User-friendly defense could buy LSU time
Published 7:11 am Sunday, August 21, 2016
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">BATON ROUGE — Forget, just for the moment, about the LSU quarterback play.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Yes, that’s the key to the upcoming season. We all know that. Just ask around.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But it’s only because the preseason worrywart committee has declared the defensive problems solved, sight unseen, with the arrival of wunderkind Dave Aranda as the new defensive coordinator.</span>
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<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">In the anguish over trying to complete forward passes, it kind of got swept under the rug last season.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But the Tigers’ usually reliable defense was arguably as much or more to blame as any archaic aerial attack, with or without Brandon Harris at quarterback.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Fans are used to complaining about LSU’s offensive stubbornness. So it’s an easy, knee-jerk reaction.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Defense? No so much.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Your grandmother in the cheap seats may be able to shout out LSU’s predictable offensive play calling at the break of the huddle.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But it takes a keener, more patient eye to dig into defensive shortcomings.</span>
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<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Yet, while offensive coordinator Cam Cameron had to ward off charges that head coach Les Miles kept handcuffing the offense, defensive coordinator Kevin Steele lived out his one season at LSU in relative peace.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Cameron was there by Miles’ choice. Steele should have been more controversial, though, after Miles was forced, against his will, to replace popular coordinator John Chavis, who left for Texas A&M following a silly political battle with Athletic Director Joe Alleva the previous season.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But there didn’t seem to be many tears shed when Steele left on his own for Auburn after one season — especially when Miles pulled a real coup in getting Aranda as the replacement.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Fact is, LSU’s defensive numbers were worse across the board last season than anything in recent memory.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It was particularly below LSU quality when the season ran off the tracks during November’s three-game losing streak.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">In that season-souring, three-game losing streak, LSU gave up 30 points (Alabama), 31 points (Arkansas) and 38 points (Ole Miss).</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">They were only three games all season the Tigers gave up 30 or more points.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">They also allowed at least 432 yards in each of those games.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">That was the season right there (and the part, of course, that almost got Miles fired).</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">And yet they say Harris just needs to be a semi-efficient game manager at quarterback? Not in those kind of track meets, he can’t. No matter the play calling, no matter the running back, they were immediately taking him out of his comfort zone.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But for some reason, the defense seemed to get a free, uh, pass, while everybody pointed fingers at the quarterback.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">How un-LSU was that defense?</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The 24.2 points per game LSU allowed tied for the worst in Miles’ 11-year tenure at the school.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The 224.2 passing yards allowed per game was the worst in the Miles era, the worst for any LSU team since 2001.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">This is the self-styled DBU — for defensive backs — that we’re talking about?</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It’s ditto for the 347.2 total yards per game, worst in all Miles’ LSU years, which also slides back to 2001 to find a more user-friendly defense.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Alert historians will note 2001 as a breakthrough SEC and Sugar Bowl championship season.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">True enough. Just don’t mention it to Nick Saban, who had to swallow hard about midseason to admit that even his genius couldn’t cure that defense as he was finally forced to turn Rohan Davey and Josh Reed loose and win some embarrassing (for him) track meets.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It’s certainly not the LSU way.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">And there doesn’t seem to be any doubt that this defense will look like LSU is used to seeing again this season.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">In this case, it’s OK to assume Aranda will get a handle on this thing.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It’s hard to imagine he won’t.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">He’s developed a reputation as something of a defensive X-and-O lab rat, who fiddled and tinkered Wisconsin into a national leader in almost all defensive categories in recent years.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">And, of course, now he has LSU-caliber athletes doing his bidding.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But that’s not all of it.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">There was nothing wrong with LSU’s defensive talent last season.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The Tigers were a little thin up front, perhaps, but their biggest problems seemed to be in the secondary, and it wasn’t for lack of players.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">There was almost a common theme throughout a season ??— but especially during the three-game swoon — when opposing big plays seemed to be the killer.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">For the most part, it was not LSU athletes getting physically beaten.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But confusion too often reigned.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">How many times did you see it?</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">There would be the big play, a touchdown signal or at least chains moving, generally followed by two or three Tigers defensive backs staring at each other dumbfounded — Was that my man? I thought you had him? Who me? What coverage were we in again?</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">And that’s the real beauty of what Aranda supposedly has cooked up down in his lab.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">By all accounts, though designed to confuse offenses, it is delightfully simple for its own operators to use.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Nobody doubts the athletes LSU has on defense.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It appears Aranda is ready to turn them loose.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Then LSU can get back to worrying about its own passing game.</span>
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<span style="font-weight: bold;" class="R~sep~ACopyEditors~sep~endnote">Scooter Hobbs</span> <span class="R~sep~ACopyEditors~sep~endnote">covers LSU</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyEditors~sep~endnote">athletics. Email him at</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyEditors~sep~endnote">shobbs@americanpress.com</span>
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<p class="p1">Follow Scooter Hobbs on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/ScooterAmPress"><span class="s1">twitter.com/ScooterAmPress</span></a>
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