LSU football: Tigers came up short against Bama, but it was anything but predictable
LSU coach Ed Orgeron admitted Monday that self-scouting during an open date last week was eye-opening.
He said his team had been “too predictable” on both offense and defense.
It was too easy for opponents to look at the Tigers’ offensive formations and anticipate when they would run and when they would pass.
It was too easy for opponents to look at the Tigers’ defensive alignment and anticipate when they would blitz, play zone, play man-to-man, etc.
On top of all that, Orgeron added, LSU was doing a poor job of adjusting after opponents easily figured out what its plan was.
That changed Saturday night.
Somewhere along the way, Orgeron and his staff fixed the predictability problem, especially on defense.
No. 2 Alabama couldn’t figure out what the Tigers were doing — especially on defense.
The Crimson Tide beat LSU 20-14 at Bryant-Denny Stadium, but the 29-point favorites couldn’t exhale until Max Johnson’s pass from the Alabama 30-yard line was batted down in the end zone as time expired.
Bill O’Brien, the home team’s offensive coordinator, never fully figured out what Daronte Jones, the visiting team’s defensive coordinator, was doing, even though most of the more than half-dozen injured LSU starters were on defense.
The Tide ran the ball 26 times. They netted 2 yards.
Bryce Young passed for 302 yards and 2 touchdowns, which was sufficient for Alabama to escape with the win. But the contents of Alabama’s drive chart surely weren’t predictable.
It was clear from start to finish that this game was not going to go as predicted.
The Tide missed a field goal at the end of the 1st possession of the game. They punted on their next 2 possessions, then they turned it over on downs. They didn’t score a point during the first 27 minutes of the game.
They finally put together a touchdown drive to tie the score at 7 late in the 2nd quarter, then took advantage of a short field provided by an interception and added a touchdown for a 14-7 halftime lead.
They would lead the rest of the way, but they wouldn’t have a moment to relax.
They got another turnover on the 1st possession of the 3rd quarter, and Young connected with Jameson Williams on a 58-yard touchdown for a 20-7 lead.
It was the 1st time and last time that LSU’s manpower shortage on defense was exposed.
That made 3 Bama touchdowns in a stretch of 8 offensive plays. The Tide scored 0 points on their other 55 plays.
They won, but they never figured out the Tigers’ defense for an extended stretch of time.
As for the LSU offense, it might need more work on the predictability front, though its shortcomings Saturday might have been more a result of a talent disadvantage.
The Tigers needed a well-conceived and well-executed fake punt that certainly was not predictable to resuscitate a touchdown drive on their 1st possession.
They needed to convert a pair of 4th-and-1s to keep alive a 3rd-quarter touchdown drive that produced the game’s final points.
They had other opportunities as their final 3 possessions ended at the Bama 7, the Bama 41 and the Bama 30.
LSU was indeed unpredictable on Saturday night.
No reasonable person would have predicted that this severely short-handed team playing under a lame-duck coach would have gone toe-to-toe for a full 60 minutes on the road against one of the stronger CFP contenders.
No reasonable person would have predicted that the Tigers’ defense would suffocate the Tide running game and hold Bama to a season-low scoring total by 11 points.
The LSU offense could never get that 3rd touchdown, which would have produced perhaps the least predictable outcome of this season. But no reasonable person would have predicted that the Tigers would come out of the game lamenting that they were 1 clutch offensive play from beating the Tide.
Losses by the Tigers have become all too predictable during the last 2 seasons, but Saturday night’s was anything but.
