BATON ROUGE, La. – The LSU Tigers have defeated the Mississippi State Bulldogs 18 times in the last 20 contests, but it’s the similarities that State’s 2020 team has to those 2 games that leads to my keys for Saturday’s game.
The Bulldogs bested the Tigers in the 2014 and 2017 seasons.
Both years, they had stellar SEC Quarterback play from players like Dak Prescott and Nick Fitzgerald.
In 2020, there’s K.J. Costello.
Not too many people know about K.J. Costello, but I can tell you this much, when he’s healthy he’s dangerous.
K.J. transferred from Stanford where in 2018 he threw for over 3,500 yards and 29 touchdowns.
While injuries kept him sidelined for the majority of his Cardinal career, the grad transfer has had ample time to recover and work out of State’s camp is he’s healthy and he’s ready to go.
Costello is a 6’5 QB with a cannon for an arm, the perfect Quarterback to run Mike Leach’s system.
This could be a potential nightmare for an LSU defense that lost Kristian Fulton and Grant Delpit to the NFL Draft and Kary Vincent Jr. in the offseason.
This isn’t me saying that he’s going to have a career day against LSU, this is me saying that pressuring him is key.
Give him all day to throw, he averages a 103.2 passer rating, pressure him and that number diminishes to the teens.