Yes, unbeaten LSU is No. 4 nationally with an offense putting up points (55 per game) and yards (551.7) at a torrid pace unmatched in Tigers' football history.
So all should be good in Tigertown heading into Saturday's SEC opener at Vanderbilt, right?
Not, according to LSU head coach Ed Orgeron.
"I know a good football team improves every week, and we've got to take the next step this week to get to where we want to go," Orgeron said. "Obviously, we know coming down the road, there will be some very strong opponents coming down the road, and we may run into one at Vanderbilt.
"When you really look at your roster, you're really looking at evaluating your personnel, you're really seeing, hey, what can we do here? What can we do there? What can we do to get better? Keep pressing on to get better and better and better so we can make improvement throughout the year."
Three areas Orgeron has targeted as needing improvement are pass rush, creating turnovers and increasing yards per carry in the running game.
While LSU has eight sacks so far, the Tigers are 10th in the SEC in pass defense allowing 221.7 yards per game and is last in the league with Auburn in turnovers created (2). The lack of consistent pass rush and some misalignments in the secondary are the culprits.
"The pass rush will cost us," Orgeron said. "We're experimenting with different things. We did a better job of mixing in our blitzes. We're going to have to blitz. We're not ready to use the four man rush now with the guys that we have. We will use it, but how effective we can be, we have to get better at it.
"On some other plays (in last Saturday's win over Northwestern), there was still some technique stuff that we played wrong. We're playing too far off in the first half. We played a little bit tighter, our guys broke on the ball.
"We're even in the turnover ratio. That's not where we want to be. We're minus 1 in the turnover ratio this week. We need to get more picks. We need to get more turnovers. We had a turnover last game and a turnover the game before, and we're not getting enough turnovers."
As for the running game, the pass-heavy Tigers are averaging just 115.3 yards per, 13th in the 14-team league ahead of Vanderbilt. LSU's 97 rushing attempts are among the lowest in the league, but the real problem is the Tigers' paltry 3.6 yards per carry.
"At some point in time, they're going to stop our passing game, and we have to run the football," Orgeron said. "What's happened is we're so good at passing the football, it's kind of hard not to call the passing plays when they're wide open.
"We had some gap schemes that we put in (vs. Northwestern) and were not very effective. We got beat at the line of scrimmage. For that, we're going to show our team that today, that we had some one-on-ones on the offensive line that got beat. We had some one-on-ones on our defensive line that their offensive line beat them, and that should not happen. Those are things we need to improve on."
You can watch Orgeron's entire Monday press conference below:
