Regardless of circumstances, a game between the Alabama Crimson Tide and the LSU Tigers is always going to be must-watch football. This coming Saturday, Nick Saban’s boys will head over to Baton Rouge to face Ed Orgeron and the Tigers, who are looking to become the first team to beat the Crimson Tide this season. The spread opened up at 23.5-points in favor of Alabama, but has since grown significantly to 28-points.
Mac Jones is playing so well this season that not a few people are saying that the Crimson Tide look in better shape than they did when Tua Tagovailia was under center for the team. That’s saying a lot, but it’s not a baseless claim, as Jones is truly delivering the goods for Alabama. Before their bye last week, the Crimson Tide picked the Mississippi State Bulldogs apart in a 41-0 win in Tuscaloosa, with Jones racking up 291 passing yards and four touchdowns with no interceptions on 24-of-31 completions. On the season, Jones has passed for 2,191 yards and 16 touchdowns against just a couple of interceptions. His 95.4 quarterback rating is also second overall in the nation, per ESPN. Jones can look forward to cooking LSU’s defense that is struggling to contain opposing passing attacks this season. The Tigers are just 120th in the nation with 335.2 passing yards allowed per game and 117th with 10.0 yards given up per opponent’s pass completion. Meanwhile, Alabama is fourth nationally with 380.0 passing yards per game and also fourth with 47.2 points per contest.
Alabama is 4-1 against the spread in its last five games overall.
LSU is coming off a gut-wrenching 48-11 road loss to the Auburn Tigers on Oct. 1 before the Tigers had their bye. LSU’s bye couldn’t come at a better time, as the team looked like it needed some time to get things together after the debacle against Auburn. LSU could also be in the process of sorting out their QB situation. TJ Finley had a nice performance in his debut as starter for LSU in the win over the South Carolina Gamecocks on Oct. 24 but was taken out in the second half of the Auburn game in favor of Max Johnson. Neither quarterback had a performance that completely separated him from the other against Auburn, though Johnson had a touchdown pass and no errors, while Finley had two interceptions and zero touchdowns. In any case, LSU will look to establish its run game again. After recording 276 rushing yards and three touchdowns against South Carolina, the Tigers were only able to come up with 32 rushing yards on 27 carries against Auburn that had surrendered an average of 180.4 rushing yards per game prior to that win over LSU.
The over is 3-1 in LSU’s last four games as the home team.
