Tell the Truth Monday: Playing well in bleak moments is not enough
If Ed Orgeron could have gotten LSU to consistently play to its potential as he periodically has gotten it to when the circumstances have been the most challenging, he might not be a lame duck.
But he couldn’t and so he is.
That’s the truth on this Tell the Truth Monday.
Orgeron will be the 4-5 Tigers’ head coach for just 3 more games, 4 if they somehow sneak into a bowl game. That’s because LSU has won 9 games and lost 10 since it won the national championship 2 years ago.
The Tigers were upset by Mississippi State and Missouri and embarrassed by Auburn and Alabama on their way to a 3-5 start last season.
They were short-handed and seemingly fading when they went into The Swamp and knocked of SEC East champion Florida 37-34, then somehow outscored Ole Miss 53-48 in the finale in Tiger Stadium.
Whispers about Orgeron’s job potentially being in jeopardy so soon after the championship were quickly silenced by the strong finish, though he entered this season with a much smaller margin for error.
Then this team was upset by UCLA in the opener and got bullied by Kentucky in a performance that led the university to negotiate a buyout of Orgeron effective at the end of the season.
But the Tigers followed the loss at Kentucky with an upset of then-No. 20 Florida and after a loss at Ole Miss they went into Bryant-Denny Stadium as 29-point underdogs to No. 2 Alabama on Saturday night.
They could have easily entered the game as a discouraged team, especially considering the laundry list of key players who were sidelined that further expanded the talent gap between the SEC West rivals.
But LSU was well-prepared, it played hard, it played with passion and it had a very good chance to win before coming up just a tad short.
The performance Saturday night was consistent with Orgeron’s demonstrated ability to motivate teams to embrace circumstances in which virtually no one outside of the team believes in them.
Remember when Orgeron was promoted to interim head coach when Les Miles after fired after a 2-2 start to the 2016 season?
In the first game under Orgeron, the Tigers shook off the upheaval of the in-season coaching change, rallied around Orgeron and had a record-setting offensive performance in a 42-7 rout over Missouri.
That was impressive.
The interim coach’s team came within 1 yard of beating Florida and going to the Sugar Bowl.
The first 12 losses by LSU teams coached by Orgeron were followed by victories.
But this Tigers team has lost 2 games in a row as it prepares to host Arkansas on Saturday. It’s the 3rd losing streak in the Tigers’ past 11 games.
It’s helpful to be able to rally the troops to victory when things seem the bleakest – and Saturday’s performance was impressive even in defeat.
But that’s not enough.
Programs are built on a consistency of performance that keeps the bleak moments to a minimum and eventually eliminates them.
Orgeron also demonstrated an ability to inspire teams to play like champions when championships – division, conference and national – were at stake, which was the case throughout the magical 2019 season.
The truth is that Orgeron’s teams have been at their best when the expectations for them were the lowest and when the challenges for them were the greatest.
It was the in-between stuff – the week-to-week grind of putting away inferior opponents quickly and decisively and being superior in the handful of plays that determine outcomes against comparable opponents – that messed him up.
Orgeron constantly preaches about his team “having one heartbeat,” which means every individual being in sync with one another.
His teams generally achieved that common heartbeat – but it also has been an irregular heartbeat.
