After a lightning delay pushed kickoff to 8:40 p.m., LSU wasted no time turning Tiger Stadium into a showcase. Lane Kiffin’s No.
11 Tigers didn’t just beat No. 23 Clemson in Saturday night’s opener - they blew the game wide open in a 51-10 rout in front of 102,321.
The headline-grabber was a defense that never let Clemson breathe. Blake Baker’s “Bayou Bandits” held the visitors to 145 total yards and eight first downs, and 71 of those yards plus seven of the 10 points came on Clemson’s final offensive drive.
Outside of that late push, Clemson punted on 10 of its next 11 possessions after opening with a 49-yard field goal. The Tigers never strung together more than five plays in a drive, and they didn’t cross midfield until 4:52 remained.
The one Clemson series that didn’t end in a punt ended in disaster.
On 3rd-and-6 from the LSU 25, Baker sent a linebacker blitz that opened a lane for senior Whit Weeks, while quarterback Christopher Vizzina tried to get the ball out quickly to Bryant Wesco Jr. on a drag route. Instead, Tennessee transfer edge Jordan Ross bailed into coverage, jumped the throw on the left hash and took it 30 yards the other way for a touchdown that made it 17-3 in the first quarter.
It was the kind of play that instantly changes the temperature of a game. It also brought back a little LSU history, drawing a resemblance to Marcus Spears dropping into coverage for a 17-yard interception return touchdown early in the third quarter of LSU’s 21-14 national championship win over Oklahoma on Jan. 4, 2004.
Ross wasn’t done causing problems. On the next defensive snap after the pick six, he came screaming off the left edge for what was initially ruled a 4-yard sack before it was changed to a tackle for loss.
Then, on the first play of the second half, he logged an 11-yard sack. In just over 30 minutes as a Tiger, he already had more sacks than he managed in two seasons at Tennessee.
Ross finished his debut with four total tackles, two tackles for loss, two pressures, one hurry and one sack on 27 defensive snaps. Pro Football Focus gave him a 93.5 grade.
“Once we kind of got it going, it was like, ‘Let’s keep the heat inside, but give them different looks,’ because that’s a hard situation for any quarterback to play in,” Kiffin said. “I’ve been on the other side.”
Ross, listed at 6-foot-5 and 254 pounds, arrived with a big reputation after being rated the No. 1 edge rusher in the 2024 recruiting class by 247sports.com and on3.com. His first two years at Tennessee didn’t match that billing - he appeared in 22 games without a start and recorded 26 tackles, five tackles for loss and 1.5 sacks.
Saturday looked like a different chapter. Ross said the moment never felt too big.
“The game felt pretty slow to me, to be honest, because once you go through a practice, everything slows down,” Ross said.
Still, he wasn’t ready to call the night a finished product.
“I feel like we’re just getting started,” he said. “The defense is looking all right.
We have some mistakes that we need to clean up, especially me. They did a pretty good job coaching us.
I feel like we just got to execute more.”
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When the show came back, it did so from inside an empty theater, a sharp contrast to the packed scene fans expected from one of college footballs biggest opening weekends. The interruption and relocation quickly became part of the conversation around the day, a strange little pregame wrinkle that stood out almost as much as the matchup itself. [Read more 🡒]