It’s the final Tell The Truth Monday of the season.

Tell The Truth Monday exists for 2 reasons. One is to not allow the disappointment of defeat to distract from good stuff that happened. The other is to not allow the satisfaction of victory to distract from bad stuff that happened.

LSU was 5-5, and the good and bad stuff were about as equally divided as the won-loss record.

Going into this off-season, Ed Orgeron can’t allow the poor performances in losses to Mississippi State, Missouri, Auburn, Texas A&M and Alabama to overshadow the good that happened in those games — even if some of it had a needle-in-a-haystack quality to it.

Nor can Orgeron allow the successes against Vanderbilt, South Carolina, Arkansas, Florida and Ole Miss to overshadow the blemishes in those performances – even ones that featured hints that things weren’t as bad at the end as they appeared most of the season.

The 2-game win streak at the end was not evidence that Orgeron and his staff had figured out everything that was wrong, just that they’d picked up on a few clues.

Orgeron has to do this off-season what he has done before – what he did after he was fired as head coach at Ole Miss, what he did after he was named interim head coach to replace Les Miles, what he did when he was hired as the full-time head coach of the Tigers.

He has to evaluate this season’s performance the way he evaluated his own performance with the Rebels, the way he evaluated the 2-2 start that led to Miles’ firing, the way he evaluated how to get the program from where Miles left it to  where he took it last season.

Orgeron is good at this.

After his failure at Ole Miss, he took stock of himself. He realized he micromanaged too much. He said he behaved as a position coach while he was being head coach. He tried to have his hands in everything, He didn’t delegate enough. He was a jack of all trades and a master of none.

It was a mistake. He realized it. He vowed not to remake it when he got another chance.

When Miles was dismissed, Orgeron looked around and evaluated the staff around him. He had to replace himself as defensive line coach and turned to LSU legend Pete Jenkins, as much as a consigliere as a line coach.

He believed he needed a different offense, so he fired coordinator Cam Cameron and promoted tight ends coach Steve Ensminger.

It worked, and improvement on offense and the smoothness with which Orgeron and his staff operated helped him land the full-time gig.

Orgeron continued to tinker with his offense. He hired Matt Canada as coordinator for the 2017 season, and that didn’t work out, so he fired Canada. He brought back Ensminger, who had returned to his tight end duties.

He admitted he never should have removed Ensminger. It was a mistake. He corrected it.

Things were more to Orgeron’s liking in 2018, but still not good enough, so he brought in Joe Brady as passing game coordinator. The Tigers’ historic passing game and overall offense produced an undefeated season and a national championship in 2019.

Then came 2020.

Nearly everything went wrong that could have. Brady went to the NFL, as did most of the key contributors to the championship.

Defensive coordinator Dave Aranda left to become head coach at Baylor.

More key players left in the summer and the fall. Myles Brennan got hurt.

A lot of stuff out of Orgeron’s control contributed to the drop-off this season. But all that stuff doesn’t excuse the drop-off.

There’s more to it than that.

Orgeron needs to evaluate everything.

He needs to start the way he started after leaving Ole Miss — by looking in the mirror. What did he do wrong? Why are so many players so eager to leave his program for the NFL or other colleges?

He needs to look at his staff as he did when he succeeded Miles. Are there weak links that need to be replaced?

He needs to do what he did after the 2017 season and look at his most recent hires.

Was Scott Linehan the wrong person to replace Brady? Was Bo Pelini the wrong guy to replace Aranda — just as Canada was a bad fit?

Orgeron needs to evaluate his program from A to Z.

And he needs to discover how he can do better in 2021.