LSU was really good on offense against Ole Miss on Saturday.

And the Tigers were really, really bad on defense in the 55-49 loss in Oxford.

Now it’s Tell the Truth Monday, which requires finding the good in losses just as it requires finding the bad in victories.

But the failure in this game – almost exclusively on defense – requires that the good stuff get merely perfunctory acknowledgment before moving on to the bad stuff that has this team trending to the negative as the end of the 1st half of the season looms next Saturday.

OK, Jayden Daniels is great. So are Malik Nabers and Brian Thomas Jr. Logan Diggs is also really good. The offensive line seems to be settling in, and if Mason Taylor continues to get healthier, the offense will get another boost.

And the special teams have been solid, orders of magnitude better than the disaster that they were last season.

That’s enough of that.

Now to the bad stuff.

There’s no need to rehash the details of 1 of the worst defensive performances in the history of LSU football. The Tigers were simply awful, and even a superficial look at the box score will tell that story.

But there’s more to look at than numbers on this Tell the Truth Monday.

Last Monday, LSU head coach Brian Kelly said in the wake of a narrow, defensively-challenged victory against Arkansas that the key to the defense playing up to the level that its talent suggests should be attainable was to do “the ordinary extraordinarily well.”

Instead the Tigers did ordinary things, such as knowing their assignments, shedding blocks, taking proper angles and tackling, extraordinarily poorly.

Kelly’s point was a valid one: young players, as they often do, were trying to do too much. They were allowing themselves to be seduced into trying to make big plays that required them to abandon their responsibilities and take on those of a teammate.

That inevitably leads to breakdowns.

Defensive schemes are designed for all 11 players to be disciplined and efficient in performing their assigned tasks, each trusting that each of their teammates will do their job.

But against the Rebels, no one did their job well with any degree of consistency, and if anyone was trying to do a teammate’s job along the way, they failed at that too.

In the end, though, the failures are the responsibility of Kelly, defensive coordinator Matt House and the rest of the defensive staff.

The Tigers started poorly on defense, played marginally better for a brief stretch late in the 2nd quarter and early in the 3rd quarter, then collapsed when the game was being decided.

Lane Kiffin and his staff did a better job of having their players, who were coming off a physically exhausting, frustrating and disappointing loss at Alabama 7 days earlier, ready to compete at a very high level as soon as the game kicked off.

To the credit of Kelly, his staff and their players, they gradually got the game turned in their favor. They took their 1st lead on the 1st possession of the 3rd quarter and held a 9-point lead midway through the 4th quarter.

But Kiffin, his staff and their players recovered, and down the stretch they regained the passion and efficiency that they had in the early going while the LSU group reverted to its early-game sluggishness.

In a game in which any touchdown-free possession, especially a scoreless one, was potentially lethal, the Rebels’ final 2 possessions produced 2 touchdowns and the Tigers’ final 2 possessions produced 0 points.

And this is where coordinator Mike Denbrock and the rest of the offensive staff can get a small share of the blame for the team’s inability to win a game in which LSU had a 35-12 run.

Kelly and his staff will show the game tape to the players. They’ll point out the many, many examples of poor execution, explain the corrections that need to be made, then demonstrate how to effect those corrections on the practice field.

They’ll consider possible depth chart changes and craft a game plan tailored to Missouri.

It’s up to the players – primarily the defensive ones – to perform better this week.

Missouri is undefeated and easily capable of duplicating the offensive success that Arkansas had against LSU if not that which Ole Miss had.

The Rebels had an excellent bounce back after Alabama, which is playing much better, as is Texas A&M. Auburn played Georgia to the wire.

If LSU is going to be relevant in the SEC the rest of the way, it needs to make significant strides this week.

That means it’s up to Kelly and his staff to do a better job of having their players ready to compete when the game kicks off and raise the entire team’s performance to a level that’s more consistent with its talent level.

The players need to do the ordinary extraordinarily well.

So do the coaches.