As LSU looks to revive its defense, all attention shifts to Aranda

BATON ROUGE, La. — Make no mistake about it — the oft-even-keeled Dave Aranda was not pleased on Saturday night.

LSU’s defense, the backbone of the team, surrendered 417 yards of total offense, 75 yards more than any game this season. Louisiana Tech squeezed 330 yards and three touchdowns out of the secondary, marking the first 300-yard passing performance against the Tigers and the most passing touchdowns than the defense had allowed in the previous games combined.

Aranda didn’t need to mix words to express his discontent with his defense’s performance when he met with coach Ed Orgeron on Monday.

“Dave is a man of few words,” Orgeron said. “Obviously, he was not pleased. He'll work hard to do better. That’s all he going to do. I saw his demeanor today and I really like his demeanor.”

That should send chills down the Ole Miss coaches’ backs.

Aranda, considered one of the best defensive coordinators in college football, will have a chance to shuffle the deck against the Rebels’ SEC-leading passing attack, a unit averaging 347.5 yards per game through the air with 10 touchdowns in four games. Last year, he architected a game plan that held the high-octane aerial assault to fewer than 200 yards.

A regrettable performance against Louisiana Tech may have been the spark Aranda needed to fortify his defense as LSU dives into its conference slate.

“Nobody should be catching long passes on us or scoring on fourth-down passes on us,” linebacker Devin White said. “Stuff like that isn’t supposed to happen against us because we prepare very hard. I’m glad. We’ll learn from it and we will learn from it. Practice will be a little more intense.

“We have all the faith in Coach Aranda. Anything is going on, Aranda sees it. During the Louisiana Tech game plan, they got the isolated cornerback on the backside. He notched and he fixed it, and when he did, we shut them down. Other than that, the dude is a genius.”

Aranda’s next task will be necessitating the Tigers’ pass rush, which mustered two sacks a week ago and 12 on the season, which ranks tied for 20th in the nation. After notching nine sacks through the first two games, the defense minus stud sophomore K’Lavon Chaisson has accounted for just three.

Without Chaisson blitzing off the edge, LSU’s outside linebackers have 4.5 sacks from its edge-rushers. Defensive back Grant Delpit has two on his own merit, while the defensive linemen combined have amassed 3.5. The lack of a push from the down-linemen has puzzled Orgeron, who has deferred to Aranda and first-year defensive line coach to remedy the situation.

“Something we need to get better as is rushing with our big men,” the coach said. “They have not gotten pressure and they need to get better at that … I trust Dave with all that we do. It’s his defense, he can do what he wants to do. When I step in the room, I’m the assistant defensive line coach.”

That onus falls on Rashard Lawrence, Breiden Fehoko and Glen Logan to get to Ole Miss quarterback Jordan Ta’amu in Tiger Stadium Saturday night. Neither Lawrence or Logan have yet to sack an opposing passer this season. Fehoko, who shifted inside to nose tackle before fall camp to welcome Logan into the starting lineup, has 1.5 sacks from the nose tackle position.

Andre Anthony, who inherited the starting Bench-linebacker job from Chaisson after the Week 1 injury, could be utilized in more designed blitzes off the edge as well, Orgeron said. Jacob Phillips, the team’s starting middle linebacker, saw snaps at outside linebacker in his first taste as a pass-rusher against Tech.

The pressure may be unconventional, but Aranda appears to be anxious to dial up the heat.

“We need to get more sacks. It’s fun when you get sacks,” White laughed. “We’ll do a better job this week. We need to send missiles all over the place. It’s hard to play defensive back. A lot of people don’t understand that we can make their job easier and we make the quarterback uncomfortable all night long. Aranda has got a great game plan and I’m ready to hear about it go out and prove that we’re a dominant defense. We had some mistakes last week to clean up and we’re ready to show we’re a new defense.”

Should Aranda revive LSU’s pass rush, it could go a long way in helping the secondary regain its form.

Only twice has a Tigers defense allowed 400 yards of offense under Aranda’s watch. And only once has a team been able to throw for more than 300 yards — in the 2017 contest against Syracuse (308 yards).

It was a distinctly quiet Tell The Truth Monday in the defensive backs meeting room. Louisiana Tech quarterback J’Mar Smith had upward of four seconds to rattle off throws against LSU last Saturday, an arduous assignment for any secondary. That led to 330 yards and three touchdowns in the box score.

The road only gets tougher with future NFL wide receivers A.J. Brown and D.J. Metcalf coming to town, but there’s an obvious fix.

“It was kind of quiet in the room on Monday,” Orgeron revealed. “The times when he (Smith) completed the ball down the sideline, the guy had over four seconds to throw. We couldn’t get a good rush. It was on all of us. We did not rush the passer … It all starts with the rush. The rush and the coverage work together. These guys are going to be challenged and they know it. There’s no more extra motivation needed this week. They turn on the film. D.J. Metcalf, A.J. Brown and I think (Jordan) Ta’amu is an excellent quarterback. They know it. They’ve seen it on tape and they have to get it done.”

Communication errors and a quarterback with escape ability in and out of the pocket posed a problem for the secondary. It also served as a wake-up call.

Three future NFL wide receivers and a dual-threat quarterback are on the slate for Saturday, the team refuses to blink. There's an almost-alarming sense of confidence that the LSU defense that allowed fewer than 13 points and 215 yards through the air -- not to mention 10 sacks -- will rear its head.

“We’re going to go to the drawing board and get ready for the big opponent this week,” said Greedy Williams, who played a key role in limiting Ole Miss’ passing game to 194 yards a year ago.

“We need to contain him (Ta’amu) more than anything, play the receivers tight and make him make bad throws and bad reads. Those guys (receives) are big, physical and some of them can run, but the majority of things is being able to put your hands on them and be physical with them. That’ll be a big emphasis for us this week.”

“We brand ourselves as DBU,” he continued. “We’ve got to step up.”