Canada sticks with team’s narrative at presser

Published 7:00 pm Saturday, December 30, 2017

ORLANDO, Fla. — Day Two for LSU here in the Magic Kingdom, and the Tigers are sticking to their story.

It’s business as usual.

The focus is on Notre Dame — even if no one seems interested in quizzing any Tigers about the 14th-ranked, 9-3 Irish.

One team, one heartbeat, as head coach Ed Orgeron says.

This LSU team, ranked No. 16, is worried only about getting its 10th win of the season.

That’s the party line.

Mostly, pay no attention to the 500-pound gorilla at the Citrus Bowl — the numerous reports, none denied or refuted, that shortly after the game on Monday, LSU will be parting ways with college football’s highest-paid offensive coordinator Matt Canada.

Canada had a bowl-ordained press conference Friday — a rare chance for LSU assistants to speak in public — and didn’t shed much more light on the matter than Orgeron had the previous day.

But, bottom line: “I’d love to be here next year,” Canada said.

To that end, he said when the bowl was done his plans were the same as any season.

“Go to work,” he said. “You look around and you don’t know what’s going to happen any point at any time. I think we’re going to have a couple days off there, spend time with my children …  then we’ll get to work, get on the road recruiting, do all the things we do.”

He said his relationship with Orgeron is pretty simple.

“Coach O and I have the same goal, we just want to win.”

Pressed further he repeated:

“That’s our relationship – we just want to win.”

Orgeron first raised doubts about Canada’s LSU future following the Texas A&M win to end the regular season when he suggested that he  might be looking for a head coaching job after one year as the Tigers’ offensive coordinator.

“You don’t apply for head coaching jobs,” Canada explained. “Head coaching jobs, people call you … if people want to talk to you about being a head coach, they call you.”

He said he hasn’t talked to anybody at LSU about his future.

“Right now it’s about the bowl game. I’m working hard. I set up a plan, we as an offensive staff set up a great game plan. We’re playing a tremendous defense (against) a tremendous defensive coordinator. Done a great job everywhere he’s been, and that’s all we’re really focused on right now — just trying to get to 10 wins.”

Canada was hired with great fanfare last year shortly after Orgeron was named permanent head coach. Orgeron was impressed with the pre-snap magic of the Canada attack, which features a wide array of jet sweeps and misdirection disguised by shifts and motion.

As with any season and any offense, it had its ups and downs.

“Wish we’d won them all,” Canada said, “but I think we did a good job.

“You look and we’ve won nine games, 6-2 in the SEC. We had eight turnovers, which is No. 1 in the nation. We have balance and talked about wanting to be balanced. We were 210 (yards per game) rushing and 201 passing. Fourteen touchdowns to two picks. The number of guys who touched the football …. I think our backs had 384 carries, really good clip. You look at the receptions. Wideouts had 80, tight ends had 40 and running backs had 39. We talk about balance.”

Of those nation’s-best eight turnovers, four of them came in the low point of LSU’s season, the 24-21 loss to Troy at home. It was after that game that Orgeron admitted to stepping in to change what Canada had been doing.

“We felt like we wanted to settle things down a little bit and line up and block. Our lack of execution had nothing to do with that. We just didn’t execute well enough. Had some young guys in there. Turned the ball over …  it’s very, very hard to win games when you turn the ball over four times. It is what it is.

“The story about that is more so what a tremendous job our players did after that when everybody, probably, threw them dead to the world and they came back and won six out of seven games. Great credit to our players for sticking together.”

Canada answered “yes” when asked if he got to run his offense the way he wanted to this season.

But he was mum when pressed for “all season?”

Regardless, he believes it can thrive at LSU.

“This offense has untapped potential,” he said. “The players here and players recruited here are going to add and fill any voids that might be there for this team. The offense will just explode. I think it’s going to be a great situation.”