LSU Football: 3 takeaways from dominant win at Mississippi State

LSU football hit the road to take on an upset-hungry Mississippi State team in Starkville, but the Tigers picked up another impressive win.

Mississippi State stood between LSU and a 7-0 start to the season and no SEC team wants to travel to Starkville to face the Bulldogs — those cowbells can cause nightmares.

However, LSU was able to overcome the raucous home crowd to beat the Bulldogs 36-13 in a solid Joe Burrow-led win. The Tigers move to 3-0 in conference play and look to be on a collision course with Alabama to represent the SEC in the College Football Playoff. Who knows, maybe both will earn a bid.

What’d we learn from LSU’s convincing win?

3. Defense bounced back

Entering the season, everyone was talking about LSU’s defense and very few were boasting about the Tigers’ offense. But the roles have been reversed as the offense has been elite while the defense is trying to play catch-up.

Some have seen the defense as a slight disappointment, though it’s still not a pushover, but LSU silenced some of those doubters against Mississippi State.

That defense was smothering all afternoon and made life miserable for Garrett Shrader. He was facing pressure all afternoon long and couldn’t really get going. He didn’t have momentum on his side throughout the game and that LSU defense did a good job of making him uncomfortable with blitz packages and added pressure — an LSU staple.

The secondary also stepped up and didn’t give any big plays up, picking Shrader off twice and holding him to under 200 yards.

Mississippi State couldn’t do much of anything against LSU Saturday.