Like Miles, 1 yard might cost Orgeron

Published 6:05 am Sunday, November 20, 2016

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">BATON ROUGE — Presumably LSU will now have to get on with a legitimate national search to lead a curious football team.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The Great Cajun Experiment was a noble gesture, a lot of fun, too, for the most part.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But now … Jimbo Fisher on line one at Florida State. Or maybe Tom Herman’s asking price just went up to leave Houston.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It’s a shame, really.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Ed Orgeron, the People’s Choice to get this coveted job, probably deserved better.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">He put too much Cajun fire and spice into it. He’s one of some of us in this nutty state.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Whatever chance he probably had came up a little less than a yard shy in a chilly Tiger Stadium Saturday afternoon.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">One yard. Oh, the irony of it.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">He got the interim job when LSU came up one (1) second late at the goal line at Auburn, and it probably disappeared as a full-time option when the Tigers came up one (1) yard short in Saturday’s 16-10 loss to Florida.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Thus are careers made and lost.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It’s been that kind of year for the Tigers, who have now lost four games in which they gave up a total — TOTAL — of three touchdowns and not only had a chance to win three of them in the final minute, but looked to be primed for it.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The other was against No. 1 Alabama. They didn’t catch many breaks in that game either.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">What, Orgeron was expecting football fortune to change just for him?</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Afterwards, several players were firmly in Coach B?B?’s corner.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">If you polled the team, it would be close to unanimous to give him the job.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Good luck with that.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It could still happen for Orgeron, you guess, but probably now only by default.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">He certainly won’t have a mandate, riding a tidal wave of Cajun Red Bull-fueled momentum in. He’ll have to hope for the A-list of possible candidates LSU allegedly is eyeing to find reasons to say no to such a plum job.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But thanks for playing, Coach O. It was fun.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Not all your fault.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Orgeron didn’t fumble on LSU’s second trip inside 10-yard line. He didn’t butter-finger the snap on a field goal attempt on another and it wasn’t him darting the wrong way on the final play of the game from the 1-yard line that could have made all the game’s previous flubs go away.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But he’s in charge. Sign up for this gig, and your fate rests with the whims and growing pains of the youth, who are usually young.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“Unfortunately we just came up short,” LSU quarterback Danny Etling said of the game’s final play. “Let’s just leave it at that.”</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Forgive Etling. He’s not from around here, a nice, polite Indiana lad trying to adapt to strange customs.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Nobody in this football-mad, finger-pointing state will ever just leave it at that. It’s one of this place’s real charms.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“You can always second guess,” Orgeron said.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Like I said, Orgeron is one of us, knows the lay of the land.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">So, on you mark, get set …</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“Maybe we should have spread it a little bit,” Orgeron continued. “Obviously hindsight is 20/20.”</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It sure is. And unfortunately it doesn’t help his case much.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">There were even some reminders of why Les Miles was free Saturday to make his first trip back for one of his beloved Michigan games this millennium.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">If Derrius Guice doesn’t go the wrong way on the final play, maybe we’re not having this discussion.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“Execution,” Orgeron blamed it on. “Just wasn’t executed right.”</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Who knows if fourth-and-goal from the 1-yard line would have worked if everybody had followed proper directions?</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The odds did not look good.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“We thought we could get it,” Orgeron said. “We thought we could get it in.”</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">We’ll never know.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But I can say this: for the Tiger Stadium crowd, the body language at least, the anticipation was not good when LSU broke the huddle in that familiar bunched set, staring across the line at seemingly a whole swamp of Gators packed in as tight as the Tigers were.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Hindsight or not, it was disturbing shades of Miles’ old stubbornness.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">That wasn’t the only time.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">All the Tigers, Orgeron too, were quick to point out that LSU, which dominated statistically, had many chances to take control of the game, even on a day spent mostly pointing a pistol at their own feet with unforced miscues.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Everything seemed to change after Guice’s fumble on first-and-goal early in the second quarter.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Mainly, Guice had to go to timeout for a good spell for his sins.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It was a gutsy gesture by Leonard Fournette to insist on playing. But it was obvious early that he wasn’t close to 100 percent. He could run straight ahead a little, but hardly at all to the side.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Guice, fumble or not, was by far the best option at running back when the game was there for the controlling.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But he seemingly was serving his penance for the fumble, and LSU offense stalled.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Miles had the same obsession with fumbles and they were the quickest way into his doghouse.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Stubborn Les.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">So far what we know about Orgeron is that his re-energized team looks great when things are going great.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But in the only two close games his Tigers have had with real adversity, they came up short.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Not by much.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But probably by too much.</span>

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

<span style="font-weight: bold;" class="R~sep~ACopyEditors~sep~endnote">Scooter Hobbs</span> <span class="R~sep~ACopyEditors~sep~endnote">covers LSU</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyEditors~sep~endnote">athletics. Email him at</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyEditors~sep~endnote">shobbs@americanpress.com</span>