It’s OK to be hopeful for LSU’s offense

Published 7:06 am Monday, September 12, 2016

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">BATON ROUGE — This promises to be awkward.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Fortunately I’m here to walk you through it.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">You’re excited that LSU finally has a quarterback. There’s hope for the offense. You want to shout it from the nearest rooftop. Failing that, you want to explain it to somebody, anybody.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Maybe the other person doesn’t give a hoot about LSU.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">That’s never stopped you before, so you dive in, maybe at the water cooler, perhaps the barber shop, maybe at happy hour.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">So, anyway, you start waxing on about this Danny Etling kid, about how you were there in Tiger Stadium or watched on TV the night the light bulb went off in Les Miles’ landlubbin’ stubborn head and his offense joined the 21st Century and how — after years of pain and torture and suffering, of untold lives ruined and seasons wasted — there is hope for the Tigers now that they have finally mastered the forward pass.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">You’ll have to dig in.</span>

<span style="font-style: italic;" class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Good for you. So how many yards did this phenom — Etling, you say? ?— have while lighting it up anyway?</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Well, uh, it was, not sure, I think something like …</span> <span style="font-size: 6pt;" class="R~sep~ACopyBody">a hundred</span><span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">.</span>

<span style="font-style: italic;" class="R~sep~ACopyBody">How many?</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">A hundred! One HUNDRED! Exactly one hundred, OK?</span>

<span style="font-style: italic;" class="R~sep~ACopyBody">(Snicker, chuckle, big smile)</span>

<span style="font-style: italic;" class="R~sep~ACopyBody">A whole hundred, huh? So now LSU is “Air Miles,” like some kind of frequent flyer program?</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">He didn’t come in until the second quarter. No idea why he’d been on the bench, but …</span>

<span style="font-style: italic;" class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Oh, so it took a bit for him to get warmed up?</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">No, he led three quick touchdown drives right out of the gate — boom-boom-boom ?— completed 6-of-8 passes slick as a whistle, even discovered a tight end.</span>

<span style="font-style: italic;" class="R~sep~ACopyBody">So, you meant 100 in the first half alone, actually second quarter, I gather. So how many in the second half?</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Well, none, actually, and finished the game 6 of 14, but …</span>

<span style="font-style: italic;" class="R~sep~ACopyBody">You’re kidding me. You’re aware, aren’t you, that real offenses these days routinely hiccup 300-400 yards passing a game, often more? Gosh, you’re killing me! Can any scoreboard contain these guys?</span>

<span class="R~sep~AZaphdingbatdot7pt">l</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">See, that’s where you’ll be stuck for a witty comeback.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It need not be.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Before going any further, though, you might as well ’fess up that Etling’s final numbers did not look markedly different than Brandon Harris’ extreme struggles the week before.</span>

<span style="font-weight: bold; font-family: ‘Myriad Pro’;" class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Harris vs. Wisconsin:</span> <span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">12-21-2, 131 yards, O TDs (four quarters)</span>

<span style="font-weight: bold; font-family: ‘Myriad Pro’;" class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Etling vs. Jacksonville State:</span> <span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">6 of 14-1, 100 yards, 1 TD (basically two quarters; he threw only one pass in the fourth).</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">You might also readily admit that Wisconsin was the far better defense and maybe not a fair comparison.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Then you throw those stats in the garbage can. They’re lying through their teeth.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Thinking you saw hope for LSU’s offense with Etling is no more of an overreaction than thinking the Tigers might as well fire Les Miles and drop football because they opened losing by two points to the No. 9 team in the country in basically a road game.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Final scores can be deceiving. Stats can play even worse tricks.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Believe your eyes. Trust the eyeball test.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Wisconsin 16, LSU 14 was far uglier than the final score.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">And Danny Etling gives LSU a chance to run (and throw) with a workable, semi-balanced offense.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">I just know what I saw. Etling’s performance did not match his stat sheet.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Once the second quarter started Saturday night, Etling looked like a quarterback (and, yes, he managed to look like a quarterback without completing a pass in the second half; at least the offense kept rolling along).</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">With him, LSU looked like an offense with some kind of plan other than throwing stuff at the wall and seeing if anything stuck.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It does no good to bury Harris at this point. He did his best. But it wasn’t working and, gosh knows, he got plenty of chances.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">So do not get upset today when Miles will probably say the quarterback competition is “ongoing.” He doesn’t throw players under the bus and, besides, there’s no guarantee he won’t need Harris again at some point.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But, make no mistake, Etling will now get every chance to be the man, and with good reason.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Stats, schmatz.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The main thing you saw, even from Etling’s first LSU play, was body language ?— or, as they call it in the quarterback fraternity, pocket presence.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Never mind that Etling not only has a crisp arm, with a quick release, mainly, he took a little off for touch passes when the need arose.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">He looked comfortable back there, moved around in the pocket without instinctively bolting in panic from the scene.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">He seemed to see the whole field, went through progressions and checked down into alternative places where the LSU passing game hasn’t ventured in ages.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Most important, the entire offense seemed to respond to him. Not only that, the coaches seemed to trust him and opened up the playbook accordingly.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">At the least, it was encouraging.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">No guarantees, of course. Maybe beginner’s luck.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But forget the stats. Don’t apologize. Feel free to think that maybe, just maybe, there’s hope for the Tigers’ offense.</span>

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<p class="p1">Follow Scooter Hobbs on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/ScooterAmPress"><span class="s1">twitter.com/ScooterAmPress</span></a>

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