Greg McElroy didn’t hesitate to put a number on Clemson-LSU before the Week 1 spotlight game even kicked off, and his pick leaned toward the home side.
On the Always College Football podcast, the ESPN analyst worked through Saturday night’s matchup at Tiger Stadium by zeroing in on quarterback health, third-down execution and Dabo Swinney’s long record at Clemson before settling on LSU 27, Clemson 20. LSU hosts Clemson at 7:30 p.m. ET on ABC in Lane Kiffin’s first game as LSU head coach, while Clemson comes in trying to rebound from a 7-6 season.
A big part of McElroy’s case started with LSU quarterback Sam Leavitt, who missed spring practice after multiple foot surgeries. “There's a detail kind of buried in that injured season because under pressure, Leavitt completed less than 50% of his throws,” McElroy said. “But when it's clean and things are good around him, 65%.”
He then turned to Clemson quarterback Christopher Vizzina, whose only career start came in a loss at SMU last season. “The one real data point is his lone start,” McElroy said.
“He threw for over 303 touchdowns in route to a loss.” McElroy also pointed out that Vizzina “lost a fumble on a blind side sack,” then tied that directly to the setting in Baton Rouge: “Tiger Stadium 7:30 on a Saturday night, that's blindside sack delivery system, right?”
McElroy also leaned hard on Swinney’s track record to explain why Clemson can’t be written off entirely. “The hardest fact in this game, very few things beat Davos Sweeney, right?
He's 183 and 50 at Clemson,” McElroy said. “So, no rushing yards or field position number gets him under 40% by itself.
Only two things do. If you beat him badly on third down and you complete passes at a really high clip, those are the two things that would lead to a substandard performance from the Clemson Tigers.”
His final recommendation was straightforward. “Take LSU and you can have the 10.5 points. I think they win it.”
The numbers give LSU plenty of support, and the matchup details point in the same direction. Vizzina is making his first career start as QB1 against a defense that finished third nationally on third-and-short a season ago, and Swinney said this week that Vizzina has “the pole position” but no “lifetime contract.”
Clemson is also dealing with a rebuilt front seven after losing multiple players to the NFL Draft, while LSU’s defensive front added Miami transfer Princely Umanmielen, who had nine sacks last season. On the other side, Leavitt says he’s fully healthy, and LSU added Jordan Seaton, the top-ranked tackle in the transfer portal, to help protect him. If the foot issue is truly behind Leavitt, LSU’s passing game should look more like its efficient version and less like the pressured attack that led to his three interceptions a season ago.
And then there’s the environment. LSU has won 27 straight home games against unranked opponents, and Death Valley at night is a rough place for a first-time starter making a road debut. If Vizzina gets swallowed up by the moment the way McElroy’s breakdown suggests he might, LSU has enough on both sides of the ball to turn a tight one into something more comfortable.
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