During the ESPN halftime show for the Friday Night Missouri vs. Nevada game (close game so far), the halftime crew was talking about the college football games tomorrow. The one guy asked Lou which team is the team that most had to show him something tomorrow, and Lou answered that team is LSU (who he pointed out was playing Miss St tomorrow). He talked about how LSU got a new DC in John Chavis and he said that he thinks Chavis is doing a great job with the Tiger D this season. However, he basically said LSU's QB needs to step up. He said Jordan Jefferson is a "great talent," but that he has not been doing good so far this season (and he pointed out some stats showing how unproductive JJ has been so far). He was talking about how you can't be a one-dimensional team on offense and that LSU has to show that they can throw the football. He concluded that "if a team's QB play isn't outstanding, that team is going to get upset."
I watched it too. Holtz was pointing to the offensive production stats to make the point about Jefferson. But out of fairness to Jefferson, that isn't all on him. His line has to give him a pocket to work out of that won't fall apart like a wet paper bag, and it also has to open up holes for our senior RBs to run through. Get that fixed, and the rest will follow.
Flip-side to that is that Lou's ND teams had some of the greatest offensive lines in college football history. I think if LSU had a problem with our OL, Lou would have quickly pointed that out, but he didn't. He just pointed out that our QB is not doing good... and Lou was lucky to have very good QB's from what I remember of watching of his ND teams (for example, Rick "Golden Boy" Mirer was taken #2 overall in the Draft, only behind Drew Bledsoe).
With all due respect to what he accomplished as a coach, with all the outlandish things he's said in his capacity as an "analyst" on ESPN I have to look at his position on the situation with some skepticism. I doubt he did any real analysis or studied film of the team. He probably just took LSU's offensive stats, compared them with Jefferson's yardage, completion rate, TD's, etc. and concluded that he's stinking up the place. While he's correct in saying that Jefferson needs to step up his game, I'm just pointing out that Jefferson's stats and team offense stats are only telling part of the story of the struggling offense.
I would add play calling to your list of intangible issues effecting JJs effectiveness/stats. Hopefully, all of these issues improve today.
It's JJ's (in)effectiveness that drives the playcalling. Crowton won't ask him to do something he's not ready to do.
I think Jefferson has the skill to execute anything in the playbook. I think the problem is that Jefferson hasn't been able to get in any sort of rhythm. The offense doesn't know what personality it wants to take on and the play calling almost looks random. Are we primarily a power running team, option team, wildcat, 4 and 5 wide passing team, or what? I recognize there is value in forcing the other teams to prep for lots of different looks, people and plays, but that is negated if you don't do any of it particularly well. It seems to me that we would do well to limit the # of formations, personnel groups and plays and focus on execution.
