Scooter Hobbs

If LSU wants to even think about staying on the field with No. 1 Alabama Saturday night, the Tigers are likely going to need more than 36 yards rushing.

They also probably can’t get by on 231 yards in the air.

And, just a hunch, but one touchdown isn’t even going to annoy the high-scoring Tide (8-0), who are averaging 48 points per game.

Those were the LSU totals last week in a 20-7 loss to Texas A&M as Tigers’ most glaring woes made the smooth transition from strafed defense to stagnant offense.

Head coach Ed Orgeron didn’t even need to watch the game tapes.

“We couldn’t block those guys,” Orgeron said immediately after the game.

But he watched the video anyway.

“We got beat at the line of scrimmage,” he said Monday.

Orgeron’s summary: Nowhere to run, two freshmen quarterbacks “running for their lives.”

But it certainly wasn’t all on the offensive line, at least not the players.

Orgeron came close to saying that LSU (3-4) got outcoached as you’re going to hear.

The blocking scheme for the week, he said, was flawed from the beginning, and the Tigers didn’t do a good job of adjusting after Texas A&M’s defense showed looks and blitzes not previously used, which isn’t unusual for a game.

“Too many free blitzes hitting our young quarterbacks,” Orgeron said. “Our execution has to be better on run blocking. We did not control their front or blitzes.”

Particularly on passing downs, the Aggies were overloading one side of the line but then often dropping some of them back into coverage and bringing well-disguised blitzes, often untouched.

The Aggies had three sacks — it only seemed like more because TJ Finley and Max Johnson were hit or pressured on almost every pass play.

“I can’t put anything on those young quarterbacks,” Orgeron said. “I thought they did the best that they could.

“When there’s free blitzes, they’re attacking them … we’ve got to have a better scheme. We need to put our players in better positions, call better plays, have answers to their blitzes.

“They were overloading one side. We turned away from it and those guys came (free). That’s just scheme. It’s something that we can fix.”

The Tigers don’t have many personnel options in an offensive line that has one starter, Austin Deculus, returning from last year’s unit that won the Joe Moore Award as the best in college football.

Cameron Wire and Dare Rosenthal, who returned two weeks ago from a month-long suspension, have been alternating in at the left tackle. But none of the other backups are really pushing starters for playing time.”

That group probably benefited from LSU’s move to the spread offense, which usually keeps fewer blockers in for protection while flooding the passing lanes with targets.

That won’t change.

“We like to keep one back in for protection,” Orgeron said. “We also like to empty (the backfield) out because you get rid of the ball quick. What happened in this (A&M) game wasn’t the amount of people that were blocking, it was how we were blocking.

“It wasn’t about bringing extra people into the protection. We like to get as many people as we can out. We had enough people in protection, but we just weren’t sliding it the right way.

“Those things can be fixed easily, things that we have done before.”Texas A&M’s blitz packages overwhelmed LSU’s blocking schemes, exposing the Tigers’ freshmen quarterbacks Max Johnson, No. 14, and TJ Finley to several direct hits. The Aggies finished with three sacks. LSU head coach Ed Orgeron vowed to fix the quarterback protection.

Associated Press