The No. 14 LSU football team is hungry to finally show the world the sky’s the limit for the revamped Tiger squad, especially on defense.
The Tigers (0-0, 0-0 Southeastern Conference) travel to Starkville, Mississippi, to play No. 25 Mississippi State for their official season opener and the first of eight SEC games at 8:15 p.m. on Saturday at Davis Wade Stadium.
The last time the Tigers and Bulldogs (1-0, 0-0 SEC) faced off, Mississippi State and then-junior quarterback Dak Prescott put up 570 yards, the most LSU has allowed during coach Les Miles’ tenure, and 34 points, giving LSU its first loss against Mississippi State since 1999.
Prescott lit up the Tiger defense with 268 passing yards, 105 rushing yards and three touchdowns alone. But sophomore defensive tackle Davon Godchaux takes exception to that game because it was early in the season and the inexperienced Tigers weren’t ready for the rigors of SEC play.
“They caught us early in the season last year,” Godchaux said. “It’s no excuse for it, but things you do is you get off the ball with technique and you stay in your gap — gap responsibility. That’s some of the things that you do to stop a good running team like Mississippi State from running up the middle.”
LSU is more focused on putting pressure on Prescott, as opposed to sitting back and letting him pick the Tiger defense apart, while maintaining assignments.
“Hopefully we can disrupt his timing and get after him a little bit,” said sophomore safety Jamal Adams. “We got to make a statement. Right off the bat, we have to hit them in the mouth to let them know we’re really here to play ball.”
The Tigers hope junior defensive ends Tashawn Bower and Lewis Neal can generate a formidable pass rush off the edges, while Godchaux and junior defensive tackle Christian LaCouture bring pressure up the middle.
Adams said defensive coordinator Kevin Steele will balance out the game plan with sending edge and middle blitzes, along with sitting back in coverage to keep Prescott honest. The end goal is to get Prescott on his back early and often.
LSU sacked Prescott twice during last year’s matchup, and junior linebacker Kendell Beckwith said four or five is the goal this time around.
“We got to get him on the ground,” Beckwith said. “I like the way we started the game against McNeese, we got a sack right off the bat. That’s the goal. We got to get him on the ground, got to cause turnovers and tackle well.”
With a deep secondary covering the inexperienced Bulldog wideouts, the pressure can make Prescott force a pass into tight coverage for an incompletion or a turnover.
But Prescott poses more than just a threat to pass. If either the outside or inside pass rush fails to contain him and he gets loose from the pocket, he can do serious damage on the ground, as he did with a 56-yard rushing touchdown against the Tigers last year.
“He’s a big strong guy, and he really has nice command of the offense, does the things that that offense asks him to do,” Miles said. “He really — as big as he is — he gets in the right hole and makes a nice cut.”
But Beckwith, who didn’t start the game last season, said this year’s speedy linebackers have the instincts to react in a split second and get to Prescott before he wreaks too much havoc.
“That’s a plus because we can keep him in the box just to spy the quarterback or we can bring a safety down,” Adams said. “Speed kills … The speed is really going to help us in the long run. Our whole defense is made of speed.”
The Tigers will look to pressure Prescott particularly on third down, a crucial down the last time the two teams played each other.
LSU didn’t allow a touchdown in the second or fourth quarters while forcing Mississippi State to go 0-for-7 on third down conversions, as opposed to 5-for-7 in the first and third quarters, during which the Bulldogs scored all four of their touchdowns.
Even if the Tigers manage to contain Prescott, they will still have to find answers for another dynamic playmaker — junior running back Brandon Holloway.
The 5-foot-8-inch, 160-pound Holloway can carve up defenses with his speed and shiftiness and is a breakaway threat in the return game, as he took a kickoff to the house in the Bulldogs’ season opener.
LSU will also be tasked with containing Mississippi State’s power back, junior Ashton Shumpert, who averaged 4.75 bruising yards per carry last week and makes his living between the tackles. At 6-feet-2-inches, 218 pounds, he resembles a taller version of former Mississippi State power back Josh Robinson, who ran through the Tigers’ defense for 197 yards and a touchdown last season.
However, Beckwith said with himself anchoring the defense at the middle linebacker spot, no Bulldog will successfully run up the middle.
“We don’t plan on nobody running up the middle — ever. No, they’re not … nobody,” Beckwith said chuckling. “They’re not running up the middle.”