Ole Miss Rebels 27, LSU Tigers 24: One More for the Road

At some point, you run out of adjectives for a day like today. Not to mention nouns and verbs and prepositions ...

Just the early upsets would have been enough for a day in the SEC. Heck, just one of the early upsets would have tilted the balance of power in the conference and made the last few weeks of the season something to watch. But the underdogs kept winning, so that by the time LSU and Ole Miss kicked off, no one would had taken the field as a favorite had actually won their game Saturday.

Alabama would break the streak. LSU would not. The Tigers' defense got carved up multiple ways by Ole Miss, Zach Mettenberger seemed at times to regress back to the quarterback he was last year, and Hugh Freeze and the Rebels finished off a day of upsets with one more episode of chaos for the SEC.

Bo Wallace was 30-of-39 for 346 yards. Barry Brunetti came in to throw Ole Miss' only passing touchdown. Jaylen Walton ran for 103 yards and two touchdowns on 18 carries. And Donte Moncrief was fed to the tune of five catches for 107 yards. And while the defensive performance was notable mostly for its three picks, it was enough to give the Rebels a chance to win the game.

LSU, meanwhile, seemed to make a baffling array of coaching decisions at times, especially when they relied heavily on the passing game even as it became clearer and clearer that Mettenberger was struggling. If you count Mettenberger's sacks as passing attempts, which they are, LSU called 36 passes and 32 runs. Given LSU's running backs and adding how bad Mettenberger looked most of Saturday night, that's just not a play-calling mix that makes a lot of sense. Then again, the longest run of the night for LSU was 12 yards. So it's not like the running game was making a lot more progress. And the defense, which gave up a total of 522 yards, wasn't helping anybody.

There was a point when the Bayou Bengals scored twice to tie the game and you thought maybe, just maybe the madness was going to end. But then Ole Miss got the ball with a bit more than three minutes left and marched right back down the field, with LSU looking powerless to stop it, and kicked the game-winning field goal.

Maybe it just wasn't LSU's night. They certainly were not the only team to go down in a season-changing upset Saturday. It seemed to be the rule rather than the exception. We're used to LSU games being crazy; for once, though, it seemed like just another game in the SEC.