Coach O out of Canada’s offense

Published 6:00 pm Wednesday, October 4, 2017

For the life of me I can’t figure out what all that pre-snap shifting and gyrating and hula-hooping is supposed to accomplish for LSU’s offense.

But evidently it’s very important to the Tigers’ guru offensive coordinator Matt Canada.

He swears by it.

And he’s supposed to be totally in charge of this offense, this thingamajig that was going to usher the Tigers into the 21st century.

The anticipation was encouraging, the anticipation was phenomenal. Snap your fingers. Instant offense, just like today’s society likes everything.

Everybody bought in.

There were tall tales from August scrimmages that even defensive coordinator Dave Aranda’s minions were baffled by the fool thing. 

The reality has been like rushing down the stairs on Christmas morning — visions of sugarplums and Xboxes dancing in your head — and finding nothing but fluffy socks and skinny neckties under the tree.

You come down wondering what Canada might do with Louisiana talent, given that his Pitt team last year scared the orange out of Clemson by hanging 42 points on it. For that matter, 76 against Syracuse. Then somebody points out that Pitt had five offensive players drafted last year, including two offensive linemen, not to mention a quarterback and a running back.

Plus, LSU’s in-house problems stopping the Canada Express make a little more sense now that we’ve had a gander at this defense with the BYU portion of the schedule having passed.

It may turn out that football is football, that you can do a Cajun two-step and perform the “Nutcracker Suite” pre-snap, but if you can’t block anybody it’s really much ado about nothing.

Still, Canada seems pretty persistent about it. And he has a track record.

So let him go do his thing as best he can. It’s worked other places. It’s why LSU was willing to pay a coordinator $1.5 million.

Orgeron seemed to be promising to do just that on Monday.

His news luncheon almost sounded like a mea culpa, seemingly admitting that he had an Ole Miss head coaching relapse in snooping around and sticking his nose into Canada’s offense.

His reasoning at the time seemed sound — he wanted to simplify things due to two true freshmen offensive linemen pressed into service.

Still, this sounds like the first crack in the master plan.

If you’ll recall, the assumption with this feel-good Cajun Coach business model was that Orgeron would be Coach BéBé, charm the masses, recruit like crazy, decide when to go for 2 or not, all the while checking the ego at the tunnel and letting those two highly paid, mad-scientist coordinators work their magic.

Yet, there was Canada at halftime last week, having to plead with Orgeron to scrap the dumbed-down offense and give him his pre-snap toys back so he could do his job.

It was obvious. The Tigers really did run completely different offenses from one half to the other.

The offense was better in the second half. Not good enough, but better.

But right after the game, Orgeron was complaining about the play-calling, most notably with the revelation that it was news to him when third-string back Nick Brossette got the game’s first carry (he’d have preferred Darrell Williams). And Brossette fumbled. Troy quickly scored.

“That set the tone for the game,” Orgeron said.

What?

Stuff happens.

LSU got an interception on the first play of the Syracuse game. The Tigers scored on the next play, but it didn’t seem to set any kind of tone.

It’s Troy. LSU spotted the Trojans seven points with 58 minutes to play. The Tigers were favored by three touchdowns. OK, so you win by two scores and nobody says a word.

If that inconvenience can set the tone for the game, then this team is more fragile than we thought.

And if Orgeron keeps harping on it, it makes you wonder how the Orgeron-Canada confab is working out.

Presumably, Orgeron and Canada have come to an accord. Sounds like it, at least.

Orgeron insisted as much Monday — to the point he has been going out of his way this week to reaffirm that Canada is now, once and for all and forevermore, in charge of the offense.

And if that halftime exchange was a little more heated than is being let on, no big deal. Happens all the time in football.

Of course, it could turn out that Canada and Orgeron, whatever each other’s individual strengths are, just aren’t a good fit together.

That happens, too.

For instance, we know that Orgeron and Aranda can work together. They proved it last year. Aranda will get this defense figured out eventually.

And maybe growing pains should have been expected with the offense. Orgeon’s stepping away was a good start.

But, for now, the jury is still out.

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Scooter Hobbs covers LSU athletics. Email him at

shobbs@americanpress.com