Thursday, September 9, 2010

Second half offense vs UNC

I heard the announcers say during the second half of the game that LSU couldn't afford to get complacent or conservative on offense. I went back and watched every LSU possession in the third and fourth quarters to see if that happened or not (also as penance for my sins).

The first drive of the third quarter began at the UNC 45 after a 50 yard return by Ron Brooks.

Shotgun: Play Action (PA) to M. Joseph for 21 yards
Shotgun: S. Ridley 9 yard run
I formation: Ridley (from FB position) runs for a 1st down and fumbles

Conservative? YES, on 3rd down. It's a play designed to get a 1st down and nothing more. It is hardly a give-up, scaredy-cat play.

2nd Drive -- LSU 46

Shotgun: Shepard runs 3 yds to the right
Shotgun: Murphy runs 1 yd to the right
Shotgun: Pass to Toliver for 4 yds

Conservative? YES on 3rd down; needed 6 yards, threw a 4 yd pass

3rd Drive -- LSU 40

Under Center: Toss left Ridley 3 yds
Shotgun: Long pass to the end zone for Toliver, inc.
Shogtun: Ridley run up the middle for loss

Conservative? YES. Total give-up play on 3rd and long

4th Drive -- LSU 31

Shotgun: Option right, J. Jefferson 4 yds
Shotgun: Run called, false start
Shotgun: Shepard run left for 6 yds. FALLS DOWN without being touched, likely would have been 3rd and short or a 1st down. (Apparently the coaches have to teach him how to run without falling down)
Shotgun: Pass left to Toliver for 7yds, 1st down
Shotgun: JJ scramble 3 yds. Called pass
I formation: Ridley left 12 yds
Shotgun: Ridley run middle, loss of 2 yds. Zone read, JJ should have kept it
Shotgun: JJ left for 8yds. Zone read, kept it
Shotgun: Pass to Randle for 10 yds on 3rd & 4
Shotgun: Pass incomplete to Ridley on middle screen
Shotgun: JJ fake to Shepard, 5 yds middle
I formation: Ridley run right, TD called back for holding
Shotgun: Pass. JJ runs backwards, keeps running backwards, throws ball away. Grounding, 22 yd loss

Conservative? NO. 13 plays, no points.

5th Drive -- LSU 27, LSU up 30-17

I formation: Pass to Shepard quick out, 5 yds
Shotgun: Ridley run 8 yds, negated by HOLDING
Shotgun: JJ Scramble 7yds. Called pass
Shotgun: 12 men in huddle
Shotgun: Pass Randle 3 yds

Conservative? YES, on 3rd down. 3rd and 10, 3 yd pass

6th Drive -- UNC 39, LSU up 30-24

I formation: Ridley run middle 5 yds
I formation: Ridley run middle no gain
I formation: quick handoff, Ridley up the middle

Let me deviate from my standard format for this one. This should be the end of the game. Stevan Ridley crosses the 1st down line with 1:15 left in the game. UNC has zero timeouts. Had LSU simply taken a knee twice on 3rd and 4th downs, UNC would have gotten the ball at their own 34 with about 40 seconds left and no timeouts, needing a touchdown. If Ridley holds on to the ball, LSU goes victory formation the rest of the way.

Instead, he gets the first down but is running in traffic with ONE hand on the ball. He loses it and the world goes crazy. LSU's defense is forced back on the field after facing 17 straight UNC offensive plays due to the onside kick.

Conservative? YES, and rightfully so. All you have to do is run it up the middle and not fumble, and the game is over.

Conclusion

I count five "conservative" plays, which I define as third down plays that intentionally go for short yardage or time-consuming purposes. Two of these plays were reasonable calls given the situation, and both of them ended with Ridley putting the ball on the ground.

Two of the "bad" conservative plays were short passes that were thrown short of 1st down yardage. I do not know if this was a result of Gary Crowton telling JJ to play it safe or if he just didn't look downfield.

One was a run up the middle on 3rd and 7, a give-up play that's completely on Crowton.

I think there were three occasions the offense could have been more aggressive, but I would hardly say that the offense went into a shell.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Thoughts on 2009

I'm not really an optimist or a pessimist. I like to wait until I see what happens on the field and then make my assessments based on that. So before I tell you what I think about 2010, here's what I saw from the 2009 LSU football team, and what I think it means for the future.

An average NCAA quarterback. Jordan Jefferson is okay. Okay in the NCAA means a below-average SEC quarterback. He makes good plays and bad plays, but mostly average plays. He has no pocket presence and has adopted Jarrett Lee's habit of sprinting away from the line of scrimmage on deep drops. He is not accurate enough to deliver the ball on the move with poor mechanics, and his mechanics are often poor. He is much more likely to take a horrible sack or run out of bounds for a loss of yardage than he is to just throw it away.

It is as if the coaches spent the offseason showing Jefferson video "Clockwork Orange" style of Jarrett Lee's interception/touchdown combos in an effort to scare him into not throwing interceptions. We learned this last season: you cannot hide your quarterback in the SEC. You cannot design a game plan when you are scared of what he might do. Nor can you run an offense with a quarterback who combines inaccuracy with hesitation and no idea where the rush is. For the second straight season, LSU has been crippled by limited production from the position.

A really, really bad offensive line. There are many more emphatic adjectives that I could--and probably should--use to describe the line's performance, but I'm trying to be charitable for 2010. I saw LSU offensive linemen pushed into the backfield by teams from the WAC and Sun Belt. I saw defenses get multiple sacks using only three rushers. I saw 3rd and 1 and 4th and 1 fail miserably because the running back had no hole to hit.

There is no substitute for good line play. You cannot scheme your way around a bad offensive line. If your quarterback is shaky, he needs protection to help him out. If your running backs aren't shifty--and LSU's really aren't--they need running lanes. This year's line gave nothing. They actually contributed nothing to the team at all. How this turned into a nine-win team is beyond me.

Iffy pass catchers. Brandon LaFell is highly rated at his position. Terrence Toliver has lots of talent. Richard Dickson is very popular. All three of them dropped a lot of passes this season. Along with making some big plays and scoring 11 touchdowns, LaFell had some inexplicable drops that brought back memories of 2007 . Toliver's hands don't match the rest of him. Richard Dickson was an invisible man, and I always thought tight ends were a young QB's best friend. In 13 games, he caught 21 passes for 157 yards. Part of that is the quarterback, but he had several drops on his own. In short, there was very little to fear from LSU's passing attack, allowing defenses to load up on the run and pressure the QB.

No offensive identity. Was LSU a passing offense? A running offense? A power offense? A finesse offense? I don't know. I think they tried to be a spread offense, but failed at every level. Take a look at some other spread teams like Oregon, Texas Tech, Florida, etc. See how big the field looks when they have the ball. In contrast, LSU somehow manages to shrink the field and eliminate room for playmakers to work. If you had to point to something and say, "This is what they do well" what would it be? Commit stupid penalties? Run the option when they shouldn't?

A blockable defensive line. Name somebody who played well this season. I guess Nevis, who had ten tackles for loss and four sacks. Other than that the line spent long stretches of games being neutralized up front and not getting any pressure on the quarterback. Rahim Alem in particular is notable for his lack of discipline and tendency to either rush so far upfield that Brick Haley has to go pick him up in Denham Springs after every play, or to crash so hard on play action that he may as well take a nap until the play is over. He was the standout player on last season's awful unit, so people bumped up expectations for this season. It's not like he spent the season being doubled, either. No-name offensive tackles handled him one on one with relative ease. Unless somebody like Sam Montgomery steps up next season to become a terror off the edge, I don't see how the defensive line will be any better.

Much better linebackers. For years I've heard LSU fans complain about the position, but this season they were the best unit on the field. Harry Coleman was outstanding, and Kelvin Sheppard was a tackling machine. Perry Riley got most of the praise in preseason, but everybody was good. Even Jacob Cutrera had a game-changing play against Washington. Having said all this, if you have to choose between great defensive line play or great linebacker play, take the former. It's much better to have average linebackers making plays behind a dominant defensive line than to have great linebackers trying to clean up the mess left by average linemen.

A Superstar, a Hitter, and Me(h). Patrick Peterson was fantastic most of the year, then had his worst game against Penn State. I think he was jobbed on a couple of calls in SEC play when he did amazing things, but I can still do without him giving the "hands to shoulder level" pose after making a solo tackle on a seven yard gain. Chad Jones emerged as a physical presence in the secondary, almost killing both Joe Adams and himself along the way. I'd still like to see him make more plays on the ball downfield. The platoon at the other CB spot, Brandon Taylor's bad angles, and Danny McCray weren't very good against good to very good competition. I think John Chavis spent a lot of time gambling on the run (Jai Eugene in the game) vs. the pass (Chris Hawkins). He did a pretty good job, too.

The Quarterback Who Did Not Pass. Russell Shepard ran the ball 45 times, caught five passes, and handed it off a few more times. He did not throw one single pass. Look at his season statistics, and see that he did not carry it more than 6 times in any game. Three games saw him not even take the field. Was everybody else so good on offense that LSU could afford to minimize one of the most electric recruits in the country? I doubt it.

So what does all of this mean for 2010? Honestly, I don't see how LSU will be any better. If Jordan Jefferson didn't improve that much--or at all--between the Washington game and the Penn State game, why should I expect him to get better between now and September? The same goes for the offensive and defensive lines. Brandon LaFell is leaving a big hole in the receiving corps. The running game will be counting on...who? Two good linebackers are gone. The best player from the last two recruiting classes not named Patrick Peterson, is...who?

Friday, October 23, 2009

What's Changed?

We're at the halfway point of the season, and I've been racking my brain trying to figure out how the week 7 version of LSU football is any different than the week 1 version. It seems like we're talking about the same things and asking the same questions over and over again. There's the lack of sacks, the playcalling on offense, the offensive line, no power run game, Jordan Jefferson's development, and on and on and on. There's only two questions I think I have answers to.

Question number one, asked after the Washington game: Will the defense tackle better than it did against the Huskies?

Answer: Absolutely. There's still a blown assignment in the secondary now and then, and the line looks very blockable at times, but I think the defense has been tackling and hitting better and better as the season has progressed. The linebackers in particular have really been smacking some people around. It's been nice to see. I was filled with doubts about the linebackers before the season, but they've played far beyond my expectations.

Question number 2, asked after--oh, every single game: Will the offensive line play better?

Answer: Define "better." If you mean better than they did in the first three or four games, then yes. Against Georgia and Florida they blocked okay on running plays. If you mean will they actually turn into a good SEC offensive line, then no. They're still a long way away from that.

I hope the second half of the season sees very positive responses to the rest of our unanswered questions.

Saturday, October 3, 2009

A Wild One to Remember

LSU came from behind with 1:09 left in the game when Charles Scott answered A.J. Green's touchdown reception with a 33-yard touchdown scamper. This was a hard fought game, and kudos to Georgia for hanging with us. This win was the first in Athens since 1987 for the Tigers, and it was another memorable game; one that no Tiger fan will forget anytime soon.

Scott scored his first and second rushing touchdowns of the season in this game, and on the last one, he bounced off a pair of tacklers and sliced through the secondary en route to the end zone. An amazing grab by LaFell for the two-point conversion put the Tigers on top 20-13 with just over :40 left to go.

Perry Riley sealed the deal on the ensuing UGA possession by intercepting a Joe Cox pass near the LSU sideline. The play was reviewed, as it was originally ruled an incomplete pass, but Riley clearly had his feet inbounds when he secured the ball.

I'm elated with the win, but one disappointing thing comes to mind for me. The three-man rush and soft zone coverage on the Georgia drive that put them on top 13-12. In my opinion, you've got to continue applying pressure and playing man coverage. Chris Hawkins had no business covering A.J. Green, and it showed on that drive as Green caught one just above Hawkins' head, bringing it down securely for the go-ahead touchdown.

It was nice to see the spread offense working to near perfection. I said it earlier in the week that we may need to try it out, and it worked wonders on the drive that put us up 12-7. After giving the lead away on the next UGA possession, a pair of penalties against the Dawgs set us up with great field position after another great return by Trindon Holliday. It took Scott two carries to find the end zone and put the Dawgs away. I'm at a loss for words right now, but nonetheless, the Tigers showed me they do in fact have an identity. They find a way to win. They left it all out there like I asked for. The intensity was there at times, and from what I saw today, this team has the makings of something special. The defense played very well today, minus a few big plays here and there, and they stuffed the run all day long, allowing only 45 yards on the ground. Let's hope we can feed off the momentum from this win and bring it with us next week as we host the defending national champion, unbeaten, and top-ranked Florida Gators.

Geaux Tigers!

Halftime in Athens...

Currently, LSU is clinging to a 6-0 lead, but it should be much worse than that. An interception in the end zone on our first offensive possession, followed by a pair of field goals (one from inside the red zone), and a failed fourth down conversion inside the red zone have prevented us from letting this one get out of control--in our favor, that is. We're keeping them in check on defense--UGA has 49 total yards of offense--and on offense, we're moving the ball fairly well by attacking the edges and through the air. Toliver is playing terrific right now, and the passing game is definitely in sync. Georgia's defense has started to snuff out the option attack, and they've done a good job in the latter part of the first half defending it.

Hopefully we start finishing drives and putting more points up. We've got an excellent opportunity to make a statement to start the second half. Let's hope the Tigers drive it right down their throat and punch it in the end zone this time. I know Miles wants the fourth down inside the red zone back, because it could be at least 9-0 right now, but oh well; let's make up for it right here.

Geaux Tigers!

Friday, October 2, 2009

4-0, but far from perfect...

So it's the beginning of October, and this can mean only one thing: Football season is in full swing. We're 1/3 of the way through the regular season, and right now, LSU controls its own destiny. That's in conference play and on the national scale. Many of us are capable of objective reasoning, and although the Tigers are unbeaten, many of us have noticed some lingering issues that have yet to be resolved. One of my LSU brethren posed an interesting topic for thought the other day. Identity. Does this team have one? Like many others, I feel the answer is no. I think the only positive things I've seen are a huge turnaround in turnover differential and Toliver emerging as that all-important third target in the passing game. R.J. Jackson had flashes of greatness against Vanderbilt, and he hauled in a 40-yard reception against Mississippi State, but aside from those two games, he hasn't been involved.

So here's a list of the negatives the casual observer should be able to point out:

1-- Running game is stagnant.
2-- Offensive line is atrocious in run blocking.
3-- Defense is playing bend but don't break the majority of the game, and missed tackles, breakdowns in coverage, and some other issues are allowing for the big play, and the big play is allowing teams to hang with us.
4-- Offense isn't keeping the defense off the field for long, which is really hurting us late in the game.
5-- Special teams had more than enough blunders last week against Mississippi State. Hopefully things will turn in the right direction for this unit. Aside from Chad Jones returning a punt for a touchdown, there really wasn't much to brag about. In fact, special teams play was as poor as the offensive line's run-blocking abilities.

Now, as an optimist, I would like to think things can drastically improve, and this team will finally put all the pieces together. The truth is, I haven't seen enough desire in this team to be sure they can accomplish this. Jefferson is improving, albeit slowly, with each game, but after the ULL game, he began to worry me because of some of the throws he made--trying to force it in there when his target had a blanket wrapped around him. We can sit here and harp on what needs to improve all day if we wanted to do so, but I'd rather talk about what I'd like to see against UGA tomorrow afternoon. I'm reluctant to make any predictions at this point because admittedly, I'm a homer; and homers tend to favor their team(s) no matter what. I know some people will say, "Realistically, LSU has no shot." The truth is, "realistically," both teams have a shot. Anything can happen on any given Saturday. Isn't that why we love college football?

Anyway, onto what I'd like to see tomorrow:

1-- Pressure on Joe Cox. I would really love to see us line up and play man coverage, mix up some blitzes, and really turn up the heat on this young QB. He's already shown he's well capable of racking up huge numbers, hence the reason I feel it is critical to knock him out of rhythm before he even gets into one.

2-- The clash between A.J. Green and Patrick Peterson. Peterson's name hasn't been called much this season aside from the Washington game in which he racked up a number of tackles and recovered a fumble; and also, this past week when he returned an interception for a touchdown. Green is obviously the go-to guy for the Dawgs, and Peterson, who is arguably the best lockdown cornerback in the nation, is the only player I trust to cover this standout wide receiver. It should be a lot of fun to watch these two tussle.

3-- Please, for the love of God. Run. The. Damn. Ball. And do it well. If ever a time were more ripe for the line to jell, it's now. We need to have the threat of a ground game in the upcoming stretch of games; otherwise, Jordan Jefferson is going to have to lead us to victory with his arm, and I really don't like our chances if that's the case. Unless the Wizard has some tricks up his sleeve he has yet to reveal, without a running game, doom appears imminent.

Aside from those few things, I just want the Tigers to go out there and play with some intensity. Keep it respectable, and leave it all on the field. A win would definitely do wonders for this team's morale, and most importantly, their identity. On top of that, it would restore the faith within the fan base, which is all but gone at the moment.

That's all I've got for now. Geaux Tigers!



Friday, September 18, 2009

LSU 2-0

The title is really all I can definitively say about LSU right now. The team is 2-0. I haven't written anything since the Washington game because I don't have that much to say, and I don't write something just to write something. Having said that, there are a few issues I've been thinking about:

Offensive Line

The topic of a lot of discussion the last two weeks, people want to see improvement here. It doesn't just need improvement, though. It needs drastic improvement if LSU is going to avoid going 3-5 in the SEC again. I was thinking that it might just be an issue of gelling and teamwork, but I rewatched the Vandy game and think it goes beyond that. On one play Lyle Hitt gets shoved two yards into the backfield on a running play. It was a play where he's supposed to be the aggressor, not the passive interceptor. Instead, he got embarrassed by the left DT, who came dang close to tackling Keiland Williams for a loss. Ciron Black was getting beat straight up by someone named--hold on while I check the game thread--Broderick Stewart. On another play Stewart came inside and the tackle looped outside him. Black tried to pass Stewart on to Dworaczyk, who was still in the middle of engaging the moving tackle. Stewart slipped in between them to pressure Jefferson.

It seems like there's both individual and unit performance issues that need to be addressed. I think Vanderbilt has some legitimate SEC talent up front, but if LSU is having trouble moving Vanderbilt out of the way, I don't want to think about what's going to happen with the big boys they have to face.

Offensive Rhythm

The offense looks sloppy, like it's relying more on athleticism and getting guys into space than on execution and fundamentals. I don't want it to be a "grab bag" of plays that seems mish-mash just to keep the defense off balance. I want to see a play run because the players are good at running the play, and because it's part of a cohesive game plan to attack the defense. Is Miles holding Crowton back? I don't think so. I think Jordan Jefferson is holding him back. Jefferson has not impressed me as a passer, and I think that has affected Crowton's playcalling. The griping about throwing the ball downfield is partly a function of the line not being able to protect, and partly Jefferson just not being all that good at it. He overthrew two receivers a long passes against Vanderbilt. One was an easy touchdown, the other an easy interception that was called back.

I'm not sure what to think about Terrance Toliver, other than that he could be really, really good. I think he dropped about three balls against Vanderbilt, though. It's way too early to say that he's reached 2007 Lafell levels of dropsiness, so I'll hold off until another couple of games have gone by.