LSU football: Davis-Price’s historic performance revitalizes Tigers
By Les East
Published:
No LSU player had ever rushed for as many yards as Ty Davis-Price rushed for Saturday afternoon.
His school-record 287 yards came on 36 carries. He had 3 touchdowns in the Tigers’ 49-42 upset of No. 20 Florida at Tiger Stadium.
That’s great stuff.
It surpassed Leonard Fournette’s previous record of 284 rushing yards against Ole Miss in 2016.
“I just did my job,” Davis-Price said, giving the credit to the offensive line’s “amazing job.”
Sure, the LSU offensive line provided lots of running room for the 2nd consecutive week after providing next to none in the first 5 games. But a whole bunch of Davis-Price’s yards came as result of him running as hard as a ball carrier can.
Sure, Max Johnson and Jaray Jenkins connected for 3 touchdown passes, but in the absence of Kayshon Boutte and Deion Smith, the Tigers passed for just 133 yards. So the Gators zeroed in on Davis-Price more and more as the game went along, and he just kept picking up steam.
Sure, the LSU defense came up with 4 interceptions — even without Derek Stingley Jr. and Eli Ricks — but Florida gained 488 yards and had 4 2nd-half touchdowns to keep putting the pressure on the Tigers to score.
And LSU kept responding behind Price, and it hardly needed to pass in the 4th quarter — which it didn’t until Johnson and Jenkins connected for the game-winner on 4th and goal from the 1 with 3:30 left.
Factor in all of that — along with the deafening noise about head coach Ed Orgeron’s lack of job security with a struggling team — and Davis-Price’s performance might just be the greatest by any LSU football player in any game.
Ever.
Well, except for that Joe Burrow guy.
The offensive line has gotten healthier in recent weeks. First-year line coach Brad Davis, hired just a few months ago, and the linemen have gotten better acquainted and the blocking has evolved.
Offensive coordinator Jake Peetz has become more decisive and less complicated in calling plays and sticking with them rather thank milking the entire play clock in search of a potentially perfect adjustment to the original call.
As a result, the offense has found a better rhythm that has kept the linemen off their heels.
All of that stuff has been helpful.
But Davis-Price’s determination and relentlessness the last 2 weeks, especially against the Gators, has turned a running game that was essentially nonexistent during the first 5 weeks into a significant asset.
LSU went into Saturday’s game ranked 4th to last in the country in rushing yards per game. Only Arkansas State, Bowling Green and Mississippi State (which doesn’t really try to run all that much) averaged fewer yards per game.
Davis-Price said the Tigers’ coaches “challenged us the past 2 weeks to go in and create a running game.”
The players accepted the challenge and rushed for season highs of 147 yards and 4.2 yards per rush against Kentucky a week earlier. A significant amount of the rushing success came after the Wildcats had assumed command of a game they never trailed and were focused on preventing big plays in the passing game.
The challenge was bigger Saturday — to run as well, if not better, from beginning to end.
Davis-Price said Peetz told him that the coaches were going to lean on him against the Gators.
“I told him it was no problem,” Davis-Price said. “I told him to feed me.”
Peetz fed him over and over again — and Davis-Price seemed to get hungrier and hungrier.
Johnson’s 3 touchdown passes mitigated the fact that he had just 14 completions, and Jenkins’ 3 touchdowns mitigated the absence of Boutte and Smith.
The 4 interceptions — by Jay Ward, Micah Baskerville, Dwight McGlothern (a pick-6) and Damone Clark (to clinch the win) — mitigated Florida’s 350 passing yards and the absence of key defenders Stingley, Ricks and Ali Gaye.
But in the end, it was Davis-Price’s historic performance that was the driving force behind LSU’s best performance of the season.
Les East is a New Orleans-based football writer who covers LSU for SaturdayDownSouth.com. Follow him on Twitter @Les_East.
