Director of the Tigers’ explosive offense

Sixty-one-year-old offensive coordinator Steve Ensminger doesn’t get, or take, much credit for LSU’s evolution into one of the nation’s elite offenses. He’s content with what he calls his “most fun season.”

Gerald Herbert/Associated PressPeach Bowl logo 2019

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ATLANTA — The last time LSU was here after torching Georgia in the Southeastern Conference championship game, passing game coordinator Joe Brady was exiting the Tigers’ locker room when someone asked him how if felt that everyone was saying he was one of the hottest, brightest offensive minds in college football.

Brady didn’t even break stride.

“They must not have ever met Steve Ensminger,” he answered.

And it would be fine with LSU’s actual offensive coordinator if they never do.

For one thing, Ensminger would be cool with it if he never did another news conference.

At 61 years old, the veteran is having the time of his life pulling the strings on the nation’s No. 1 offense, an attack whose drastic transformation from its staid old ways has been the talk of college football and has the Tigers (13-0) in the semifinals of the College Football Playoff Saturday against Big 12 champion Oklahoma (12-1) in the Peach Bowl.

If the nation wants to think it’s all Brady’s doing, then so be it. Ensminger could care less.

Never mind that Ensminger still calls 90 percent of the plays while the young 30-year-old whipper snapper seems to get most of the credit in his first year as a full-time assistant coach.

Ensminger has been there, done that, during a 39-year career with stops at seven colleges before returning to LSU, where he was a quarterback under Charles McClendon in the late 1970s.

LSU may have been dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century offensively, but this year is the offense Ensminger has been waiting most of his career to direct.

“This is the most fun season I’ve had in coaching,” Ensminger said. “You have so many weapons and an offense that uses them.”

As Georgia’s passing game coordinator in the early 1990s, the Bulldogs threw it all over the lot. The word when Ensminger was fired at Texas A&M in 1996 was it because he didn’t run the ball enough.

So, no, when head coach Ed Orgeron mentioned to him after last season that he was thinking of opening up the offense, jumping in with both feet into the spread, the up-tempo and the run-pass options, he didn’t have to ask Ensminger twice.

“Oh, no, I wanted it,” Ensminger said. “I had been wanting it. I knew we needed it. It was just … how do we do it? How do we get there?”

Ensminger has been a part of many high-powered, wide-open offenses.

“But I didn’t know what an RPO was,” he said of those days.

Enter Brady, then an “assistant to an assistant” with the New Orleans Saints, who went to Baton Rouge to give the Tigers a tutorial and famously ended up with a job offer.

“I was just very impressed with how he presented it all, “Ensminger said. “Coach (Orgeron) said, ‘What do you think about Brady?’ I said, ‘Right now, go get him tomorrow.'”

They worked out the details over the spring with some trial and error, even getting early input from Joe Burrow, the quarterback who would run it.

“Steve worked his tail off to learn the new terminology, the new words,” Orgeron said. “He calls most of the plays. He and Joe meshed perfectly.”

The rest is history — a first-year assistant won the Broyles Award as nation’s top assistant coach, the first ever who wasn’t an offensive or defensive coordinator.

Burrow came out of nowhere to win the Heisman Trophy. Ja’Marr Chase won the Biletnikoff Award as the nation’s top receiver.

Ensminger was barely mentioned in the hoopla … which bothered him not a bit.

“Are you kidding me?” Ensminger said. “I’m having the time of my life.”

Maybe 25-30 years ago when he was a young up-and-comer, like Brady is now, it might have annoyed him. Maybe not.

“He reminds me a lot of young me, to be honest,” Ensminger said of Brady. “He’s a helluva lot smarter than I am. But his path here … I wish I had had a chance to spend a year under (Saints head coach) Sean Payton with Drew Brees to work with. But I don’t mind at all.

“He brings a lot to the table; my job is to coordinate … and I know what my strengths and weaknesses are.

“He’s a lot of fun to be around.”

Good thing. They are kind of cut from the same cloth, football X-and-O junkies who, if need be, will fiddle with a game plan until midnight and sleep at the office until they’re happy with it.

Then they sit side-by-side in the press box calling plays.

“I call most of the plays with input,” Ensminger explained. “But there’s formations that he understands better than I do and I lean on him for that. If I go to this formation, I need some help, I hit him on the arm, ‘Pay attention, going to need help here. What’s the play here?'”

The results were immediate — LSU scored touchdowns on its first five drives of the season opener against Georgia Southern. The third one was the epiphany for Ensminger.

“We were down at the goal line. I called a running play but it was a lookover (an option to pass),” he recalled.

Ensminger didn’t like the defensive coverage he saw. LSU ran the play and automatically adjusted with Justin Jefferson running a fade route for the score.

Brady looked at Ensminger: “How you like this offense now?”

“Pretty damn good,” Ensminger said.

Oklahoma vs. LSU, 3 p.m. Saturday • ESPN