...to start the 2009 season was an injury they had pre-season to their starting center iirc and they had to do some major shuffling to their OL including converting a TE over to play center who didn't have enough time to adjust to the new role. Bronco did a really nice job mixing up his blitz packages and kept their OL confused throughout the game.

Most people fail to give BYU the credit it was due for winning that game and instead mistakenly focus on their 8-5 finish to say they weren't that great but with a returning Heisman winning QB coming back for his senior year and all the NFL draft picks they had on their roster that year. Something like 18 or 19 NFL draft picks in the 2010 and 2011 NFL drafts came from that Sooner's team including 3 of the first 5 picks of the 2010 draft and 4 1st round picks overall that year. I think they were every bit of a #3 ranked team had we not knocked Bradford out for the year and if they didn't have to shuffle their OL so much maybe we don't have the edge we needed to win that game.

Big factor imo. Similar thing occurred in the 2009 Sugar Bowl when Alabama All-American and Outland Trophy winning LT Andre Smith was suspended for the bowl game and it caused a major re-shuffling along the line with no time to practice and adjust. It was destabilized enough to allow Whitt to exploit things early in the game as Utah sacked the Tide QB 6 or 7 times in the first half and jumped out to an early 21-0 lead.

Hopefully LSU's pass rush will be somewhat neutralized as a result of losing this player and give their defense less of an impact on this game.