LSU Notebook: Orgeron on his biggest day coaching, endorses Ensminger

BATON ROUGE, La. — The heartbreak from LSU’s loss to Alabama continues to sink in across the football team.

The coaches, players and analysts worked feverishly to concoct a recipe to hand the Crimson Tide their first loss of the season. Now, it’s on coach Ed Orgeron to do channel all of that energy into his meeting with the team on Monday.

Orgeron was open about the challenge he faces in the aftermath of the Tigers’ second loss of the season, which dropped them to No. 9 in the most recent AP Poll and out of the current College Football Playoff picture. There are three games remaining on the schedule and LSU has already punched its ticket to a bowl game. That might’ve been a pipe dream back in August, and the 24-hour rule may be extended in this particular instance after being blanked by an arch-rival, and it will be on the second-year head coach to revitalize his club before Saturday’s trip to Arkansas.

“Today's an important day. I have to be my best today,” Orgeron said during his Monday press conference. “We had a meeting with the staff today. We’ve got to let it go. There's a lot of hurt people in that building, a lot of hurt people on our football team. I understand that. This is a very big game for everybody involved in the state of Louisiana, but we have to let it go.”

The 29-0 final score doesn’t tell the full story. Alabama held the ball for nearly 20 minutes in the first half and out-gained the home team and nearly tripled the home team in total yardage. Defensively, the Tide bottled up LSU’s usually-potent rushing attack to a mere 12 net yards rushing and under a yard-per-carry average.

That’s a result of the battle that Alabama decisively won in the trenches, negating the run game and putting pressure on Joe Burrow consistently for four quarters, evident by five sacks, 10 tackles behind the line of a scrimmage and an interception to close out the game.

After the loss, Orgeron asserted his team was in need of reinforcements on both the offensive and defensive lines, calling for bigger, faster bodies to equal the playing field between LSU and Alabama. He used his platform on Monday to also take blame for the outcome.

“It starts with me. Coach better. Put our guys in better position. The schemes could have been better. The guys did a good job for the most part, but there's some things that we could have done better for our team,” he said. “No. 2 is execute better. There was some execution that wasn't done and it cost us. You can't do it against a good team like ‘Bama. No. 3 on (the) offensive and defensive line, we have to be better in terms of building more depth, increasing the number of quality players that we already have.

“We're all disappointed, no question. And again, we could have coached better, we could have executed better, (the) line of scrimmage struggled at times. We got to get them more help.”

That help will likely come on the recruiting trail between now and National Signing Day.

The statistics from Saturday night depict an honest overview of LSU’s offensive woes against the Tide. More so, a bitter sample size of how offensive coordinator Steve Ensminger has fared calling plays against them in Tiger Stadium the past two meetings.

Among those glaring numbers:

--0 points in the last two meetings (Ensminger was interim offensive coordinator in 2016)

--11 scoreless quarters against Alabama (dating back to 2014)

--19 combined first downs (Alabama had 29 in the 2018 meeting)

--Lowest rushing total (12 net yards) by the team since being held to -7 net rushing yards vs. Florida in 1999. That season, LSU was also held to 11 rushing yards at Georgia.LSU has combined for 55 net rushing yards the past two home meetings with Alabama

--First home shutout since 2016 (also against Alabama)

While LSU’s first-year offensive play-caller has been the subject of plenty of criticism over the past 48 hours, Orgeron gave him a ringing endorsement based not one game, but his entire body of work this season.

“He's done an excellent job,” he said. “For us to beat Georgia by 20 points, I thought it was a great game plan against Georgia, it was excellent. I thought the comeback victory against Auburn was excellent. Thirty-three points on Miami, I think he's done a tremendous job there.”

“Steve's a Tiger,” Orgeron added, “and I'm very pleased with his work.”

Entering the Week 10 tilt with Alabama, Ensminger’s offense ranked second in the SEC in terms of red-zone offense with a 92.1-percent scoring mark. LSU managed 300 yards or more of total offense every week from the Southeastern game through win over Georgia. Three times in that stretch, LSU eclipsed 400 yards, including a season-best 573 yards against Louisiana Tech.

Naturally, being held to less than 200 yards of offense with an ineffective rushing threat and the inconsistent passing game was frustrating for the coordinator, Orgeron said.

“He was disappointed,” he said. “Obviously very disappointed. There was nobody that wants to do it better than Steve.”

Safety John Battle was nicked up and sidelined for the length of the Alabama contest after the opening series on defense. Orgeron slapped the “questionable” label on the senior defensive back leading into this week’s showdown with the Razorbacks.

“I would say he’s 50-50,” the coach said.

Sophomore Todd Harris replaced Battle from the first quarter on, registering a team-leading 12 tackles and notched his first career sack — against Tua Tagovailoa — the Alabama signal caller's first interception thrown on the season.

Harris would be in line to get his second career start at Arkansas, depending on how Battle fares in practice this week.

“I thought Todd played his best game,” Orgeron said. “Helped recruit both of them, great parents, great homes and we're proud that they stayed in the state of Louisiana.”

There have been times throughout the season where Orgeron has considered replacing Burrow with backup quarterback Myles Brennan to get the second-year player some late reps toward the end of victories.

In one instance, Brennan was nursing an injury. Other games have remained too competitive into the fourth quarter.

Brennan, who on Saturday became eligible for a redshirt campaign, has a chance to play at some point this season, Orgeron said, but that will be largely dictated by the inner workings of the game.

“Myles Brennan is ready to go every game,” he said. “The time that we could give him some reps, I asked him and he was just nursing a slight injury. Then, all of the other games have been so tight that we just kept Joe in there.

“There's three games to go, there's several players that can get more reps and still get redshirted, but I do want to put them in at the right time. I don't want to put them in at the wrong time and I want to make sure that he's ready to go in. But again, if Joe would get hurt, he's going in. He’s our quarterback and I believe in him.”