FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Don’t look now, but college football’s free radicals are on the loose.

What is a free radical, class? It is defined as an unstable molecule. That’s the best description I can think of to describe this LSU football team after Saturday’s 34-10 victory here over Arkansas.

Yes, the Tigers don’t exactly play what you would call the beautiful game. They’re still giving up big shots on defense (although it seems to be less and less each week). On Saturday, they traded ineffective run blocks for a series of offensive line penalties that crippled their offense and allowed an overmatched Razorbacks team to hang on to LSU longer than it probably deserved.

But LSU has won six straight since losing to USC in Las Vegas earlier in the season. I’m sure Brian Kelly, an avid golfer, would happily buy a mulligan for it. We’ll never know, but if these two teams played right now, I think the Tigers would torch the Trojans.

USC fell to 3-4 with a loss at Maryland on Saturday. LSU is trending the other way, the gap between them widening as fast as the universe.

You know that popular social media phrase when someone shows you two photos side by side and says, “How it all started…how it’s going.” LSU started to go nowhere with another insane season-opening loss. But then the Tigers started winning week after week, improving with every mile of the season that clicked on the odometer.

And now? Thanks to Georgia’s 30-15 win over No. 1 Texas in Austin, Texas, while LSU harassed Arkansas in the second half, the Southeastern Conference has become an absolute contender. Who would have thought it, but the last two undefeated teams in SEC play meet on the last Saturday in October in College Station, Texas: LSU (6-1, 3-0) at Texas A&M (6-1, 4-0 ). ).

For the Tigers, their problems were suddenly drowned out by opportunities. LSU will likely be the underdog in Aggieland, but name a game the Tigers can’t win the rest of the way? There is none.

As LSU prepared to play the Rebels last week, it was clear the Tigers faced a grueling four-game stretch that would define their season: Ole Miss, at Arkansas and A&M, at home against Alabama. Now it’s the Tigers who are in a position to define terms. They’re fighting for one of those two coveted spots in the SEC Championship Game and then for one of the even more coveted spots in the newly expanded 12-team College Football Playoff.

From being written off to being a written national player in less than two months. What a story.

Afterward, someone asked Kelly the question the Tigers are currently facing: “Why not us?” He didn’t back down.

“I think it’s pretty clear that this group understands that now,” Kelly said. “I think they feel that they have put themselves in a good position. Now they have to earn it on the road, but they clearly see things differently over the next six weeks.

“They believe they are doing better, and I believe they are doing better too.”

Two big passing plays marked LSU’s 29-26 overtime win over Ole Miss last week: Garrett Nussmeier’s 23-yard touchdown pass on fourth down to Aaron Anderson that forced overtime, and his 25-yard touchdown pass. Pass to Kyren Lacy, who won it in overtime.

This Saturday evening the game was determined by one play. A piece that could define this season.

With LSU leading 16-10 but momentum building on the Razorbacks’ sideline, linebacker Whit Weeks and star defender Major Burns turned Arkansas quarterback Taylen Green into an unwilling rallying point inside his 10-yard line. Weeks intercepted Green’s frantic pass attempt near the 5 and went down in a tangle of bodies at the 2, his interception setting up the second of Caden Durham’s three touchdown runs on the next play.

That sequence gave LSU a 24-10 lead. It wasn’t game, set, match, but Momentum suddenly imagined how much fun the Tigers’ charter home would be and that the campus bars might still be in celebration mode when they returned.

For the second straight day, the LSU defense did not allow a touchdown in the second half. Like the Knights of old, the defense is trying to help LSU win games and not be a liability to overcome. It’s the type of defense the Tigers need to be national players. The kind of defense Weeks always thought the Tigers had.

“We know who we are,” said the ever-smiling Weeks. “At the end of the season everyone will know who we are.”

That sounds like an anthem for a team that could be completely different than we perceived them until recently.

Radical thought.