Before the final minutes of the No. 17 LSU football team’s upset loss to then-unranked Mississippi State, the Tigers’ offense had only scored 10 points.
Though LSU produced 19 late points, its poor showing through the first three quarters created a hole too deep to climb out of.
The Tigers (3-1, 0-1 Southeastern Conference) look to improve on their lackluster offensive performance against New Mexico State (2-2, 1-0 Sun Belt Conference) at 6:30 p.m. tomorrow.
LSU’s offense focused this week on correcting mistakes at all levels to improve the consistency of play and create a more cohesive unit.
“This week, it’s about us improving,” said LSU coach Les Miles. “It’s about us looking at the time that we have to make adjustments and make those needed moves that make our football team better.”
The Aggies should prove to be a perfect remedy for the sputtering Tigers’ offense. They come into the weekend giving up an average of 30.2 points per game.
Despite recent scoring woes, the Tigers average 437.8 total yards per game, which includes 192 yards rushing and 245.8 yards passing.
Last weekend, the Aggies gave up 432 rushing yards on 52 attempts to in-state rival New Mexico, and LSU has the potential to take full advantage of a defense struggling to stop the run.
However, the Tigers’ running backs are coming off their worst performance of the season.
Freshmen running backs Leonard Fournette and Darrell Williams and seniors Kenny Hilliard and Terrence Magee combined for 76 total yards against Mississippi State. In the first three games, these four running backs averaged a combined 185.67 yards on the ground.
Although some drop-off was expected with the heightened competition in SEC play, the inability of the running backs to get any rhythm going stalled the entire offense.
“When you’ve been as dominant as we’ve been the past running the football, you expect guys [to stack the box],” Magee said. “In order to throw the ball, you’ve got to have a ground game. So us establishing our ground game is going to allow us to throw the ball. We have just got to be more effective in doing that.”
The Tigers’ fading rushing attack is not entirely the running backs’ fault — the offensive line has struggled at times to create gaps for them to run through.
“Execution is our key,” said senior center Elliott Porter. “If we execute there’s not much too much to stop us. Our backs are good enough to make the cuts that they need to make and get free like they need to get free.”
The offensive line has surrendered nine sacks through LSU’s first four games, compared to only four sacks in the first four games of 2013. Six of the 10 sacks allowed by the offensive line came on third downs, effectively stunting drives.
The Tigers converted only two third downs against Mississippi State. Sophomore quarterback Anthony Jennings threw for both conversions, which came on passes of 12 yards to sophomore wide receiver Travin Dural and 15 yards to freshman wide receiver Malachi Dupre.
This weekend’s matchup will give the Tigers a chance to improve offensively before they restart SEC play.
“To be honest, each game that we play is important,” Magee said. “We have a specific plan and focus that we want to get better on that week. For us this week, we’ve got a lot of little things that we messed up on last Saturday. We want to clean up and fine tune and get our offense rolling to get off to a good start come this Saturday.”