LSU football schedule 2020: Can Tigers continue to work their 2019 magic?

Last year was an unforgettable year for LSU football, but does the Tigers’ schedule set up for Ed Orgeron’s team to continue riding that wave in 2020?

The LSU football schedule is officially out and the reigning national champions are now the hunted instead of the hunter as they were a year ago.

The 2019 LSU Tigers were one of the greatest single-season teams college football has ever seen. After having 14 LSU football players selected in the 2020 NFL Draft this year’s team will look radically different, although a few standouts return like Ja’Marr Chase and Derek Stingley, Jr. However, the Tigers must do their best in adverse circumstances to repeat as not only SEC Champions but National Champions. Is Coach O’s team up for the loftiest of challenges?

The LSU football schedule features tough road games with Florida and Auburn but gets Alabama in Death Valley where they’ll look to beat the Tide for the second year in a row

• LSU football home games: Alabama, Mississippi State, Missouri, Ole Miss, South Carolina
• LSU football road games: Arkansas, Auburn, Florida, Texas A&M, Vanderbilt

Despite losing so much talent after such a triumphantly successful season, LSU is in good shape to contend for another SEC crown and potentially a national title. LSU was one of six SEC teams that had realistic College Football Playoff aspirations entering the 2020 college football season before the Big Ten and Pac-12 backed out of playing this fall. What are their chances now?

When it came to picking up the two additional SEC games, no team got a better luck of the draw than did LSU. The Tigers added a home date vs. Eliah Drinkwitz’s Missouri Tigers and a road vs. Derek Mason’s Vanderbilt Commodores. Somehow, someway, Orgeron’s team added potentially the two worst teams in the SEC East to round out their schedule. Could LSU go perfect again?

No team should be expected to go undefeated in SEC play this year, not even the Alabama Crimson Tide, the Georgia Bulldogs or LSU. It’s too brutal of a gauntlet for even the bluest of SEC blue-bloods to come out of it unscathed. If any team does go undefeated in SEC play this year, it would be one of the most remarkable accomplishments we will ever see out of a college season.

So is perfection in play for LSU? I guess, but the Bayou Bengals have three tough road games this year: At the Auburn Tigers, at the Florida Gators and at the Texas A&M Aggies. They will drop at least one of those games, maybe two and possibly all three. As for the home games, the toughest of the five is obviously against Alabama, though it’ll be tough for the Tide to win in Baton Rouge.

For this year’s team’s apex, LSU could do the unthinkable again and go undefeated. If we’re talking about a worst-case scenario, 6-4 would be in play with losses in all four of their toughest games. Again, Joe Burrow doesn’t play quarterback for the Tigers anymore. We think Myles Brennan will be good, but he’s not going to fill the shoes of The Geauxt overnight. That’s patently impossible.

Realistically, LSU will finish somewhere in the 9-1 to 7-3 range. If the Tigers are going to lose a game, it’s probably at Florida in the Swamp. They could drop any of those other three games in question and it wouldn’t be shocked. For the sake of simplicity, let’s assume a road loss in Gainesville, an undefeated season at home, but a second road loss at Auburn or College Station.

Given what they lost to the NFL, an 8-2 season vs. only SEC competition would be reasonable.

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