A Weekend to Forget - An Article by Jim Gazzolo

Two offenses that never got going and a defense that could not make a stop. 

That sums up a lost weekend for area football fans who had to sit through three games lost on three different levels by the teams they follow.

McNeese State’s season of trouble continued down a historically bad starting stretch with a fifth straight loss. Ten penalties, four turnovers, and several missed opportunities did in the Cowboys as they began Southland Conference play with an ugly 31-10 loss to previously winless Nicholls.

No McNeese team has ever started a season with six straight defeats. The last time the Pokes lost five straight at the start was in 1954. 

“We were our own worst enemy,” said McNeese head coach Gary Goff. “It was all self-inflicted.”

Things for LSU weren’t much different. The once-proud Tiger defense gave up 55 points to a Mississippi club that scored just 10 the week before against Alabama. The 55-49 loss to the Rebels leaves LSU all but out of the running for the national title.

Two losses before the first day of October don’t happen very often in Baton Rouge. 

“We need to be pissed off about what happened and have some resolve about our circumstance,” LSU head coach Brian Kelly said Monday. “That’s not a standard of play that’s acceptable.”

It may not be acceptable but it might be becoming the norm at LSU.

In three of their five games this season the Tigers have allowed at least 30 points to their opponents. Their two ranked foes have scored over 40 with Florida State dropping 45 on LSU in the season opener. 

That is not supposed to happen to LSU teams or at least it wasn’t before Kelly showed up.

Then there was Sunday and the Saints. 

To say the signing of Derek Carr to play quarterback is off to a slow start would be an understatement. 

The Saints didn’t score a touchdown in their latest loss, a 26-9 debacle at the hands of Tampa Bay. Only once this year have the Saints scored as many as 20 points, that being in the second game.

Carr is averaging less than 200 yards a game through the air and has been sacked 13 times already. Again, not what is expected by the fanbase.

All three of the teams followed closely by local football watchers seem to have gone away from what made them winners in the past. It has left the faithful wondering just what is going on. 

It was far from a September to remember on the football field. 

If things don’t change in October all three clubs will be left with a lot of explaining to do at the end of the season.

Jim Gazzolo is a freelance writer and is the host of Poke Nation on CBS-Lake Charles.