Ed Orgeron and the LSU Tigers had a tough SEC debut against Mississippi State.
The sad state of reality for the LSU Tigers is that Joe Burrow and Joe Brady are not walking through that door. The current batch of LSU players, which doesn’t include Ja’Marr Chase either, needs to discover their own identity, and fast. Myles Brennan didn’t inspire much confidence last Saturday, but it was the Tigers’ defense, which was exposed by Mike Leach and Mississippi State’s offense, that needed the wake-up call.
Stanford transfer K.J. Costello threw his way into Heisman contention (granted it’s early) with a 623-yard, five-touchdown performance. Derek Stingley or not, that’s not an acceptable performance from an SEC defense.
So, Orgeron didn’t hold back about the Tigers’ goal heading into Saturday’s game against Vanderbilt.
"Championship's over. ... I guarantee you this week we'll start fixing it." —Coach O
— College GameDay (@CollegeGameDay) October 3, 2020
LSU is looking to bounce back after opening its season with a loss to Mississippi State 😤 pic.twitter.com/sLYMp92ygd
Fixing LSU’s issues might be easier said than done
Even with Stingley expected to play this week against Vanderbilt, the Commodores aren’t a reflection of the rest of the SEC. Thankfully, the Tigers’ schedule works to their advantage as they figure out precisely what’s wrong with this defense.
LSU plays Vandy and Missouri in back-to-back weeks in two games they’ll be favored to win. On Oct. 17, however, they travel to the Swamp in a true test of Orgeron’s commentary.
While LSU’s defense received most of the headlines for all of the wrong reasons, Brennan wasn’t particularly impressive either. Brennan will be chasing Burrow’s ghost for as long as he remains the starter at LSU, but as Orgeron noted after the Tigers’ loss, he needs to be the best version of himself. To be frank, we’re not sure what that means exactly, given we haven’t seen much of him in this offense.
The 2020 LSU Tigers cannot possibly compare to last year’s. In fact, no college football team in recent memory can. Orgeron wants to move forward and it all starts in Nashville on Saturday night.
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