Aranda has work to do against Notre Dame

Published 7:00 pm Saturday, December 30, 2017

ORLANDO, Fla. —  Meanwhile, on the defensive side of the ball for LSU … 

No drama here as there is with the offense and the speculation over coordinator Matt Canada’s future. 

Defense? Business as usual.

Which means Dave Aranada, the Tigers’ devious defensive genius, has been holed up in a cellar somewhere intently plotting up his madcap schemes with quiet efficiency, all designed to foil Notre Dame in the Citrus Bowl on Monday.

It’s what he lives for.

You already knew that Aranda doesn’t fit the mold of the wild-eyed, loud-mouthed, helmet-butting defensive coach.

Aranda barely speaks above a whisper, usually in the cold, calculated tones of perhaps a surgeon  describing a delicate brain procedure.

He’s a hopeless football junkie with a obsession for defense, the cerebral side of it.

Rather than in your face nose-to-nose, he’s more likely to be observing the action from the sideline, chin perched between thumb and forefinger with a furrowed brow as the only hint of emotion.

Let the uncouth throw things around the meeting room. Aranda goes about things with the precision of a watch-maker.

“I do enjoy it,” Aranda admitted wistfully, as if it was vice. “There’s a part of me that says if that’s all it could be I would be all right with that.”

He did take Christmas morning off.

“It’s hard to just chill,” he said, adding that he did enjoy watching the kids open their Christmas presents.

He was back in the office by 1 p.m.

Maybe that’s why they say don’t give Dave Aranda a whole month to figure out how to blow up an offense.

Last year after LSU learned it would be playing Louisville and Heisman Trophy-winner Lamar Jackson in this same bowl, head coach Ed Orgeron gave the staff a few days off.

When they returned to the office Aranda was toting a loose leaf binder the size of the Manhattan phone book — just a few notes he’d jotted down after studying up on the Cardinals’ high-powered attack, directed by offensive mastermind Bobby Petrino.

Aranda’s plan held the Cardinals to 339 yards and 36 points below their season average. Jackson was sacked eight times and completed only 10 of 27 passes.

It turned out Louisville didn’t have much of an offensive line. LSU did Aranda’s bidding and feasted on the Heisman winner.

Notre Dame is a animal, a different challenge.

After a short break this year, Orgeron said, Aranda came back with an even bigger binder full of Notre Dame.

There’s no Notre Dame Heisman winner — not this year anyway, although the Irish have had seven of them in their rather rich history.

There’s another mobile quarterback, however, in Brandon Wimbush and an NFL-ready running back in Josh Adams.

But mostly there’s the certified best offensive line in college football.

That’s not Aranda hyperbole.

The Irish offensive line won this year’s Joe Moore award as the nation’s best.

It ought to be. The left side has two consensus first-team All-Americans in Quenton Nelson and Mike McGlinchey, two of the four seniors in residence on the five-man unit.

That might not be what worries Aranda most, however.

It’s not like LSU hasn’t seen the likes of the Irish beefstock up front. Alabama and Auburn finished second and third for the Moore award.

But it appears there’s an offensive version of Aranda plotting every Notre Dame move, most likely Notre Dame offensive coordinator Chip Long.

“There’s an intelligence in their attack,” Aranda said in his usual measured tones.

He’s watched every Notre Dame play of the season many, many times.

He learned long ago that his thick binder has to be condensed down to college Cliffs notes and written in layman’s terms to do his team any good.

That’s been a challenge this go-around.

“Every game within the season is a little bit different because they’re game planning (differently) every week,” Aranda said. “How do you attack that?”

He went into a lot of specifics using terms such as “red hammer to hammer” and “exon calls” that had an entire press conference’s heads spinning.

Layman’s terms: Aranda has spent as much time trying to figure out what Notre Dame thinks of his defense -— and the Irish will attack it — as he has what he thinks of the Irish offense.

“Do you try to do it all and not be good at anything? Do you try to identify how they see you? That’s what we’ve tried to do, but it’s quite a bit. To do it in a systematic way to where it’s easy for us on defense and we’re giving them multiple looks, that’s the trick right there.

“I’m excited about the challenge of it, but I’m nervous about covering all the bases of it. There’s quite a bit there.”