Didn't read the article, but!

There is no way beating Portland State requires a full playbook. Our players, all of them, will get experience without breaking out lots of our plays. With a QB that's had a year in the offense we can go way deeper into the playbook, and the same thing on defense. The talk is that the D last year was very simple, but this year is going to change it up a lot, now that everyone has the basics down.

In football the biggest in season growth for most teams usually happens between week one and week two. Given that we can play in week 0, we get the game after our period of greatest growth, and before LSU has theirs.