.5-point value attached. That is roughly 15% for LSU with a Missouri win, 12.5% with a Florida win. A coin flip that pays, the easiest hour of rooting on the schedule.
Vanderbilt at Georgia: root for Vanderbilt
This result carries a 2.3 percentage-point impact on LSU's conference-title-game probability.
11:45 a.m. Central on SEC Network. Vanderbilt wins this about 11% of the time. Enjoy it for what it is rather than counting on it. If it happens, LSU's title-game number lands near 15.9% instead of about 13.6%, and its chance at a playoff bye ticks up too. A loss for the No. 2 team in the country is the kind of thing you watch without planning around.
Full numbers and the rest of the board are in the interactive guide, and the simulation behind them is explained in the methodology.