LSU needs to stick with power running game vs. porous Texas Tech defense
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After the Les Miles firing at LSU almost happened but didn’t, the embattled coach promised to “tweak” his offense. But with a Texas Tech matchup in the Texas Bowl on the horizon in Houston, it’s just fine if Miles decides to wait a while on that offensive redesign.
The reason? Texas Tech has the third-worst rushing defense in America. So LSU’s run-right-at-them offense should work just fine, thank you.
Plus, there’s bragging rights at stake here in the Dec. 29 game. For conference pride, an SEC-middle-of-the-pack team like LSU needs to beat an average Big 12 team in Texas Tech. Especially since the Red Raiders already have an SEC scalp hanging on their wall this year. They beat Arkansas 35-24 back in September.
Another loss to Kliff Kingsbury’s high-flying style of play could be a signal that the old-school way of pounding the football and playing solid defense just doesn’t work anymore in the up-tempo modern era. Football traditionalists cringe at the thought, but if Kingsbury’s air attack subdues a second SEC West opponent in the same year, it has to mean something.
But Texas Tech is really bad at stopping the run and that’s what LSU and Leonard Fournette do best. The Red Raiders defense is yielding a whopping 271.8 yards per game on the ground. It’s the perfect opportunity to re-establish a running game that went dormant over the last four games of the regular season.
The Tech matchup offers a path for LSU to turn back the clock, back to the first seven games of the 2015 season when the Tigers dominated the line of scrimmage and Fournette popped through defenses 5-to-10 yards downfield before ever being touched by an opposing player.
That’s the formula for victory. That’s the formula for showing the college football world that the Kingsbury way is not the wave of the future but more of just a gimmick, a fleeting fad that must ultimately submit to the old tried-and-true ways of the game.
Only then can Miles begin the task of changing things up offensively, if indeed he ever truly intends to do so. That needs to be a 2016 discussion, not now.
The alternative plays right into the Red Raiders’ hands. For Miles to try to develop a passing game against that defense would be as ill-conceived as slamming Fournette over and over again into Alabama’s brick wall of a defensive front.
He could try it, but he’d probably regret it.
No, the timing is all wrong for Miles to do anything but what he knows best and that is smash-mouth football. Tigers fans will just have to get over it. Their last nerve will be grated, but they’ll just have to realize that Miles is only taking advantage of this particular situation and should not reflect on possible changes for the 2016 season.
Of course that will come as no solace to Tigers fans. They’ve grown weary, for more than a decade now, of the stubbornness in their coach. They’re ready for an immediate change.
But the timing is just not right for it. Not if Miles wants to cool Kingsbury’s heels and give the Tigers their best chance at victory.
Glenn Sattell is an award-winning freelance writer for Saturday Down South.
