More Likely to Get Revenge in Week 3, LSU or Alabama?
LSU and Alabama, the SEC West's best teams over the past decade, will try to avenge rare losses this week against Auburn and Ole Miss, respectively.
All four teams in question are ranked in the Top 20 of the Associated Press poll: Alabama at No. 2, LSU at No. 13, Ole Miss at No. 15 and Auburn at No. 18. If the Crimson Tide and Tigers want revenge for what happened last season, when Ole Miss upset Alabama 23-17 and Auburn steamrolled LSU 41-7, they will need to beat quality opponents.
But which one is more likely to pull it off?
.jpg?w=256 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
The short answer is Alabama, although both teams stand at least a decent shot. The long answer is explained in the following sections.
Sound off below and let us know why you agree or disagree!
The Numbers
LSU and Alabama are both medium-strength home favorites.
Sportsbooks favor both teams to win by roughly seven points, per Odds Shark, but advanced numbers prefer the Crimson Tide:
| FEI Projected Score | ALA 31, MISS 17 | LSU 30, AUB 21 | +5 |
| FEI Win Probability | 86.4 | 73.3 | +13.1 |
| F/+ Projected Score | ALA 33.5, MISS 25.8 | LSU 32.3, AUB 26.4 | +1.8 |
| F/+ Win Probablitity | 67.1 | 63.4 | +3.7 |
The F/+ projections at Football Study Hall, which incorporate but are usually more conservative than the FEI projections at bcftoys.com, make both teams relatively small favorites. But even in that case, they like Alabama's chances more than those of LSU.
We should note, though, that both teams fall within the same range of F/+ win probability, landing between 60 and 69 percent. For the season, teams with that win probability are 20-2 straight up—a 90.9 percent clip that's unsustainable but still impressive.
Both teams are favored to win, but Alabama is the stronger play.
Recent History
Again, this trend favors Alabama more than LSU.
Prior to last year's upset, the Crimson Tide had won 10 straight meetings over Ole Miss by an average of 19.1 points per game.
The LSU-Auburn series is more balanced, although the Tigers have still won seven of the past 11 meetings. Also of note: The past two times Auburn won before last season (2006, 2010), it was promptly followed by three-game LSU winning streaks.
But the real reason recent history favors Alabama more than LSU is the extent of what happened last season. The Crimson Tide and Tigers both lost, but they lost in very different ways:
| Score | 17-23 | 7-41 | +28 |
| Percentile Performance | 51% | 17% | +34% |
| Adjusted Scoring Margin | 0.7 | -22.5 | +23.2 |
| Win Expectancy | 10% | 0% | +10% |
According to percentile performance, which compares a team's single-game F/+ rating with that of the rest of the country, Alabama played its worst game of last season against Ole Miss, and LSU played its worst game of last season against Auburn.
But the magnitude of those season-worst games was alarming. Auburn made LSU look bad—legitimately bad—like, Sun Belt Conference bad. Ole Miss just made Alabama look average.
According to SB Nation's Bill Connelly, no team's lowest-percentile performance was higher than Alabama's loss at Ole Miss. In Connelly's words: "It was the best worst game in the country."
There's also the matter of Nick Saban's recent record in revenge games. Since arriving at Alabama in 2006, he's won nine of 10 games against opponents that beat his team the previous season. He found similar success at LSU from 2000-2003, winning eight of nine revenge games. He is 17-2 in his last 19 games in this scenario.
Good luck betting against that.
Early-Season Overreactions
The main point compelling LSU in this article is how bad Auburn looked in Week 2 and how good Ole Miss has looked in each of its first two games.
Auburn needed overtime to beat FCS Jacksonville State, which is why it dropped from No. 6 to No. 18 in the AP rankings, while Ole Miss hung 76 points against Tennessee-Martin and 73 points against Fresno State.
But it's important to note that Auburn, one of just four teams in the country to make multiple national title games since 2009 (the other three being Alabama, LSU and Oregon), has a history of starting slow. It struggled to beat Clemson and Kentucky at the start of 2010. It struggled to beat Washington State and Mississippi State at the start of 2013.
It made the national title game in both of those seasons.
"We've got more than enough talent to do what we want to do this year," Auburn safety Johnathan Ford said Tuesday, per John Zenor of the Associated Press. "It's not hard to believe at all.
"Don't count us out for anything."
Ole Miss, on the other hand, has a penchant for starting fast and getting worse. It also has to deal with left tackle Laremy Tunsil, the most talented player on the team, likely missing another game on suspension, according to reports from Chris Low of ESPN.com.
Tunsil was the No. 8 overall player and No. 1 offensive lineman on Bleacher Report's Preseason CFB 250. SEC lead writer Barrett Sallee called him "the most indispensable player on that team" and said "without him, Ole Miss is not a serious SEC contender."
We can overreact to how the Rebels have looked against UT-Martin and Fresno State, but the truth is we know nothing about this offense. We know nothing about quarterback Chad "Swag" Kelly, who leads the country in QB rating but has never played a defense like Alabama's, never started a road game, never started a night game, never played in Bryant-Denny Stadium, never been on ESPN in prime time.
Unknowns make Ole Miss a high-variance opponent, while knowns make Auburn slightly more predictable. We don't know that Auburn is good, but we at least know that it can be good, at least know it's better than Louisville. With Ole Miss, we only think those things.
The advantage is once again for Alabama.
.jpg?w=480 "Ohio State Team Doctor")
