The 2020 College Football Playoff field has been revealed. It’ll be the LSU Tigers vs. the Oklahoma Sooners in the Peach Bowl. Who ends up winning this one?
After 12 regular-season games and a weekend slate of conference championships, the 2020 College Football Playoff field has been set. The SEC Champion LSU Tigers earned the No. 1 seed with the Ohio State Buckeyes, the Clemson Tigers and the Oklahoma Sooners rounding out the top-four. As the top seed, LSU will play in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl and open as 9.5-point favorites, according to The Action Network.
No. 1 LSU (13-0) will face the Big 12 Champions in No. 4 Oklahoma (12-1) in Atlanta on Saturday, Dec. 28. The Tigers had just won the SEC Championship in the same building that they’ll play the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl in. Oklahoma will make a rare trek to Atlanta to face the Bayou Bengals at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in late December.
This is the first time LSU has ever qualified for the College Football Playoff, while this will be the fourth time Oklahoma has gotten in as a Big 12 Champion. Besides having Heisman Trophy contenders at quarterback in Joe Burrow for LSU and Jalen Hurts for Oklahoma, what these two Power 5 champions have in common is that neither school has won a playoff game to date.
This is more of a jab at Oklahoma, who has lost all three of its national semifinal games to date, including dropping the Capital One Orange Bowl to the Clemson Tigers in the last playoff. LSU should and will be the overwhelming favorite in this game, as the Bayou Bengals have yet to drop a game this season. Oklahoma’s only loss was on the road to the Kansas State Wildcats.
Though LSU will be largely expected to advance to the national championship being played at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome on Jan. 13, we should be getting a nice, high-scoring game on the fast Atlanta FieldTurf.
These are two of the most explosive offenses in college football this year. Burrow has been a record-setting quarterback at LSU in 2019, while Hurts has played tremendous football in his lone year at Oklahoma.
Interestingly enough, both of these Heisman contenders transferred from another elite Power 5 program to even get to this point. Burrow originally played at Ohio State before transferring to LSU before last season after losing out on the starting quarterback job to Dwayne Haskins. Hurts lost his starting job at Alabama after Tua Tagovailoa showcased his magic in the 2017 national title.
With two high-octane offenses and two great head coaches in Ed Orgeron and Lincoln Riley at LSU and Oklahoma, respectively, what very well may end up being the difference in this national semifinal is which defense ends up playing better. Though both defenses have had their moments this year, that’s not the side of the ball that led these two Power 5 teams to the playoff anyway.
LSU, historically a very strong defensive-minded team, is led by defensive coordinator Dave Aranda on that side of the ball. He’s been in Baton Rouge during Orgeron’s entire time as head coach. His best players on defense are in the secondary in cornerbacks Grant Delpit and Derek Stingley Jr. Delpit is a finalist for the Jim Thorpe Award, while Stingley is a freshman phenom.
Oklahoma usually had one of the better defenses in the Big 12 under former head coach Bob Stoops. However, that side of the ball has lacked since Riley took over for him three years ago. That being said, bringing in Alex Grinch as defensive coordinator has been huge for Oklahoma. Their best defensive player is linebacker Kenneth Murray, who succumbed to an injury vs. Baylor.
So what we’re looking at in terms of who will end up winning this game, it’ll come down to turnover differential and red-zone execution. We can trust the LSU secondary more than the Oklahoma front-seven to turn the football over. Though Hurts is a great playmaker in his own right, he can be a tad more reckless with the football than his counterpart in Burrow.
We should expect a close game heading into the latter part of the third quarter. LSU might have a two-score lead heading into halftime, but Oklahoma will have its chances to orchestrate a comeback vs. LSU. That being said, better execution in the red zone in the second half will end up giving LSU a comfortable victory over Oklahoma. The Sooners will fall to 0-4 in playoff games.
Pick: LSU 34, Oklahoma 17
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