MVDs: LSU Edition

Dec 4, 2022 - 3:35 PM

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You don’t win an SEC Championship Game and hand Brian Kelly his third consecutive loss to the Bulldogs without a total team effort. But even then some Athenians are bound to distinguish themselves. These are your MVDs, the Most Valuable ‘Dawgs from Georgia’s 50-30 win over the LSU Tigers.

Offense: Stetson Bennett. There were plenty of standout performances in the offensive side of the ball, but Bennett’s day stood out to me not only because he set a personal record for touchdown passes in an SEC game (4), but also because he tied his personal low record for interceptions (0).

Defense: Jalen Carter. This one was a struggle. I could have gone with any number of Bulldogs who had big days. Javon Bullard led the team in tackles, Smael Mondon and Chris Smith had heads up interceptions. Tramel Walthour had a productive day (3 tackles, 1 sack). But Carter’s presence in the middle couldn’t be ignored. The big guy had 4 tackles, a sack, 2 tackles for a loss, and even batted down a pass. Beyond those concrete statistics he was in the Tiger backfield all night, harassing first Jaylen Daniels then Garrett Nussmeier into critical mistakes and generally disrupting a pretty sophisticated game plan on the part of the Bayou Bengals.

Special Teams: Chris Smith. It bears repeating:

Smith’s heads up return of a blocked field goal was the type of play you expect a fifth year senior to pull out, and it was the first of a couple of swing plays where the Dawgs got points out of unexpected situations.

As always drop your own MVD picks in the comments, and…

Go ‘Dawgs!!!