A new voice can be heard loud and clear in LSU’s spring football practices.
That voice is none other than offensive coordinator Matt Canada, the first major hire of coach Ed Orgeron’s tenure at LSU.
Known for running an up-tempo and steadily moving offense, Canada’s system has already made an influence on senior quarterback Danny Etling.
“We’ve started from the base in, and now we’ll start to figure out where everybody is going to be, what we’re good at, who we want to get the ball to and how we want to get them the ball,” Etling said. “We’re a lot further along. I feel a lot more comfortable. I’m just working more on anticipation of who’s going to be open, what we want to do each play and getting a better rapport with coach Canada.”
Etling finished the 2016 season with 2,123 passing yards, completing 160 of 269 passes with five interceptions and 11 touchdowns for the Tigers.
Canada’s offense at Pittsburgh, where he was offensive coordinator in 2016, generated 2,882 passing yards and 28 touchdowns.
These numbers are slightly larger than Etling’s.
“Everything has plays off of it,” Etling said. “You always want to keep a defense on their heels, and that’s what coach Canada’s main philosophy is: ‘We’re the offense, and we’re going to be offensive.’ There’s a lot of layers to the offense. There’s a lot we can do, we just have to figure out what we want to do with the talent we have.”
Etling used baseball to describe what it’s like to be under center in Canada’s offense.
“It’s kind of like a pitcher having a changeup, fastball and a slider,” Etling said. “You want to be able to switch up the tempo and speed, so that’s kind of what I compare it to.”
The Purdue transfer said it’s not hard to pick up the new offense. Etling has been there and done that.
“I’d say this one is easier to pick up than when I first went to Purdue and had to learn that offense,” Etling said. “This has actually been the easiest offense for me to grasp so far, just because of the systematic thought process behind it.
As far as what separates Canada from Etling’s prior experiences, he says it all comes back to the basics.
“He’s huge on fundamentals,” Etling said. “I think mine have kind of gotten slowed down a little bit, because once you start playing college football, much of the time is spent preparing for games and defenses. I think we’ve gotten a lot better in the past couple of practices as far as feeling each other, throwing on time and all of those things.”