On3 Roundtable: LSU not out of the woods yet, setting realistic expectations for 2023

LSU has all kinds of differing opinions out there about them. Was the success of Brian Kelly’s first season in Baton Rouge a fluke? Or is that the expectation now for the Tigers with him at the helm? To Shea Dixon of The Bengal Tiger, he feels as though it’s somewhere in the middle.

Dixon shared his thoughts with On3’s JD PicKell in a recent episode of the On3 Roundtable. To start, he pointed out how LSU obviously has more work to do, especially considering how they ended last season.

“(LSU’s) not out of the woods yet. And I think this roster was a multi-year rebuild. Brian Kelly has said that all along,” Dixon pointed out. “After beating ‘Bama, which took them into overtime to do, they stumbled, really, against Arkansas. Barely beat them up at Arkansas, just didn’t play well. And then, at the end of the month, they get housed by Texas A&M, a team that could barely put on their jerseys all year. Finally, they get healthy, really dial in for a game, and blew LSU away in College Station. You can’t have those things happen.”

What does Dixon expect then? LSU has plenty of talent, they have several returning pieces to lean on, and are coming off a season where they competed for the SEC Championship as well as made a case for the College Football Playoff.

That’s why, in Dixon’s opinion, the Tigers can expect more of the same this season. He isn’t sure about them meeting the lofty expectation of winning their division once again. However, if they take things week by week, he believes LSU can reach 10 wins again and be right back in the mix for one of the bowl games on New Year’s Day.

“It’s got to be a play-by-play, game-by-game approach for this team. I think that they can, again, compete,” said Dixon. “The goal should be a New Year’s Six Bowl or something of that nature. Winning the SEC West in year one is tough. I can’t put that expectation on them every season. It’s the goal but I don’t know if that’s my expectation.”

“I think, again, getting to 10 wins would be big,” Dixon continued. “This time, I think, again me personally, the goal would be moving from a bowl game against Purdue, which is undermanned, to a New Year’s Six Bowl and having one of those tickets punched, which they would have done had they beaten A&M.”

LSU cleaned up last season, especially when you consider how they played in 2022 from the start of October to November 5th’s overtime win over the Crimson Tide. Still, Dixon believes there’s more meat on the bone and that, depending on how things go, they can get closer to reaching that last bit with how they play this season.

“It comes down to winning 10 games. If you lose a couple in the SEC, it’s not the end of the world,” Dixon said. “You can land in a New Year’s Six Bowl and continue to set yourself up to keep rising up that ladder, as Brian Kelly would say, each year. And, soon, be a team that’s considered, annually, a playoff contender, if not this year.”