Fall camp is over. From now until September 2nd the Tigers will be in game preparation mode for Miami. Joe Burrow did nothing to separate himself from Myles Brennan in the final scrimmage but Brennan separated himself from Burrow by going 5 for 19 for 40 yards. There were 9 dropped passes and that's another story. Tom Brady couldn't separate himself from Jordan Jefferson if nobody caught the ball. I have to hope that's because Burrow hasn't had enough reps with the WR's to get everybody in synch and if that's the case the blame goes to Oeaux for trying to trick McMillan and Narcisse into believing that they had as got a chance of starting as anybody. But what's done is done. Burrow and the WR's only have 13 days to get everybody on the same page. The OL should be good but not as good as we hoped due to the suspension of Ed Ingram and the fact that the number one juco O lineman recruit, Badora Traore, looks like a bust so far. Still, I expect Clyde Edwards-Helaire and Beast Mode Curry to be able to find running room. I have no idea whether Nick Brossette and Tae Provens can provide any quality depth. Defense will be great but somebody has to step up to the plate opposite Greedy Williams at corner and we can only hope that Terrence Alexander can fill the nickle role. He is smart enough, he graduated from Stanford but is he athletic enough? So. Can we beat Thuh U? Yes if: Miami is really not as good as their preseason ranking and if Burrow and the WR's can somehow find their groove. I believe they will sometimes early in the season but it will be tough to make that much improvement in less than 2 weeks of practice. I'm not going to make any predictions here, I'll wait until gsme week when somebody starts a prediction thread. That and the fact that I just don't know how it will turn out. Any predictions I made now would be no better than flipping a coin.
Putting way too much stock in scrimmage stats and the QB transfers. The transfers had to happen no way any team can keep all 4 guys happy. I will predict now that we are 3 deep at QB and we will be fine. I also trust E. I watch a lot of videos and the Sale kid is a really good QB. Jeaux is our starter and Brennan is developing into a good # 2. Didnt see many drops in the spring game. Correcting dropped passes is not that hard to correct. We have a bunch of great recievers. My worry is RB. If Hellaire and Curry turn out to be good productive backs our offense will be good enough to be lethal. 9-4 outside chance to be 10-3.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t concerned about the offense and QB position. I also wouldn’t be an LSU fan if I said I wasn’t worried about those, because......that’s what the life of an LSU fan is. Always wondering about our offense, or lack there of. Only this year, we have no idea what our offensive identity truly is either, which is even more scary. We know what we’ve heard....and what we saw Ensminger do with Cameron’s/Miles playbook. I’m holding out hope that the scrimmage numbers are skewed due to situational plays being ran and us having a suffocating defense. I’d feel a lot better if we had a buffer game before going straight up against a top 10 team away from Death Valley, but it is what it is. I think one thing is certain, win or lose, people will overreact to the outcome of this game. Like LSU, nobody knows how good Miami will be. I think pound for pound LSU has more talent but Miami is going into year 3 under its current regime and a bit more put together, which sometimes makes all the difference week 1. I don’t buy the notion that we will learn who LSU is based on the results of week 1. That notion last year after week 1 would have told us that Auburn and the Stidham experiment failed, but it didn’t. It was just 1 game. We could very easily start the season 1-2 and come into form by the time UGA comes to town for an upset. Or we could just be a total shit show all year and finish 7-5 or 6-6. However, coming out the gates swinging and walking down a top 10 team would be a pleasant surprise.
Defense will be good, offense will make mistakes but tigahs will win by a field goal. Oh well as good a guess as any.
8-5 at worse. I may be whistling but it's my prediction. O and E have been coaching for a long time and Aranda is one of the best defensive minds in the country. Somebody had to go at QB and I believe the 2 best stayed and if you watch videos as much as I do Sale is a quality # 3. This is LSU not Vandy which is a force on it's own that says we are not a 6-6 football team. Pride wont let us accept that maybe once but that would be still be odd. Is O really as bad as you think? Look at this article especially O's last 29 game record vs Jimbo's last 29 game record. "Coach O went 6-2 as interim coach at Southern California in 2013 and is 15-6 in nearly two full seasons at LSU. That’s a combined record of 21-8, and that record compares favorably with other coaches around the country. How favorable? Only eight college coaches in their past 29 games have a better record than Orgeron: Saban (27-2), Clemson’s Dabo Swinney (26-3), Ohio State’s Urban Meyer (25-4), new UCLA coach Chip Kelly (25-4 at Oregon), Wisconsin’s Paul Chryst (25-4), Washington’s Chris Petersen (24-5), Miami’s Mark Richt (22-7) and Penn State’s James Franklin (22-7). That’s it. Orgeron has the same record in his last 29 games as Stanford’s David Shaw and USC’s Clay Helton and has a better mark over that span than Auburn’s Gus Malzahn (19-10) and Texas coach and one-time LSU target Tom Herman (19-10). Even Jimbo Fisher, Texas A&M’s new $75 million man, was a pedestrian 18-11 in his final 29 games at Florida State, leaving with a 5-6 mark as FSU’s interim coach steered the Seminoles to a pair of closing wins."
I’m a little concerned after the players only meeting. Don’t get me wrong, players only meetings are encouraging and for us to be having one at this point in the season (fall camp) shows the leaders of this team are being proactive rather than reactive (like last year after the Troy loss). But it also shows there are some issues going on and maybe even some division in that locker room. Let’s hope it’s all been worked out.
Lets start with what we can reasonably expect. D should be filthy. It just should be. No real reason to see this D get smoked outside of a few key plays here and there. If there is a weak point in our D, it would be 2nd the CB spot, however with the depth we have at safety, Aranda should be able to scheme around this. I would imagine we see more blitz packages than we are used to. We have a lot of edge speed. Special teams, can it get worse? I dont think so. We need to reasonably expect to make the 20-35 YD FG. Reports are the kid is good for 40-45 reasonably well. We will see come game time. This will be key with a young Offense and a D that will more than likely win the field position battle. Punting. Haven't heard much about it. I would assume we are decent here. A strong D and special teams can really carry us early. Offense. Here is the big ticket everyone is concerned about. Here is how I look at it: Burrow cannot possibly do worse than previous years. If at the least he is a bigger stronger version of Etling, its not "horrible". If he is hitting the right targets at the right time, this will be a big upgrade. We don't necessarily need 400 ypg passing. Make the smart play and make it often. Running game. Its going to a pack until someone separates. We have talent. We just haven't see it live yet. Oline should be our biggest question mark just because of new starts and Ingram possibly missing the first game or first few. Overall they have talent. Just needs to continue to work. They got better last year. Our hope should be sooner rather than later. OC. From the above on the Oline, we re going to have to rely on smart play calling to hide our issues and more importantly, attack the D's weak-spot with our weapons. Not concerned about WR. Someone always steps up. This year, who really knows. The 1st game will tell us all we need to know. I personally feel like we have the horses to beat everyone, but understand that isn't reality. I do think our D is going to be fire so that alone gives me confidence we start off 1-0.
Truth. A great example is the waxing A&M gave UofSC at the beginning of the 2014 season. As I recall Texas A&M was ranked in the 20-25 range in the pre-season poll and jumped to the top 10 after that win. They put together what, five wins to start the season? I do recall losses to both MS schools and Bama to put them at 5-3 and then they lost to LSU and Mizzou, back to back, to close the season.
