So much for Fournette’s night off

Published 10:00 am Sunday, October 4, 2015

Sorry, Leonard.

Maybe next game.

Yeah, you were promised a night off for LSU, or at the least a leisurely stroll through the park before relaxing, perhaps with an umbrella drink for the doldrums. 

Maybe do the NFL thing and sport a ballcap for the second half.

Remember?

This was going to be the game against an outmanned Eastern Michigan team in which the Tigers explored their other offensive options, the stuff the Tigers might need for further down the road.

Maybe they don’t have any.

Maybe this really is a One Man Team.

The shocker wasn’t that Fournette, the Tigers’ Heisman Trophy candidate, went over 200 yards for the third consecutive game, 233 to be exact.

That’s not just an LSU first, but three in a row is a first by anybody, ever, in the same Southeastern Conference that produced Bo Jackson and Herschel Walker.

So say wow.

But the truly startling thing was that LSU needed all 233 of them to win the blasted game 44-22.

Against Eastern Michigan.

Whatever that is.

And it had perhaps more anxious moments than even a 22-point win would suggest, mainly because the Tigers took their sweet time about disposing of the pesky Eagles.

Fournette’s last touchdown came in the fourth quarter, long after he was supposed to be into R&R for the night.

Hopefully he didn’t have an early date.

But LSU needed him to stick around.

And that evidently wasn’t the plan. 

But after experimenting widely with that newfangled forward pass thing, LSU was finally forced to throw Air Tiger in the dumpster for another week.

Just win the game and move on.

Yo, Leonard! Got a minute?

LSU was almost saying to Fournette, just go ahead and get us through this week, and we’ll resume the flight tests again soon, real soon. 

It was a noble effort.

LSU threw it all over the lot in the first half.

It didn’t work.

There were also some leaks on defense. 

So, hanging on to a 20-14 halftime lead and perhaps even forcing a good portion of a chilly Tiger Stadium crowd to consider the unthinkable upset, LSU went back to its roots.

LSU showed its hand on the first play of the second half.

It was a straight handoff to Fournette and, slick as a whistle, there you had it — a 75-yard touchdown run.

That was all LSU needed to see.

After throwing 13 passes in the first half, the Tigers thew only two in the second half, and danged if I can remember them. Neither of them connected.

Fournette got several more runs worthy of the highlight reel for the Heisman voters. He was still scoring touchdowns into the fourth quarter.

That evidently wasn’t the plan.

This, by all evidence, was supposed to be the night LSU turned Brandon Harris loose and unveiled the passing game to go along with Fournette.

It was quite the crowd pleaser at first. LSU opened the game with a play-action pass the Harris completed a 19-yard pass to Malachi Dupre.

By the half LSU had thrown on first down six times, presumably with EMU’s attention squarely on Fournette. And yet they completed only two of them.

This wasn’t the ongoing quarterback dilemma taking a turn for the worse.

Brandon Harris still looks like LSU’s quarterback. Or at least he looks like a quarterback, which is certainly an upgrade over last year’s nightmare.

He still needs to be brought along slowly, with patience and forethought.

He still holds the ball too long occasionally in the pocket.

But what he really needs right now is a little help from his highly touted receiving corps.

Evidently that was the plan for this night — let them take some target practice, hit some fungoes.

It’s wasn’t like Harris was misfiring all over the place.

For too long the general consensus has been that LSU was wasting all that pass-catching talent with the quarterback travails. 

Not Saturday.

Even with LSU firmly established as a run-first team, the receivers had trouble getting separation against what presumably is not an SEC-caliber secondary.

And when the Tigers did, it hardly seemed to matter.

There were at least four or five out-and-out drops.

The two biggest talents, Dupre and Travin Dural, both dropped what would have been easy touchdown receptions.

So in the end, instead of opening up the throwing game, LSU ran for 399 and, for the third time in four games, capped the air game at under 100 yards. There were, I believe, 80 yards, none in the second half. 

“We’d have thrown for 200-250 had it not been for the drops,” head coach Les Miles said.

So LSU shut down the air waves. And ran. And ran. And ran.