LSU should bare all of its age-appropriate offense

Published 7:21 pm Friday, September 1, 2017

Apparently LSU will open its football season Saturday, probably in New Orleans, most likely in the Superdome, purportedly, at last double-check, against BYU.

Yeah, it was supposed to be in Houston, but things happen, especially when LSU gets involved with the weather.

Things have settled down into an eerie calm — hopefully NOT before the storm — almost too calm, some would say.

But, by all accounts, come Saturday night there will be LSU football, marching bands and all.

On the positive side, though you might want to check the fine print, this was a one-game contract with BYU, so to get the game moved to nearby New Orleans, LSU will not have to make trips the next five years to Provo, Utah, to make up for it.

On the negative side for the Tigers, BYU has already played a game.

Even worse, most LSU players said they watched the Cougars beat Portland State 20-6 last Saturday.

They tried to keep a straight face about it.

But if anybody watched that game, nothing BYU did offensively would scare even a very young LSU defense.

Where were the playmakers?

Maybe it was a ploy by BYU to hoodwink LSU into overconfidence.

That’s the working theory, anyway, if not quite the party line coming out of LSU this week.

About the best head coach Ed Orgeron has come up so far with is raving about how BYU has as good of a center, Tejan Koroma, that the Tigers will see this year.

That’s nice. And nose guard is a bit of a question mark. But I don’t recall a center dominating a football game lately.

True, we don’t have a clue about this LSU team yet.

But it got so bad that I have been asked this week if LSU will really unveil Matt Canada’s new offense this game or try to keep it on ice for another couple of weeks until SEC play starts?

Simple answer for the new offensive coordinator: You have a new offense, run it.

Let’s see it. All of it. Right now. With all the bells and whistles and end-arounds and tackle-eligible jet sweeps included.

Surely Canada knows how starved Tigers fans are to see something from this century.

He may be new to these parts, coming in with much fanfare from Pitt, but Orgeron isn’t.

There’s a half-truth common to football that teams make their biggest improvement from Game 1 to Game 2.

The reality is that sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. It’s about 50-50.

Sometimes they get worse.

But in this case, BYU being in the dark about LSU’s offense, would trump that supposed advantage, no matter how many kinks the Cougars get worked out.

Even Orgeron almost admitted it.

“Matt Canada has a new offense they haven’t seen yet,” he said Wednesday on his call-in show. “They’ve practiced some stuff from Pittsburgh, but it’s not the total offense we’re going to run here. We’re going to give them some surprises.”

But Orgeron knows how desperate LSU fans are waiting on this sleek new attack. It doesn’t have to be perfect. But it better be different.

If not, it’s like the kids running out Christmas morning and being told, “Oh, the good stuff is coming New Years Day.”

Can’t imagine that Orgeron would play that mind game.

He had a mandate when he got the job — he’s head coach now because Miles wouldn’t upgrade that clunky offense — and, even if he thought he could get away with it, you and BYU and all the ships at sea are going to see something different on offense.

Bring the fireworks.

If it doesn’t work, then it’s back to the drawing board.

But don’t start the game with a toss sweep.

Show us all of it.

Beyond that, the only cautionary tale would be the standard age difference concern when playing BYU.

Most of them, according to legend, are well into their 30s by the time they get through with their Morman missionary work and return to college football.

But the BYU news release for the game lists the average age of the roster as 21.4 years old.

Not kids, for sure, but hardly gray beards. There are also 32 married players. The school must be sensitive about the age thing. 

You have to take their word for it — fortunately there’s a strict campus honor code in place — because neither the website’s roster nor the individual bios list an age or a birth date for anybody.

It’s not Little League, so you don’t have to bring a birth certificate, even if you weigh 425 pounds like Motekiai Langi.

LSU does seem at the other end of the spectrum.

It’s been a moving target even this last week, but best can be deciphered from the depth chart, the Tigers will have 14 true freshmen on the two-deep chart.

At least two will start, three if the Tigers open with five defensive backs. 

That seems like a lot.

Oh, and one other thing.

Orgeron has hinted the last two days that there could be suspensions for the game.

If there are any — and he didn’t say for sure there were — they won’t be announced, and everybody will have to figure it out on their own.

It’s kind of team policy.

Depending on what kind of grade this team gets in deportment this season, that could add a whole new parlor game for pregame warmups.

l

Scooter Hobbs covers LSU athletics. Email him at

shobbs@americanpress.com