Honeymoon over for LSU coaches
Published 6:00 pm Wednesday, September 20, 2017
<p class="p1">Maybe Mississippi State was just <em>that</em> good.</p><p class="p1">Possible. Not likely. Slightly incomprehensible. Off-the-rails crazy. But possible.</p><p class="p1">Maybe there will be cowbells on the White House lawn sometime next spring accepting congrats from The Donald.</p><p class="p1">As frightening as that prospect might be, there’s a more horrifying explanation.</p><p class="p1">Perhaps LSU really is <em>that</em> bad — like 37-7, sour-milk bad.</p><p class="p1">I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the ever-elusive truth is hiding somewhere there in between.</p><p class="p1">In that case, my advice would be to … remain calm. Do not panic. Come in off that ledge.</p><p class="p1">Now if that really was the real LSU in Starkville last Saturday, then the Tigers are in a whale of trouble. In that case, by all means, it’s time for panic in the streets, anarchy in the stadium, a nuclear meltdown in the chat rooms.</p><p class="p1">The only thing close to it in recent years was the 41-9 debacle at Auburn in 2014. That one had the excuse of a true freshman, Brandon Harris, making his first college start at quarterback in a very hostile environment. Almost predictable, particularly in retrospect.</p><p class="p1">What happened in the Starkpatch … nobody saw that one coming.</p><p class="p1">But don’t fall into the trap of assuming that whatever happened in the last game will define the remainder of the season.</p><p class="p1">There is an outside chance the Tigers can get better. As little consolation as it may be, I honestly don’t think they can play any worse than that.</p><p class="p1">Maybe someday LSU fans can look back on Orgeron’s Saturday’s disaster whimsically, like remembering Nick Saban’s unexplainable fourth game as LSU head coach when he managed to lose to Alabama-Birmingham.</p><p class="p1">Stuff happens, especially in football.</p><p class="p1">It just wasn’t a good look. The timing couldn’t have been much worse.</p><p class="p1">In the first real test of LSU’s new football business model — a charismatic Cajun coach armed with, but staying out of the way of, two rock-star coordinators — they all fell flat on their face.</p><p class="p1">You look pretty silly when both of the team masterminds get their socks coached off by the opposition.</p><p class="p1">Maybe they just both had bad nights.</p><p class="p1">It happens.</p><p class="p1">In truth, Canada’s offense, which did mostly fine when it could dodge yellow flags against two outmanned opponents leading up to last week, still hasn’t looked particularly ground-breaking, let alone revolutionary.</p><p class="p1">Maybe everybody was expecting too much. We’re not even sure what we’re looking for.</p><p class="p1">You keep waiting on the good parts to surface. What are they hiding? What are they waiting on?</p><p class="p1">Against Mississippi State, all it was a bunch of motion and shifting, signifying nothing.</p><p class="p1">Mississippi State defensive coordinator Todd Grantham had the Tigers figured out Saturday like he was in their huddle. Last December, when still at Louisville, he didn’t have much of a clue how to stop LSU in the Citrus Bowl.</p><p class="p1">LSU’s Dave Aranda was the defensive wunderkind in that game. He didn’t get dumbfounded overnight.</p><p class="p1">And we know Aranda is better than how last week’s game played out.</p><p class="p1">There were more penalties, of course, nine of them this time, though hard as the Tigers tried to reach double digits, State kept declining them late.</p><p class="p1">Never mind the handful of egregiously bad calls. That didn’t beat LSU. </p><p class="p1">Worst-case scenario: even genius coordinators have to win some battles in the trenches to do their magic.</p><p class="p1">But, if anything, forget the Xs and most of the Os, and even the breeches of the rule book.</p><p class="p1">Presumably those woes can be minimized, if not totally corrected.</p><p class="p1">The most shocking thing for an LSU team was, start to finish, how much more pure energy Mississippi State brought to the game than did the Tigers.</p><p class="p1">How does Coach “Red Bull” himself allow that to happen?</p><p class="p1">It was shocking. That should be his speciality.</p><p class="p1">So is Coach O on the hot seat?</p><p class="p1">I’m still fuzzy on how that works, by the way.</p><p class="p1">It pops up all the time, of course, but it always seems like a coach gets on that proverbial hot seat when you aren’t paying attention. You just turn around one day and there he is, squirming. It becomes accepted, without an official announcement from the school, unless it’s Texas A&M.</p><p class="p1">So what exactly is the proper protocol for such a thing?</p><p class="p1">Is there a federal agency a fan base can call to register their coach in the official National Coaching Hot Seat data base?</p><p class="p1">Asking for a friend.</p><p class="p1">But, no, you don’t put Orgeron on the hot seat, whatever it is, this quickly into the tenure. That would be ludicrous even by LSU standards.</p><p class="p1">But, for sure, he’s got some making up to do.</p><p class="p1">This much we know for sure: Even with the extra wiggle-room allowance for his Cajun roots, his LSU honeymoon is officially over.</p><p class="p2">l</p><p class="p3"><strong>Scooter Hobbs</strong> covers LSUathletics. Email him at</p><p class="p3">shobbs@americanpress.com</p>
