Georgia looked pretty average last night. This game is a tossup, with maybe the slightest of edges going to Georgia being the home team. Defense made a few strides, namely the play of Chad Jones. The pass rush still isn't clicking like we need it to, and the nickel/dime and safeties must do a better job in coverage on those blitzes. They are killing us. LSU may have the best corner tandem in Peterson and Hawkins. Hawkins is quietly having an outstanding season thus far. He is so vastly improved over last year. The offense has to decide if we're going to stick with this power running game in obvious run formations, or go to what gives us the best opportunity to succeed. If Les Miles believes we can run the ball, and I am pretty sure he does, then we will be stuck with a ton of 1 and 2 yard carries from here on out, unless the O-line turns it around somehow (which looks close to impossible at this point). Too many mistakes. The penalty bug came back to bite us. And they aren't even of the aggressive side of things (defensive penalties). They were all pretty much silly offensive penalties. The delay of game thing is back in vogue. That ain't good. Overall, not good enough to compete vs Bama or Florida. That's for certain. And we will have our hands full vs Georgia and Ole Miss. We can only hope the improvements come in dramatic chunks these next 2 weeks.
The opponents we played the first 4 weeks of the schedule should be the barometer of how we play the rest of our opponents from here on out. We'll just continue to outscore people at a 2 to 1 clip. I got it. I have no idea why I couldn't see that. Must be a forest from the trees kinda thing. Thanks.
Im just going to say we are some missed tackles away from shut outs and turning all those field goals into TD's away from blowouts..
doubt it but i think we'll see a different approach vs them. our coaches have to realize what we are doing now is not going to work vs the better teams. i know you just like to whistle along while winning w/o looking closer but this team needs serious work from coaching to players. or next year will resurface. not bad but not representative of the talent. only thing saved us yesterday is no game breakers on msu and 4 turnovers. and dan mullen.
to carry that a step further, even though it is a sore point with people here, I submit that the next 4-5 weeks will define Les' career @ LSU. It doesnt mean he will be fired, but it is much harder to get back up that slope if you start from further down in the ditch. The idea here is to not repeat last year. Even if we lose 4-5 games, Lets look good... that counts IMHO. its not the smooth sailing that molds a coach it's the rough waters. I wouldnt feel nearly as bad if we lost a few games but played really tough and played them down to the wire. However I would feel awful about us if we played like we are playing now and got murdered. ( i'd still wear my colors of course ) AND the criteria the admins use for hiring and firing coaches is attendance, sales, wins losses, etc. One ties in with the other. AND further as a coach in this modern era of football unfortunately you cant rest on your laurels, the new college football landscape is " what have you done for me lately?" And sometimes these things arent even the coach's fault, some coaches do all they can do and still due to some other factors it just doesnt gell. yes these next few weeks will define Les' tenure at LSU. I dont advocate for Les' head that is just not what LSU needs right now. The team needs his leadership right now. We are at a cross roads, fate has given this team the same cards ( sort of ) that it was dealt last year, we can look at it as a second chance to change things, to prove we are in the top tier of college football programs or we can let it defeat us. I hope the team and coach step up and he has a long career with us. The man certainly has many admirable coaching traits. but the number one trait you have to have as a coach is win and you are only as good as last week's win.
The only areas that we progressed in were QB play and in the secondary. Running game clearly got worse. I don't know what the problem is, but it will destroy us if we don't find it fast. We couldn't sustain any drives, and we were something like 2 for 11 or 12 on third down. Unacceptable. I keep hearing people saying that the defense improved, and I have to wonder if they saw any of the game other than the goal-line stand. The only time we had success up front is if State didn't go outside. If they had gone outside on the goal-line stand, we would have blown it. It was the EXACT same thing as last week v USL. On the read option, when the QB handed it up the middle to the RB, we stopped him immediately. But every time they took it outside, we were freaking toast. They gnashed and gashed our sorry butts all day long on that gimmicky crap, and for the life of us, we couldn't figure it out (well, those of us at home could, but the defensive coaches couldn't :huh. And they even took it up the middle a good bit on us. And we still can't tackle. I don't know what the problem is, but I'm not seeing any improvement over last year on D. LSU could have saved themselves a lot of money and kept Malveeto to get these results. We knew we were going to have problems last year when we couldn't keep UNT's QB from passing all over us. Well, having these kinds of problems with USL and State is frighteningly ominous. If they don't do a complete 180 in practice this week, we'll find ourselves being the latest victim of the #4 curse.
I agree with this. It's all setting up very similarly to last year at this time--except that we haven't looked as good or won as convincingly. So, I'm really concerned we're looking down the barrel at '08, part II.
