When No. 7 Florida visits No. 5 LSU on Saturday night in Baton Rouge, La., it will be one of the nation’s best defenses facing one of the nation’s best offenses.
But this time it’s LSU that has the high-scoring offense and Florida that has the stonewalling defense.
Generally, in the recent past, the identities have been reversed.
But with senior Joe Burrow operating first-year passing game coordinator Joe Brady’s scheme, the Tigers (5-0, 1-0 in the SEC) lead the nation in scoring (54.6 points per game) and lead the SEC in total offense (571.0 yards per game).
Burrow has completed 78.4 percent of his passes for 1,864 yards with 22 touchdowns and three interceptions.
The Tigers went on the road and beat then-No. 9 Texas 45-38 in their second game of the season, but their other games have been against Georgia Southern, Northwestern State, Vanderbilt and Utah State.
“Are we going to score the same amount of points that we have been scoring every week? I don’t know, we may, we may not,” Tigers coach Ed Orgeron said. “I think our guys understand the teams that we have played. Some of them were not as strong as the ones we’re going to play, but we have been gearing up for this and we’re ready.
The game against the Gators (6-0, 3-0) is just the start of the SEC gauntlet for the Tigers, who also have games against No. 12 Auburn, No. 1 Alabama and No. 24 Texas A&M.
“The real season starts now, we’re in SEC play,” Burrow said. “Those first five games were nice to kind of get our confidence going, but this is when the real season starts and this is when the big-boy football is played.”
Florida played big-boy football when it defeated previously unbeaten Auburn 24-13 last week.
“One of the great challenges in this league is it’s not the one game, it’s the multiple games in this league,” Gators coach Dan Mullen said. “That’s always the challenge, and that’s not true in every league.
“A lot of times you don’t have these type of games in every league, where you have consecutive weeks playing top seven opponents. That’s one of the great challenges in this league, one of the fun parts about being here. It’s why you want to be part of the SEC.”
Florida has remained undefeated despite losing starting quarterback Feleipe Franks to a season-ending ankle injury against Kentucky last month.
His replacement, fourth-year junior Kyle Trask, has completed 72.2 percent of his passes for 881 yards with seven touchdowns and two interceptions. He sustained a knee injury in the second quarter against Auburn, but returned in the second half.
He’ll face an LSU defense that has been inconsistent, but was dominant in a 42-6 win against Utah State last week.
The Tigers have had a series of injuries to their defensive front, but Saturday they could be the healthiest they’ve been in a month.
“We were the biggest game in the country last week,” Mullen said. “We’re the biggest game in the country this week.”
