It still comes down to scoring points

Published 7:04 am Monday, November 7, 2016

BATON ROUGE — You mark my words. Some day LSU will beat Alabama again.

It may not be in our lifetimes. It’s looking more and more like it certainly won’t be in Nick Saban’s lifetime.

But it will eventually happen.

And most likely it will be some game when you’ll least expect it. You might even will have given your tickets away.

And it will probably be totally by accident.

Face it, that looks to be the only way it’s ever going to happen.

The traditional means apparently just don’t apply for this ongoing state crisis.

Wishing and hoping it to be true, even slinking down to begging, sure don’t seem to be doing the trick.

All manner of planning, scheming, trash-talking, open-dating, hype video-dropping, coach-changing, offensive awakening and rosary bead rubbing doesn’t seem to be helping much, either.

LSU’s been there, failed that.

And yet I saw a few cute handmade signs popping up behind ESPN’s Game Day set that I thought might be real difference-makers this time.

I forget now what they said.

Doesn’t matter, anyway.

You can’t light Tiger Stadium’s fuse with much more energy than did the 102,000 who brought the goods and ramped up the vocal chords Saturday night.

And yet …

Alabama 10, LSU 0.

It doesn’t really matter that LSU probably can’t play any harder.

It was still there: Alabama 10, LSU 0.

Or that it’s defense can’t play any better.

Ed Orgeron’s interim new energy or not, there it was: Alabama 10, LSU 0.

And, of course, there was the familiar Rammer Jammer chant from the smug Bama faithful ?— fingernails on the chalkboard for LSU — as everybody filed out.

They seemed to be frustrated — of course they were — but not really mad. Postgame call-in shows, even the well-oiled ones, seemed sympathetic, content to point fingers at an official’s call (or one notable non-call) or two.

It’s just hard to fault that kind of effort by a home team.

And at least there was no Big Bama Tease this time.

That would have been inhumane.

The last two times a zoo atmosphere got its Bring-on-Bama hopes up in Tiger Stadium, LSU somehow actually led in the final minute before the carrot was snatched away with a cackle.

There wasn’t much danger of that happening this time.

Check the NCAA manual. It’s pretty clear on the subject. To get a lead, a team must — it’s right there in plain English — score something, anything, by any of several legal means.

Nothing won’t do it.

And that’s what the Tigers were going to end up with — zilch, squat, nada, naught, nil, big fat zero.

That’s how you squander as good of a defensive game plan and execution as LSU is ever likely to come up with.

Nutty stat: You know what you saw with your eyes as Bama tossed LSU’s offense around like rag dolls. But would you believe LSU’s defense actually had more tackles for loss? It’s true —12 for LSU, 9 for Bama.

And 23 total with two offenses that had looked pretty good coming in tells you what kind of big-boy defense this was.

But LSU’s only hope was to get to overtime scoreless, where possessions start in field goal range, and hope for a Bama shank.

Or maybe let the defense do the scoring too.

The LSU offense surely wasn’t up to it.

Setting the table wasn’t enough.

Two forced turnovers set LSU’s offense up in Bama territory, but neither amounted to anything.

So LSU now has three losses this season, and in those three games the Tigers have surrendered a total — TOTAL ?— of two touchdowns (Auburn had six field goals in an 18-13 game).

This was supposed to be different — and it kind of was. That wasn’t the same offense that got Les Miles run off, no matter how familiar the results looked.

In theory, LSU has changed some things under Orgeron, not that you could tell Saturday.

But maybe all those wide-eyed fans got too excited watching the O Offense in its three trial runs against bad-to-mediocre defenses.

There are a lot of new-fangled offenses out there.

But, for all the tinkering in the lab, they haven’t found one yet that can do much while its offensive line is getting mauled up front.

True, Danny Etling, the game manager LSU thought was all it needed at quarterback, looked below average this night and at times overwhelmed.

“Didn’t play well,” Orgeron said. “He knows it. But, hey, it’s not one person.”

It also would not have mattered as long as the offensive line was getting knocked into next month.

Bama exposed it.

The Tide defense will do that.

But if LSU is to recover and make something of a still-challenging November, that’s where the Tigers are going to have shore up.

Or else more defensive gems will be wasted.