The slightly more rose colored opinion of Saturday Night

Two things were very apparent Saturday night...
1. The team looked like they had just been through a hurricane. College athletes are finely tuned machines. When they are knocked off of their routines it has a very adverse effect on their ability to perform.
2. Les Miles is still calling the shots on offense and he still sucks at doing it. The running game is great; the passing game is terrible. LSU just does not run a modern passing offense. There are absolutely no crossing routes. Everything is either a screen or a deep pass. LSU had some of the best athletes in the world playing at the WR position. Run some crossing routes, get it to these kids in space and let them do the work.

 

I don't remember the screen being run much at all....The bubble screen maybe.

 

I finally watched the game last night (been out of town) and I can't understand why so many people are freaking out. It was very obvious that the team was feeling a bit unmotivated after we went up by three scores almost immediately. It was also obvious that the playcalling changed after Mett took his hit. But we came back out in the second half and tossed it downfield a bit. I guess everyone is disappointed because we didn't put on an airshow...but if you actually thought that would happen, then I don't know what to tell you.

I also do not believe that we even scratched the surface with the passing plays. I guarantee you that Mett did not rack up +/-330 passing yards in the final scrimmage by throwing sideline screens all day long. Miles has always played it very vanilla when we open up with inferior competition (see also: Moo U in 2007). There is no need to show things that we don't need to use to win the game. If anything, this indicates to me that Miles has more confidence in Mett because he didn't see any benefit in having him run certain plays against N. Tx. I, for one, am not the least bit concerned about the passing game. We're not going to set the world on fire with it because we simply won't have to in order to win. However, I am fully confident that it will be adequate, which is all you need with a superior running game.

What I saw was a freakshow. We've got ridiculous athletes roaming the field at nearly every position. Mingo dropping into pass coverage, Beckham taking everything to the house, Eric Reid playing Superman on the interception, and the wicked hands of Jarvis Landry...and that's not to mention the promising play of the young LB corp. The only things that concerned me were the penalties (how many block in the backs can you commit on punt returns in 1 game??) and the pass protection. I know that offensive lines often require a couple of games to gel and work together as a unit, so I'm hopeful that we can chalk it up to that.

 

But I think that is indicative of a problem with fan perception and expectations. Seems like many of us wanted to go out and erase the 1/9 debacle in one game vs a cupcake, and it's unreasonable to expect that. This is a new team with a new QB, and there are going to be new challenges. To expect perfection in game 1 (preceded by a mid-week hurricane, mind you) is just setting yourself up for disappointment.

Week 1 always leads to overreactions across the board. But it seems like many of our fans are ignoring lessons that we've learned about Miles in the past. To me, this was the perfect set-up. We got our RBs some much-needed game reps, and were given the opportunity to identify areas that need work without having to suffer a loss. Also, peaking too early in the season is, more often than not, bad news.

 

Read through the game thread and you'll have that impression, too.

That goes back to the problem with perception that I mentioned earlier. If you expected this team to be all jacked-up against NTx for 4 quarters then you probably don't understand the mindset of 20yr old collegiate athletes very well.

NTx never made "a game of it", and it's silly to draw comparisons between this opponent and that of 1/9. Can't we just move on from that already?

And so far, it hasn't. We beat the shit out of NTx.