The SEC Forum at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

That was an odd game for LSU.  We lose sometimes, more now than a few years ago, but it's few and far between that we get whipped like that.  Only games that come to mind are 2008 Florida and 2014 Auburn.  I guess a couple of games in 2015 at the end when Miles was trying to survive Alleva's attempted coup.  Out of all of them, I never remember an LSU team being intimidated like that.  They never came out of halftime.  Those kids wanted to get on the bus and go home starting the 3rd quarter, and they never believed they could win.  I've seen that body language on a lot of opposing sidelines, never ours.

I wasn't a big fan of giving Orgeron the keys to the kingdom, but since we did, I figured one major plus would be the intensity of the team.  theumrebel (APB on that guy, btw) used to tell me that when O coached Ole Miss, the only great thing about him was his ability to motivate.  How when you listened to his pregame or halftime speeches, you would be ready to run your head through a tree trunk for him.  I saw none of that last night.  If he can't get the team fired up, I'm not sure he's got a lot of value for LSU and our particular situation.  

This is probably the youngest team we've ever had, younger than 2010 even, but I can only chalk so much of what I saw last night up to youth and injury.  A fair bit of that was flat bad coaching.  And frankly, dealing with youth is the gig here.  Since the NFL changed the rookie contracts, players have left LSU asap at a record pace.  If anyone is waiting on a relatively jr/sr-heavy team like 2007, that probably isn't going to happen here anymore.  You wanna win, you're gonna have to do it with youth.  

How the team responds will be not just key for the season, but telling for O's suitability for a job like this.

When making definitive statements I usually either attach qualifiers or discuss the possibilities in which they may not come to pass, no matter how unlikely they are perceived to be.

I noted Alabama is a heavy favorite again to win the SEC, in part because the SEC appears to be down, again, to me anyway.  I don't know who the second best team is, and it probably doesn't matter in truth, but I'd guess either MSU or UGA at this point.  Maybe the CG should be for second place anyway.

Has any school lost more early departures then LSU over the past 4-5 years? It's tough to overcome and it's why they are so young.

Coach O has probably the best set of coordinators in college football right now. LSU will be fine in the future.

I don't know.  Never seen any comparison amongst schools.  I do know that since the NFL made it to where you have to get past your rookie contract to really make bank every NFL caliber kid we've got has left asap (2011 or 2012, I'm thinking?  Not sure).  Since then we've been the youngest team in the west every single year (a time or two, in the entire conference, though Tennessee has usually been younger than us over that span), going by starting rosters and officially listed two-deeps.  The exception was last year, 2016, when Miles made a great effort to keep quite a number of eligible jumpers and succeeded.  There was finally experience and more depth so that excuse wasn't there.  When we started 2-2, he was fired.  
As for the coordinators, we'll see.  I'm a big believer in "fit" when it comes to coaching.  Almost no coach is a panacea for whatever ails you.  Bill Snyder is a damn purple wizard, I love everything about him as a coach, but that doesn't mean he'd succeed at a place like Ohio State or Texas, etc.  He's really good at excelling in the natural circumstances KSU exists in.  There's no shortage of examples of guys who are really good in one place and then find, for various reasons, they aren't suited for other places.  
Aranda looked like a genius at Wisconsin, where, if I'm not mistaken, guys tend to stick it out and you wind up with your fair share of upper-classmen with time and experience in the program and the game.  Last year's D at LSU had a decent amount of experience, by our standards anyway, and by the middle of the season had really picked up on what Aranda wanted from them, and they were elite.  But we haven't usually had that much experience lately, and by his own admission, he's coaching harder than he's ever had to.  When asked what he meant by that, he stopped short of calling our guys "football stupid" but he did explicitly say we've got a lot of kids who understand nothing beyond high school football, who don't know and understand the game intricately, and who have to have everything simplified and dumbed down for them.  So I'm wondering if his chops as a DC are built on the complexity of his scheme, and if so, if it's necessitates more experienced players, and if that's something he/we can count on routinely here.  Dunno.
Same goes for Canada.  I don't know much about him other than Pitt scored a lot of points last year.  Our offensive line looks pretty bad atm and the receivers are probably way too young this year to amount to much in conference.  I guess time will tell on him.  It's hard to run any type of offense when your line is blown up like ours was.  We overmatched BYU and Chattanooga, but I wasn't overly impressed with what I saw from him.  I'm not sure what the big deal is supposed to be yet.  By his own admission, his offense is simple, it's just a handful of plays run out of a lot of different formations with lots of pre-snap movement and window dressing.  It didn't seem to phase MSU in the least.  They stuck to their gaps, played their assignments, and didn't take the bait on any misdirects.  If the plays themselves aren't designed to be exploitative then I don't know what good it is.  All that shit will get blown up in this division.  Of course, by his own mouth and the QBs too, "We haven't even seen a tenth of our offense yet."  So, whatever, I don't know.  It really doesn't matter if you have no O-line.  
I saw nothing Saturday to justify the 1.5+ mil we're paying these guys, though Aranda has a bit of a pass given the injuries to the DL right now.  We run 3 down linemen as a base, and 3 DL starters were out for this game, so.....yeah.  The 2s were not as good as we hoped the 1s would be, go figure.  Also the offense couldn't stay on the field, so they got tired, with few other bodies to rotate.  It's not a good look for Aranda's unit to fail to set the edge the entire game, but because of his job last year, I give him a pass.  For now.  

There might be a higher ceiling with the talent, but a lower floor with the inexperience (and more often).  We'll just have to see.  The guys last year were elite by mid-season.  They were as good as any LSU defense I've seen.  They were also older than the defenses we've had since 2012.  

We're going to need to change the 3-and-done culture, I think.  

I'm not sure how Alabama gets around this.  I don't keep track of them, but it sure seems like they lose a lot early to the draft.  They either are not losing as many, or else it's got to do with the fact they have 5 stars sitting on the bench, and so when guys leave early for the NFL, they have more studs who are still older and have experience in the program.  They obviously lose a lot to the draft, yet every year they are older than us.  So is every other team.  Like I said, I think that's got to change.