BATON ROUGE — I guess the final score was 59-31, something like that, which seems like a lot of fireworks for a mundane spring LSU football game.

The Tigers’ Gold team was the winner over the Purple, not a real shocker since the Gold was afforded every available offensive player in what was actually a mere scrimmage.

There were ways for the defense to register points, apparently, and early on it looked like they

A point for a sack here, two or three for a three-and-out, pretty soon, by whatever means, you’re talking about a 11-3 lead for defense.

It was not a sustainable model, of course, and directly the offense had its way, perhaps way too much for comfort.

Frankly, I have no idea how they arrived at the final score.

But it made for an interesting scoring summary and a stat sheet that was tougher to decipher than the Dead Sea Scrolls. So I will not even attempt to use those stats in this analysis.

Still, it’s a tradition to over analyze this affair, and we will get there post haste.

But my “football eyes” have never been trustworthy enough to figure out what a spring game has to do with success the following fall.

We will trudge on anyway, although for this exercise, we will have new head coach Brian Kelly double-check my knee-jerk observations.

ME: Kelly must deliver a humdinger of a halftime sermon, at least to his offense.

After fiddle-daddling most of the first half the offense seemed to score at will with whichever quarterback it wanted.

KELLY: “I thought our defense started out with the right mindset. They came out with a lot of energy. The offense did not. They came out the second half with a better mindset. Those are important things. I don’t want to have to do that in the (regular season) opener.

“Maybe it was not doing it the right way before we started the game. They need to be educated.”

ME: That quarterback derby is for real. There are four to choose from and all can make every throw, even the jitterbug transfer from Arizona State, Jayden Daniels. Myles Brennan, Walker Howard and especially Garrett Nussmeier never reverted to the spring urge of just chunking balls deep and hoping. There seemed to be a purpose to every throw, most of which were accurate. I could make a case for any of them.

KELLY: “We didn’t clear anything up with the quarterbacks today. We probably made it more difficult.”

ME: Maybe this would be, dare I think it, the possibility of a two-quarterback system.

KELLY: After a lot of hemming and hawing and dodging the question, sounded like, in effect, Never on his watch.

ME: There seemed to be a lot of running room for a spring game, particularly in the second half. The talk of the spring was John Emery, who missed several late practices with a sprained ankle but made a token appearance with four carries, apparently for 24 yards.

But don’t sleep on sophomore Armoni Goodwin, who showed some real burst, as did Tre Bradford.

KELLY: Emery only played because he wanted to test how it would be to compete not at full strength. “But those running backs are hard to tackle.”

ME: As for the Job I in the spring, I was surprised at how well the offensive line looked.

KELLY: “We’re not here to bang the drum and say we’ve arrived. But there had to be some semblance of progress in that area … I think we can say that we did after it was emphasized. Now we can look at what we do well and what we can do better.

“If you’re going to win the SEC West you better run the football.”

ME: Wide receiver Jack Bech was doing Jack Bech things, with at least two TD catches. Which should have been no surprise to anyone.

KELLY: Surprised. “He plays better than he practices. He’s a gamer.”

ME: The defense looked worn out in the second half and still needs help.

KELLY: “How many coverages did you see us run?”

MEDIA: Duh.

KELLY: “One. How many (defensive) fronts did we use?”

MEDIA: Uh.

KELLY: “Two.” It wasn’t a fair comparison.

ME: Let’s be honest. The highlight for most of the fans was when Joe Burrow walked out on the field — sadly, not in uniform — along with some of his national championship cohorts like Justin Jefferson, Clyde Edwards-Helaire, etc.

KELLY: The coach had a bone to pick with the Heisman Trophy winner, who of course now plies his trade in Cincinnati, where Kelly was the head coach at the University of Cincinnati before moving on to Notre Dame.

There’s a famous steak house thereabouts named Jeff Ruby’s.

“I had a steak named after me, a petite filet. He (Burrow) has this massive steak like with crab etouffee on it.”

ME: Actually “Steak Burrow” at Jeff Ruby’s is a 14-ounce strip with what the menu calls “creole crawfish sauce” on it.

But Kelly is getting there, and should have the difference in crabs and crawfish down by the fall.

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Scooter Hobbs covers LSU athletics. Email him at scooter.hobbs@americanpress.com