AD Alleva involved in meetings with Orgeron, coaches

Published 6:00 pm Thursday, October 5, 2017

If meetings can turn things around, then LSU should be in good shape heading to Gainesville to play No. 21 Florida on Saturday.

There has certainly been no shortage of them this week.

Apparently it’s part of the soul-searching process for a 3-2 team that lost 24-21 to a three-touchdown underdog in Troy State, with the bulk of its schedule still ahead.

But since then, beyond the normal staff and pre-practice meetings, there have been several players-only meetings, another couple of meetings between team leaders and head coach Ed Orgeron and, perhaps most notably, a meeting between Orgeron, his two coordinators and Athletic Director Joe Alleva.

It began shortly after the shocking loss, still in the Tiger Stadium locker room when, Orgeron said, running back Darrell Williams gathered the team together. Some players said it was safety John Battle but, regardless, several team leaders voiced their opinions.

“I wasn’t in the players-only meeting,” Orgeron said Wednesday on the Southeastern Conference teleconference. “But they say it was positive.”

By Monday, Alleva was in Orgeron’s office, along with defensive coordinator Dave Aranda and his offensive counterpart Matt Canada.

Although it was well documented that Alleva rarely communicated with former head coach Les Miles, Orgeron said it was not unusual in his case.

“Joe and I meet all the time,” he said, “(This time) we said, ‘Let’s bring in the coordinators, let’s talk to them. Let’s see what’s going on.’ Both he and I, because we feel that we have two very good coordinators, and he wanted to know what was going on, what could we do better. We all got on the same page. It was a very positive meeting.”

It took place shortly after Orgeron’s weekly media luncheon Monday.

“I think the reason why Joe wanted to do it — and I wanted to do it -— was we’re not playing very well,” Orgeron said. “We all know that. We wanted to see what we could correct. We threw everything out on the table. It was very positive.”

Orgeron said it was nothing new for him, explaining that when he was interim head coach at Southern Cal, then-athletic Pat Haden often dropped by his office.

But it raised eyebrows elsewhere.

“This is something I’ve never seen before,” ESPN analyst and former NFL player Trevor Matich said on the SEC Network. “Completely unheard of. The optics to me are as horrible as they can possibly be.”

The meetings with team leaders were more conventional during what had to be a busy Monday in the football operations building.

Orgeron said he brought several team leaders into office, “guys that I thought were doing the best they can, on and off the field.

“I gave them a chance to voice their opinions of what was going on, what are the things that we could fix.

“I picked about one guy from each position group for them to be leaders of their group, maybe two guys at some positions.”

Those players then went and talked to the team and their position groups with coordinators.

Several players, for instance, said Canada told them “We’re going back to being us.”

That was an apparent reference to simplifying the offense at Orgeron’s request in the first half against Troy.

Orgeron said it was all about making sure “Everybody is pulling on the same side of the rope. We made sure we brought the leaders together and everybody is on the same page and practicing with a purpose. Talked to all the coordinators, looking at the way we practice, looking at the way we play, one team one heartbeat.”

It’s a start, he said, while admitting there are no simple solutions.

“Sometimes those things work and sometimes they don’t,” he said.