Another LSU starter out

[Prediction? Pain.]

Yes, but Costello was hurt last year, so his returning production stinks. Costello only played in 5 games last year and threw for 1038 yards and 6 TDs

However, in 2018 he threw for 3,500 yards and 29 TDs

So what year is more representative of what MSU is getting?

Possibly, but I don't know that. In response to a comment about Kentucky's situation, where Terry Wilson is coming back after getting hurt last year, Bill C. said that he plugged Wilson's 2018 numbers into the formula:

I'm not on Twitter, but I guess someone who is could confirm that Costello's '18 numbers are reflected in the returning-production stats. I'd be interested to know.

Also remember that we're bringing back all of Shrader's stats at the QB position, too, and he accounted for a little over half our total yards at the QB position. So it's not like the cupboard was totally bare to begin with.

Regardless, I'm not sure how much this all affects our S&P+ projection. The offense is projected at 26th. The defense is the unit bringing the projection down. (Note, too, that even before the transfers on defense, we were 113th nationally in returning defensive production.)

And to bring my babbling back home, my points were just these: (1) On the original topic of the thread, LSU lost an insane of amount of production from last year. Barring something completely out of the ordinary happening -- as five years' worth of data shows, teams at the bottom regress 80% of the time -- LSU's going to be markedly worse than last year. (2) We're not in a great shape under those same metrics, either. Yes, there are tons of variables. But putting all that aside, most teams that return as little production as State (and LSU) this year haven't gotten better. I sure hope that the improvements in S&C and discipline stuff alone can make up for this. And it's certainly got to help some. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to ignore the facts, either.