College Football Playoff: LSU defense growing more confident

The College Football Playoff game between LSU and Oklahoma in this year’s Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl might be more a defensive chess match than many think.

When you look at the College Football Playoff matchup between the No. 1 LSU Tigers and the No. 4 Oklahoma Sooners, what immediately might spring to mind is stellar quarterback play and a ton of points. But despite both teams hanging their hat on offense this year, the defensive strategies will be an interesting thing to watch.

When Joe Burrow and Jalen Hurts are busy breaking ankles in scramble drills and lofting the ball to a group of speedy wide receivers, their opposing defenses (and by extension, those defensive coordinators) will be trying to do what few in their position have accomplished this season.

Stop either team from scoring.

In the case of LSU, they defensively limped into the second half of this season facing the toughest part of their schedule, and most figured the Tigers to drop at least one game, if not more.

But players returning from injury along with some tweaking and tinkering by LSU defensive coordinator Dave Aranda contributed to a complete turnaround on the defensive side of the ball, culminating with 50-7 win over rival Texas A&M in the regular-season finale, and then a dominating 37-10 win against Georgia in the SEC Championship game.

Is LSU now a complete team heading into the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl? Aranda thinks they’ve definitely turned the corner.

“We’re at our most healthy now,” Aranda said at the Peach Bowl Media Day. “I also feel the standards at LSU are so high, which I love, and I’ve always seen LSU as a defensive school. And so when we early in the year did not hold to that standard, I think that a lot of criticism came. And so I think those issues that we had early on were issues of, one, finding who we are, knowing like what we do best, and this particular year, with this particular group I think we’ve settled into that.”

His players are just as optimistic and seem to be well-prepared for the challenge ahead of them. Dual-threat quarterbacks like Hurts can drive a defense insane with the ability to improvise and make something out of what would normally be a sack or a busted play. LSU linebacker K’Lavon Chaisson feels up to that challenge.

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“In my opinion [facing a dual-threat QB] is one of the hardest things to do in football right now,” Chaisson said. “For us, the defensive line and linebackers, it’s a challenge we’ve very well accepted and we’re going to work through it.”

Having faced the likes of dual-threat quarterbacks such as Alabama’s Tua Tagovailoa and Ole Miss signal-caller John Rhys Plumlee, the LSU defense is no stranger to how these players can potentially wreck a game. Tagovailoa threw for 418 yards and four touchdowns, while Plumlee ran for 212 yards and four touchdowns in consecutive games that could have easily gone the other way for LSU.

Tigers defensive back Derek Stingley Jr. knows that Jalen Hurts is just as, if not more special than those two players.

“Well, I mean, they pretty much talk about, like, his running abilities, and if he gets running, you got to treat him like a running back because he’s a bigger guy,” Stingley told reporters. “Really good. You know, he’ll run you over. Throwing-wise, we know that he’s good throwing the ball. I’ve seen that on TV last year.”

Getting after the quarterback the way they did Georgia’s Jake Fromm won’t be the gameplan if the Tigers want to stop Hurts. They’re going to have to spy him and keep him contained and make him dump the ball to his safety valves or throw it away. K’Lavon Chaisson gave a little insight into the LSU approach.

“It’s about rushing him, keeping consistent pressure him all game but don’t rush past the quarterback and create open wide lanes. Going into the game with the mindset — going into the Texas game and kind of took the wrong approach and tried to keep him in the pocket. He beat us with his arm all game.”

A good plan, but teams have seen schemes against Hurts go poof on the heels of his sneakers in the blink of an eye. LSU will need to play not only with confidence on defense but with as much control as they can muster.

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