Scooter Hobbs

BATON ROUGE ­— There will plenty of time to dissect and discuss all that went wrong with LSU’s … well, you probably couldn’t even call this season a national title defense without bringing down the house.

But, for now, head coach Ed Orgeron has the right idea.

He’d just escaped a wet, chilly and pandemically near-empty Tiger Stadium Saturday night with a 53-48 victory over Ole Miss, finding sensible shelter inside. Right on cue, the Zoom-aided press corps wanted all the answers as to how he planned to quick-fix it all.

He listened patiently, smiled all the way through the inquisition. The look on his face made it obvious he already had his answer ready.

But he paused anyway.

“You know what,” he said. “I’m just going to enjoy this victory.”

Good for him. He might even extend the sacred “24-hour rule.”

He probably won’t.

There will be changes, you can be sure. He probably has a good idea right now on some adjustments, probably some staff changes that fans have been clamoring for.

Following up an unthinkable upset of Florida with a white-knuckler comeback to beat Ole Miss to finish the season doesn’t erase all that came before it.

LSU isn’t in the habit of getting excited about beating Ole Miss. Certainly the College Football Playoff Committee took scant notice of it.

But just this once, it’s OK.

Shoot, these Tigers danced all over the stadium after beating Arkansas.

By then they’d learned not to take anything for granted.

True, in the end the best thing you can say about this season ­— other than it’s over — is that it could have been worse.

Probably should have been worse.

And — mainly — that the season and, more importantly, the program, never quite imploded.

It surely looked headed that way just a few weeks ago.

That’s why LSU needed to beat Ole Miss so badly.

There a long list of candidates if you’re looking for the season’s low point.

But the negativity surrounding Tiger football following the 55-17 belly-flop against Alabama — with a trip to Florida looming —was almost unprecedented.

Doom and gloom ruled the week.

There was another rash of opt-outs after the preseason outbreak on a team that seemed to be lacking any real leadership from the players. The transfer portal got some visitors.

A handful of potential recruits took notice and started looking elsewhere.

Orgeron, it was whispered, had lost the locker room.

One thing after another, mostly gloom and doom.

Among coaching challenges, third-and-five or whether to on-sides kick or not is a cake walk compared to that kind of crisis.

There wasn’t a whole lot left of the team LSU thought it would have this year going to Florida before finishing the season with Ole Miss.

Six of the 11 offensive starters at the start of the season were missing. The secondary has been patched together all year. As Orgeron said Saturday, there wasn’t much of a “rotation” for the defensive line.

If any team was a candidate to mail it in and be done with it, that was LSU when it was 3-5.

But …

LSU can take great pride that Florida still hasn’t figured out how it lost to the Tigers — hint: there was more to it than a thrown shoe.

And somehow, some way they survived Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin’s offensive chicanery and followed it up with a victory over the Rebels that kept Florida being viewed as a total fluke.

What it mostly lacked in aesthetics and precision, it made up for with, as Orgeron described the Ole Miss victory, “grit and determination.”

What was left at the end gave you some hope that this year was the aberration, not last year.

“We fought through some adversity, obviously,” Orgeron said. “We stayed with each other and those guys that chose not to opt out and to finish, I’m very proud of them.”

Not to mention that in the last two weeks, every point the Tigers scored was by a freshman or sophomore.

And with that defense in this offensive day and age, they needed a lot of points to win both games.

The bulk of LSU’s offense Saturday was freshman quarterback Max Johnson to freshman wide receiver Kayshon Boutte, 308 of Johnson’s 435 passing yards and all three touchdowns. Johnson also ran for two scores.

Freshmen, sophomores everywhere it seems.

Deal with that much youth and stuff happens — 16-point leads against Ole Miss become 8-point deficits.

“Our team became closer … we continued to fight,” Orgeron said. “There were some games where we didn’t play very well, but we came back and we fought, and we finished strong.

“That’s what I’ll remember about this season.”

The rest he can start figuring out later.Scooter Hobbs

Admin