It wasn’t like it should have been a big shocker.

There had been preseason warnings. On the laundry list of question marks for LSU heading into the season, the makeshift offensive line loomed as the most iffy.

It hasn’t been answered yet, at least not to the Tigers’ satisfaction.

Special teams guffaws hogged most of attention in a sloppy 24-23 loss to Florida State Sunday night.

But, expected or not, the most glaring problem the Tigers had was blocking Seminoles. It was a good FSU defensive defensive front, but nothing the Tigers won’t see a lot more of, if not this week against Southern University, then in Southeastern Conference play.

So it was back to the drawing board after the Tigers allowed four sacks while quarterback Jayden Daniels was running for his life most of the night. Three LSU running backs, meanwhile, combined for 39 yards rushing on 14 carries.

LSU’s most effective plays seemed to be desperation scrambles ad-libbed by the shifty Daniels.

He did become the first LSU quarterback to rush for 100 yards (114) and throw for more than 200 in a regulation game. Joe Burrow did it in the memorable seven-overtime game at Texas A&M in 2018.

But that’s not the way LSU draws it up and probably not a formula for success.

“It wasn’t pretty football,” LSU head coach Brian Kelly acknowledged. “Our coaches are accountable, I’m accountable.”

So are the players, of course — a mixed bag of transfers, a true freshman and a sophomore playing center for the first time that Kelly cobbled together after taking the job last December. Kelly had no problem with the effort.

“They’re gritty and they’re going to play hard,” he said. “You’ve got to look at your personnel going against who we played against.”

There, he said, perhaps the coaches let them down.

“There were other ways that we could have helped our offensive line,” he said. “Should we have sprinted (out) more? Should we have gapped it more?”

The Tigers didn’t score a touchdown until late in the third quarter, but it was the first of three consecutive scoring drives after LSU went more with an up-tempo pace.

Part of that, Kelly said, was that Florida State, with the late lead, didn’t pressure as much, preferring to drop more players back in a semi-prevent defense.

“They were in a lot of pressure fronts (early),” Kelly said. “They went to a lot of ‘bear’ (alignments) that covered us up front. So they had individual, singular matchups on each one of our five guys up front.

“Their edge guys were really good. One of them went against a true freshman (Will Campbell) who held his own, won some lost some.”

Senior right tackle Cam Wire, he said, was left mainly in one-on-one situations.

“There was some tough plays there for him but he battled.”

That was true across the line.

“We needed to be in some different protections,” Kelly said. “It took us a while to recognize some of those.

“We started to chip (edge rushers) late in the game and give some help on one side or the other.”

Still, about the kindest thing you could say right is that the offensive line is still a work in progress.

“They have to know where their help’s coming from,” Kelly said. “That’s what you get when you get a group of guys that are playing together for a while. They know where to help. We call that O-line awareness. Certainly we lack a little bit of that right now, but we’ll get there. We’ll build that as the season goes on.”