LSU coach Ed Orgeron was pleasantly surprised when WR Terrace Marshall came to him on Monday morning and wanted to have a players-only meeting. The coach believes the Tigers need more of that kind of leadership down the stretch as they get set for five remaining games.

Between trying to right the ship of a 2-3 record, or improve NFL draft stock, there is plenty of motivation to close strong. The older players and draft-eligible players have a two-fold motivation. Orgeron no doubt understands that winning — and championship — teams have leadership not just from the coaching staff, but the juniors and seniors as well, who want to cement their legacy.

“They want to win. They want to go out and win, and they represent the purple and gold,” Orgeron said at his Monday press conference. “And they don’t like the results on the field either. But you know what? A lot of them got a lot of things to prove on the field to go into the NFL, and put it on tape. And let’s use Terrace Marshall as an example. The guy’s having a tremendous season. He wants to talk to the team today. I know what he wants to talk to the team about, playing one team, one heartbeat, let’s go beat Arkansas, one game at a time, a lot of good football left.”

Orgeron reiterated that point on Tuesday morning on his regular appearance on “Off the Bench” on ESPN Baton Rouge.

“Talking about the significance of us finishing hard these last five games, and great leadership, I thought we had one of our best practices yesterday,” Orgeron said. “The better leadership we have in the locker room, the better team we’re going to be. Obviously we need to coach them better and the leadership needs to pick up. Glad to see that Terrace did that yesterday.”