Amidst atypical circumstances, we’re about to find out how far removed from 2020 LSU really is
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The health and safety of Louisiana residents in the wake of Hurricane Ida trumps anything that’ll happen on a football field a couple thousand miles away in Los Angeles on Saturday night. Let that be known. That perspective is worth remembering, even as 8 months of buildup comes to a head in the Rose Bowl on national television.
The word “adversity” is overused in sports. The same word shouldn’t be used to define LSU’s start to 2020 compared to its start to 2021. In 2020, the Tigers struggled with roster depletion, post-championship motivation and poor coaching hires. Ultimately, they didn’t handle those circumstances well. A 5-5 season could’ve easily been 3-7.
How well will LSU handle these circumstances in the 2021 season opener? It’ll be telling.
That’s not to say we should expect Ed Orgeron’s team to come out and play a perfect, 2019-like game. After all, LSU’s prep for UCLA took a detour when Hurricane Ida forced the team to evacuate for Houston on Saturday night.
The #LSU football team left Baton Rouge at 9:30 pm last night and only just arrived at 8 am this morning in Houston, where they’ll stay and practice this week.
Because of evacuation traffic, it took the team buses more than 10 hours to make the normal four-hour trip.
— Ross Dellenger (@RossDellenger) August 29, 2021
Sheesh.
There are players on that LSU roster who are probably experiencing flashbacks of Hurricane Katrina, which tore through the city of New Orleans 16 years earlier. Players like LSU quarterback Myles Brennan, who is out indefinitely with a broken arm, had their family homes destroyed by Katrina. It remains to be seen what the devastation will be from Ida.
Now imagine having thoughts like that in the midst of preparing for a primetime season-opening game. That’s adversity. That’s a true measure of how focused a team is on taking care of business within those 60 minutes.
When Katrina forced LSU to move its 2005 season-opener against Arizona State to Tempe, Ariz., the Tigers had even less time to adjust. That decision was made on Monday ahead of Saturday’s matchup.
Jacob Hester, a Shreveport, Louisiana, native who was on that 2005 LSU team, said it wasn’t the picking up and moving that was a challenge. That became a bit too familiar during hurricane season in south Louisiana. Katrina was a different beast because there were players on that team who didn’t have any contact with family members. Imagine going days without knowing the status of loved ones and focusing on playing a football game.
It was also Les Miles’ LSU debut after the original opener against North Texas was postponed. On top of that, it was against an ASU team that jumped into the top 15 after it dismantled Temple in its opener.
There are parallels to this 2021 matchup. Fortunately, LSU was always scheduled to play out Wet. However, just like in 2005, the decision to pack up the team and evacuate Louisiana wasn’t always the plan. And while UCLA won’t be a top-15 team on Saturday, the Bruins are coming off an impressive season-opening blowout win against Hawai’i.
The 2005 LSU team rolled with the punches and somehow outlasted ASU in a 35-31 overtime thriller. Hester said the coaching staff did a phenomenal job of making it “family first, football second.”
We don’t know if the 2021 team will have similar resilience, but given all the questions about a potential bounce-back year, it does feel like the ultimate barometer for LSU.
Nobody would fault the Tigers if they didn’t look crisp from the jump on Saturday night.
Let me take that back.
It’s the SEC. It’s a national stage. Of course, some people would fault the Tigers if they didn’t look crisp from the jump on Saturday night, and if LSU does fall in the opener, Orgeron’s seat will get hotter in the public eye.
Nobody should be surprised* if the Tigers don’t look crisp from the jump on Saturday night.
This isn’t just about sleeping in an unfamiliar place. This is about needing to be mentally dialed in for 4 quarters when there’s a real-life natural disaster taking place back home. It can’t be easy to diagnose tendencies in a Chip Kelly offense under normal circumstances, much less when a rabbit hole of stunning images of a life-altering hurricane is just a click away.
Coaches always say “block out the noise,” but how do you tell an 18-year-old kid that when his primary focus is on whether his childhood town is recovering from a hurricane? Honestly, I have no idea.
This was the hand LSU was dealt. Thankfully, the storm will be over by the time the Tigers take the field for the first time in 2021. Perhaps for some, football will serve as a welcome distraction this week. Perhaps for others, it’ll lack significance.
What’s clear is that this is different than finding out before the opener that Derek Stingley Jr. won’t play because of a non-COVID illness, or that only a fraction of the usual Death Valley crowd will be allowed to attend home games because of the pandemic.
It would say a lot if the Tigers came out and blew the doors off an improved UCLA squad. It would be an early indication that the Tigers do have realistic expectations to compete in the West instead of being eliminated from the race by Week 3 of 2020.
That second loss of 2020 came when, ironically enough, LSU was told on Wednesday that instead of playing Mizzou in Baton Rouge, the game would be moved to Columbia because of Hurricane Delta. LSU then allowed nearly 600 yards of offense and lost as a 2-touchdown favorite. Orgeron’s squad was many things in 2020 — “adaptable” was not one of them.
Saturday night will set the stage for the year ahead. At the same time, losing to UCLA wouldn’t necessarily mean a 2020 repeat is in store for LSU. That’s worth repeating.
So is something else; there’d be no quicker way for LSU to put 2020 in the rearview mirror than by rolling with Ida’s punches and returning home with a victory.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
