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In Ed Orgeron’s second game as head coach, LSU looked a little bit like a Les Miles team, and we still don’t know exactly how good or different the Tigers really are.
After a 45-10 win over Southern Miss, LSU is 2-0 under Orgeron, having beaten USM and Missouri by a combined 87-17 score. But these are two foes Orgeron’s team should have dominated in retrospect.
How does that translate to how the Orgeron Tigers will do against better SEC competition? We lost a chance to see last weekend when Hurricane Matthew postponed the Florida game. But we may finally see this week when LSU hosts Orgeron’s former team, Ole Miss.
Against Southern Miss, LSU went to power football to try to subdue a foe that was suspect against the run. It mostly worked after some early issues. The Tigers did show two things: They are capable of making big plays and the defense – even against an offense that’s pretty good by any standard – is stout.
5 Takeaways
1. Offensive line changes were …?: LSU offensive line coach Jeff Grimes opted to shuffle some players on the Tigers’ offensive line, rather than plug backup gaurd Garrett Brumfield in for the injured Will Clapp at left guard. Instead, he moved center Ethan Pocic to right tackle in place of injured Toby Weathersby, gave Andy Dodd his first start at center and moved jack-of-all-trades specialist Maea Teuhema from right tackle (where he has been starting for Weathersby) to Clapp’s left guard spot, the third position Teuhema has started this year. The results? LSU had trouble moving the football on the ground early and finished with just 17 first downs. But the good news is they opened wide-open holes for some big runs by Derrius Guice in the second half, and he finished with 162 yards on 16 carries.
2. Despite attrition, the LSU secondary looked great: With safety Rickey Jefferson out with a broken leg, new starter John Battle was solid. And with Kevin Toliver suspended for the first half, Dwayne Thomas got more snaps and played just fine. At the end, Southern Miss’ explosive, attacking passing game was held to 161 yards on 36 attempts as quarterback Nick Mullens consistently settled for short, safe passes and LSU was mostly up to the challenge to make stops in space for minimal gains. With back-to-back dominant performances against statistically good passing attacks from Missouri and USM, LSU has to have some confidence with Chad Kelly and Ole Miss coming to town next week.
3. Break out days for Etling, Dupre?: Danny Etling’s 11-for-18 passing day won’t raise many eyebrows, but his season-high 276 passing yards should. It showed that LSU made chunk plays in the passing game, not just keeping it safe with underneath routes and missing down-the-field throws. And among the down-the-field targets was Dupre, whose 3 catches (also hardly a noteworthy stat) went for 100 yards (including a 63-yard bomb) and 2 touchdowns. If LSU is to make a run at the SEC West title, it’s going to need Etling to continue to make plays down the field, and Dupre is perhaps LSU’s best candidate to make those plays.
4. Signs of growing pains: Orgeron and Steve Ensminger changed up LSU’s offensive approach after the firing of Miles, and after a pretty clean effort against Missouri, the Tigers looked like a team learning a new system against USM, getting penalized for illegal substitutions and sometimes looking confused in the first half. Orgeron said the Tigers were perhaps caught subbing too much. Perhaps the Tigers got those mistakes out of their system, but the remaining schedule won’t be as forgiving of them.
5. Is Guice the SEC’s best?: After his 16-carry, 162-yard, 2-touchdown effort against USM, is it time to move Derrius Guice into the conversation as the SEC’s best running back, at least until Leonard Fournette is back at full health? Guice is explosive, strong and quick and has great vision. His 9.1 yards per carry leads all SEC running backs with enough carries to qualify among the leaders. He is fifth in the league in rushing yards per game (94), but that’s with three games where Fournette was the feature back. Is it possible LSU has the two best running backs in the SEC?
Report Card
Offense: B — This is averaging out two grades. In the first half, a team that (as noted above) sometimes looked confused and couldn’t reliably move the chains with the running game was a D team. Southern Miss had just given up 55 points to Texas-San Antonio and held LSU to 10 at halftime. But in the second half, LSU rolled up 35 points, with all five touchdowns from more than 20 yards out and three from more than 60 yards. That’s an A-plus effort. Combine it, and you get a solid B.
Defense: A — Give Southern Miss credit for driving down the field for an early touchdown. But after that, LSU shut down a pretty good offense. Dave Aranda’s group was solid after the first drive. Shutting down a talented Southern Miss offense the way LSU did was as impressive as shutting down most SEC offenses. LSU pressured Mullens and made tackles in space, something USM schemes to make you have to do.
Special Teams: B+ — A long second-half kickoff return by Donte Jackson was negated by penalty. Otherwise, LSU was solid. Colby Delahoussaye was perfect on placement kicks, LSU’s kickoff coverage — best in the SEC coming into the game — was again very good and punter Josh Growden averaged 58 yards on three punts. Had Jackson’s return gone unpenalized, it would have been a pretty complete domination from the special teams.
Coaching: B — USM got off to the faster start and LSU looked a little confused and lethargic coming off the bye week. But Orgeron and his staff made great adjustments at halftime — mostly by getting the Tigers focused and locked in — and it was a much different team in the second half.
Overall: B — It’s hard to get nitpicky about a 35-point win, but LSU will need to come out stronger the rest of the way. An effort like the first half the rest of the way will result in the Tigers digging out of a hole, not tied 10-10. But the explosive plays and solid defense in the second half are hard to ignore as well.
Game Plan
On offense, LSU wanted to try to punish a reeling USM defense that gave up 339 yards rushing in the previous week’s 55-32 loss to Texas-San Antonio. It didn’t work early, but in the second half, Guice got going and the Tigers had a decent rushing day (183 yards on 24 carries) that was good enough to set up some long passes down the field late. On defense, it was vintage Aranda. The Tigers did not allow big plays and made tackles in space against an offense that thrives on creating advantageous matchups in the open field. Aside from an early USM touchdown drive, the Tigers executed well.
Game Balls
S Jamal Adams: Not only did Adams finish with 11 tackles, including 1.5 for loss, he also forced a fumble and recovered it, setting up a touchdown that helped trigger the blowout. With fellow safety Rickey Jefferson out, Adams stepped up his game appropriately.
C Andy Dodd: Dodd got his first career start at center as part of the above-mentioned offensive line shuffle, and while Pocic (moved from center to right tackle) and Maea Teuhema (from right tackle to left guard) deserve kudos for gamely accepting new positions, Dodd gets love for defeating first-start jitters and turning in a solid performance for an offense that rolled up 459 yards.
WR Malachi Dupre: LSU’s been waiting for a breakout game from him, and he delivered in the second half with two touchdown receptions in a 3-catch, 100-yard day. Both Dupre and D.J. Chark delivered multi-touchdown games (Chark scored via the air and the ground) and gave LSU the explosiveness it needs in the passing game to make this a complete offense.
