No.3 Texas A&M hits the road for the second week in a row, traveling to Baton Rouge for a Saturday night in Death Valley showdown with the No. 20 LSU Tigers. LSU may be coming off a loss, but no Aggie
needs to be told how hard it is to win down there. To see how folks were feeling on the Bayou Bengal side of the fence, we spoke to Zachary Junda of And the Valley Shook, SB Nation’s LSU team site.
Good Bull Hunting: This game feels massive for both teams, but for very different reasons. A&M trying to bolster their Playoff resume, LSU trying to salvage a season on the brink. What’s the vibe in Baton Rouge right now?
Zachary Junda: About as bad as they could possibly be. LSU went all in this season, and the return on that $18 million investment looks like it’s going to be rewarded with a trip to, I don’t know, the Gator Bowl or some shit like that. Brian Kelly called his shot in December and said that LSU would be keeping receipts and that we’d see them in the national championship, and that’s blowing up in his face in a truly spectacular fashion.
GBH: It’s no secret that the locals seem to be getting restless with head man Brian Kelly. Beyond just wins and losses, what would you say are the biggest contributors to that displeasure?
ZJ: I think it’s just that LSU can’t hang its hat on anything, and year after year different problems with the roster arise. Year 1 in 2022 can kinda sorta be handwaved, but the special teams unit was atrocious; and of course there was that hideous loss to A&M in College Station that killed any chance of going, at worst, to the Sugar Bowl.
Kelly’s never going to live down 2023. He wasted a national championship caliber offense with the worst defense in program history, and now in 2025 it looks like he’s wasting a playoff-caliber defense with an awful offense. And it’s not even “awful LSU offense” like the end of the Les Miles-era, because at least those teams could run the ball. There’s just nothing they do well this year. So if you’re making the wrong special teams hire one year, then the wrong defensive hire the next, and follow that up with the wrong offensive hire…I mean who else is there to point the finger at?
GBH: We’ve heard a lot about LSU’s struggles on offense, particularly in the ground game. Adding in mounting offensive line injuries, what is the panic level for Tiger fans headed into this game, and what might be their reasons for optimism?
ZJ: Let’s start with the optimism part because this has been such a downer exchange (for me at least). Call it cope, but as far as I can tell the only reason for optimism is that LSU hasn’t played its best game yet and if there were ever a time to do it, it would be in this exact scenario: at home against an undefeated top-5 opponent with your season hanging in the balance. Plus, LSU’s actually been showing signs of life on offense the past two weeks: they would have scored in the high 30s against South Carolina had it not been for two red zone turnovers, and last week against Vandy was their best game against a P4 team this season.
But all of that doesn’t matter because LSU’s offensive line is a disaster. It’s been the single biggest weakness on this team, and it’s only getting worse with starting left tackle Tyree Adams out for Saturday’s game.
GBH: It seems like the defense has been a bright spot for the Tigers for a change, this season. What seem to be the biggest reasons for that turnaround, and what are the areas where that unit really excels?
ZJ: It’ll sound really simple, but they just went out and got better players. Guys that will actually play on Sundays. Blake Baker deserves all the credit in the world for working with what he had last year, but now he’s got draftable players at all three levels of his defense.
As for what they do well, LSU’s finally back to having an awesome secondary and it’s allowing the pressure-happy Blake Baker to blitz till his heart’s content. He can trust that his DBs can be left on an island long enough for the pressure to get home, and it’s been pretty successful so far.
GBH: Beyond obvious guys like Nussmeier and Harold Perkins, who are the playmakers on both sides of the ball Aggie fans should know about?
ZJ: Trey’Dez Green is probably LSU’s best weapon on offense. The 6’7” tight end is as freaky of an athlete in college football, he even played some basketball for LSU last season, but now he’s focused wholly on football and he’s just scratching the surface.
Defensively I’m going to single out Mansoor Delane, the corner they added out of the portal from Virginia Tech. Somehow, someway Delane turned himself into a 3rd-Team All-ACC player into someone who will possibly be the first corner off the board in April’s NFL Draft. It’s a return to form for a DBU program that’s produced first round corners like Patrick Peterson, Morris Claiborne, Tre’Davious White, and Derek Stingley.
GBH: What originally felt like a somewhat forced rivalry between the Aggies and Tigers has seemed to develop a bit more animosity in recent seasons (it helps when A&M actually wins a few). With the (relatively) recent announcement that A&M and LSU will be permanent rivals in the new SEC scheduling format beginning in 2026, how are LSU fans feeling about us seeing so much of each other for the foreseeable future?
ZJ: The overwhelming majority of LSU Twitter assumed A&M would be one of the permanents. I don’t know if they like it per se, but LSU’s one of those programs that doesn’t have a true No. 1 rival. And I don’t mean that in an arrogant “LSU is above all!!!!” way, but no one else in the conference is going to make LSU its most hated team. The Iron Bowl and Egg Bowl are the biggest games in the state of Alabama and Mississippi. Florida and Georgia have each other; Tennessee and Vandy have each other; Texas has Oklahoma and now A&M’s back on the schedule. LSU just doesn’t fit in with that (unless they bring back the Tulane game on an annual basis, which they’ll never do) so Texas A&M is the closest thing we’ll ever get to that “in-state, end of year rival.”
GBH: A&M’s struggles in Death Valley are well-documented, but this is also the rare time they enter as the favorite. How do you see this one playing out?
ZJ: I think it does finally play out in A&M’s favor. I just can’t keep giving LSU’s offense the benefit of the doubt anymore. You’re seven games into the season and you have one of the worst offenses in the country, and LSU’s much hullabalooed defense still can’t stop mobile quarterbacks. LSU had no answer for Marcel Reed in last year’s game (players after the fact admitted they didn’t prepare for him, which is a whole other issue) and the front seven is starting to lose its depth: defensive end Gabe Reliford is lost for the season with a torn rotator cuff, and it’s very likely star linebacker Whit Weeks misses a second straight game. Brian Kelly said on Wednesday’s SEC coaches teleconference that he’s in a boot and can’t put weight on that foot. Unless the good Lord Himself puts His healing hand on Weeks’ ankle there ain’t no chance he heals up quickly enough to play Saturday. But yeah, I can’t call Saturday a track meet because LSU’s offense still can’t get out of the starting block.
