Help me here.

Trying to remember when a 31-0 LSU victory caused so much fear and trepidation — bordering on resignation — among the Tigers’ faithful.

I’m not sure what the acceptable number against Southeastern Louisiana would have been. But evidently, judging by the mood of postgame Tiger Stadium (meh), it was somewhere north of 50, maybe well into the 60s.

Or maybe 31-0 would have suited everybody just fine if it had involved a second half of R&R for all the LSU starters.

That wasn’t the case either.

If anything LSU was fortunate to get 31 and the Lions moved the ball a tad better than a big, fat zero would suggest.

The gentlemanly thing to do would be to give some credit to a feisty SLU team for the effort, but this is college football, not a fall cotillion, that we’re talking about.

So, the gentlemanly protocol decrees that it’s time for LSU to panic, in overdrive.

Maybe it’s just another reason why Power Five conference teams shouldn’t be playing Football Championship Subdivision schools.

But, proving again what a wonderful country this is, the Tigers moved up a spot in the coaches’ poll, which would also suggest that the TV ratings for the game were minimal to miniscule outside the bayou’s immediate precincts.

It didn’t fool anybody who was there.

So suddenly, after one 31-0 victory, all the gloom and doom and mediocrity that had been visited on LSU in the preseason predictions seem to be validated.

All the good feelings after the season-opening, defiant statementmaking shocker against Miami seemed to have vanished.

For that matter, suddenly everybody remembered that, lost in the warm after gloating of trouncing Miami, in retrospect, that was a game in which everything that could possibly go right against the Hurricanes did and Miami couldn’t really catch a break.

Never mind LSU initiated a lot of Miami’s misfortune.

In the retelling, suddenly it would have been hard for LSU to lose that game if the Tigers had tried.

False alarm, everybody.

Funny what one week does to expectations.

Beat SLU 31-0 … and one would have thought LSU lost to Troy again.

And now big, bad Auburn — a big, bad Auburn that LSU has beaten five of the last seven years — is waiting to crush LSU into oblivion.

The same folks who a week ago were fast-forwarding through the schedule confident that the Tigers would be unbeaten when Georgia comes to town on Oct. 13, now scan the gauntlet and wonder if they will win another game, let alone put much of a scare into Auburn.

To be honest, after watching LSU and SLU, I’m trying to figure out a way that the Tigers can block Auburn’s front seven, and I’m coming up empty.

But calm down.

I know you’ve heard this sermon before.

But one more time, with fire and brimstone — One. Week. Does. Not. Define. A. Season.

There’s no gussying up the Southeastern game. It was pretty ugly. And maybe it does take some of the shine out of the shocker against Miami.

It’s human nature.

But neither game is going to be the season’s permanent script and blueprint.

LSU will get better or it could get worse. I guess that’s why they practice so much.

But fans tend to take whatever happened in the current week and instinctively plug it into the rest of the season.

The truth? One week usually has nothing to do with the next.

There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence to prove it.

The week after the Troy debacle last year, just to cite the most recent example (an actual loss, at that), LSU went to Florida and, although neither team played particularly well, the Tigers played tougher and turned their season around with what at the time was an unlikely victory.

But the next week LSU upset … Auburn, after falling behind 20-0.

It may well turn out that Auburn is the better team, simple as that.

Or not so simple, as it were — Auburn was a better team last year and a fat lot of good it did it.

Point is, the LSU team that shows up Saturday in Auburn won’t be the same team that fiddle-faddled around in its own backyard last week against an overmatched opponent.

LSU’s defense is fine. It will hold its own against anybody.

Offense, well now …

Quarterback Joe Burrow hasn’t really put up any real numbers yet, but he’s still getting a free pass.

If he’s not the answer, the feeling seems to be, then the season is over.

That’s quite a switch for LSU, which is used to being perceived nationally as a true quarterback away from being in the national hunt.

This is probably the week that he has to do more than not make any big mistakes, preferably without Auburn players hanging from his every body part.

It’s a tall task.

But, no matter what happens, it won’t be because the Tigers beat Southeastern Louisiana by only 31 points.

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Scooter Hobbs covers LSU athletics. Email him at shobbs@americanpress.com