The 2020 LSU football season has arrived. Louisiana just took a huge sigh of relief and plopped down into the comfy chair in the living room corner.
There are so many questions LSU fans want answered. How will Myles Brennan fill the void Joe Burrow left as the quarterback and leader of the team? Will the defense be good enough to compete with powerhouse offenses like Alabama, Florida, and Auburn? How does one of the best teams in college football history follow up the accomplishments of last season and replace all but five returning starters? Is this season even sustainable amidst an ongoing pandemic across the country?
Yet, none of these big questions will be answered on Saturday. These questions require time and most likely patience from fans of the purple and gold. Everybody will want to look ahead, but Ed Orgeron and his LSU Tigers are staring right at the now: beating Mississippi State and going 1-0.
“Obviously on Monday you can always feel it’s game week,” Orgeron said Monday. “There’s a little fall weather out there, and 10 SEC games coming up. One game at a time.”
Let’s talk matchups as the long-awaited Saturday matinee draws nearer every second.
This is a Mississippi State team that has also seen a lot of changes in one offseason, starting right at the top. The Bulldogs fired Joe Moorhead shortly after a 38-28 loss to Louisville in 2019 Franklin American Mortgage Music City Bowl. Moorhead’s tenure was very short, and with a record of 14-12, largely unsuccessful. Moorhead was supposed to revitalize the Bulldogs’ offense, but the personnel and scheme never fit together like everyone in Starkville imagined it would.
So who do the Bulldogs hire to replace him? One of the most prolific minds of the modern day spread offense that has taken over college football by storm, Mike Leach.
Leach’s Air Raid offense has easily become his claim to fame. Years designing offenses as the head coach at Texas Tech and Washington State that were notorious for 40-50 point outings has paid off well, and he has finally returned to the SEC, after serving briefly as Kentucky’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach from 1997-1998.
The basis of Leach’s offense that he brings to Starkville is simple: get athletes the ball in space to make plays. The Air Raid, instead of forcing perhaps undersized offensive lines or weaker running backs to toil for minimal yardage against strong defenses, calls upon short passes, decisive reads via run-pass-options, and spreading players all across the field to work as an extension of a typical run-based attack. The athletic, quick teams Leach has coached in the past are not necessarily known for throwing deep passes, but more so nickeling and diming their way down the field. The emphasis stays on keeping the defense spread out, leaving their shifty receivers and running backs with minimum coverage to beat to gain yardage. The idea has been modified and adjusted as personnel may require, but the roots remain the same as they were 20 years ago when Leach coached with Hal Mumme at Kentucky, who championed the offense.
“The thing that’s hardest about his offense is that he’s always going to put his players in the right spots to make plays,” LSU safety JaCoby Stevens said of Leach’s offensive scheme. “He evaluates his talent very well, and he knows what they can and cannot do, and he doesn’t ask them to do things that they can’t do.”
The good news for Leach (and bad news for the Tiger defense) is he does have athletes, as well as the means to get them the ball. Mississippi State picked up Stanford transfer quarterback KJ Costello, and he will be the starter under center on Saturday. Costello is a veteran QB who does not need to learn mechanics or footwork, nor how to keep composure in big games, so expect Leach to instill full confidence in his ability to run the offense. The graduate transfer also has a strong arm, which opens even more dimensions for the offense beyond a game manager. Costello said he has been willingly watching old film during the summer of past Mike Leach quarterbacks to learn exactly how to play in the Air Raid, specifically Graham Harrell’s electric career at Texas Tech from 2005-2008.
“I asked for the tape,” Costello said. “I wanted to see who was the most successful in the system.”
“I wanted one that was a little further back in time to see how this offense could potentially evolve or how it stayed the same. I asked our film guy for it in the summertime, and then I talked to Leach about it, and he actually said Graham was a great one to watch.”
The Bulldogs return consensus preseason All-SEC running back Kylin Hill, and he is going to be the focal point of the Bulldogs’ attack. Hill is exactly the kind of running back Leach wants to use: a strong, physical runner, but also very fast, elusive to would-be tacklers, and a great pass catcher. Hill rushed for 1350 yards and 10 touchdowns last season with limited quarterback play, making it reasonable to believe he can match or exceed a similar rate this season.
At receiver, the Bulldogs have a lot of potential playmakers, led by senior Osirus Mitchell, who was the Bulldogs’ receiving yards and touchdowns leader last season. However, Leach has said earlier this week that wide receiver is one of the toughest position groups to sort out due to an inability to be steadily proficient from any of the receivers.
“We want guys that are consistently good rather than occasionally great,” Leach said.
This potential inconsistency that has plagued the receiver room and a young but unreliable offensive line will look to be where LSU will slow the Bulldogs’ attack. The Tigers’ secondary, a well-documented strength of the defense, should impose their will in man-to-man matchups, and athletic sideline-to-sideline players like Stevens and linebackers Damone Clark and Jabril Cox will be the go-to guys to wrap up players in space. If the Tigers’ defensive line can also contain Hill’s rushing attack and create pressure on Costello, the Air Raid may never take off from the runway.
On the opposite side of the ball, all eyes are on Myles Brennan. Following in the footsteps of one of the best college football quarterbacks of all time was never going to be easy, and with only 2 starters returning to join him, the turnover in his offense has been in question all offseason. But all signs have pointed to Brennan and his teammates rising to the challenge of being not a replicated version of the 2019 offense, but rather the best version of 2020 offense they can be.
“We just have to take it a week at a time,” Brennan said. “We have a bunch of fresh faces, a lot of guys that, as Coach O likes to say, ‘haven’t been in the fire yet.’ And we’re going to have to learn and develop week by week. We have a lot of talent on offense, defense and special teams, but we’re relatively young in terms of experience. But that’s not going to stop us.”
Brennan will continue to get compared to Joe Burrow for as long as he attends LSU, and surely long after he leaves the university, but he is ready to be nothing else but Myles Brennan.
“Joe came in here, and he did his thing, and what he did was great. It’s my turn now to do my thing and write my own story,” he said confidently. “I’m not really worried about making sure I do what Joe did, making sure I’m throwing as many touchdowns or breaking the records that he did. I’m Myles Brennan. I’m not worried about what he did, and I’m not going to be following in his footsteps because it’s time for take my own path and write my own story.”
The biggest matchup fans will see on Saturday will be how LSU’s offensive line protects Brennan and blocks for the LSU run game against a solid Mississippi State defensive line that returns two veteran defensive linemen in Kobe Jones and Marquiss Spencer. Add in consensus preseason All-SEC linebacker Erroll Thompson, and a crafty new defensive coordinator in Zach Arnett, formerly of San Diego State, and the Tigers will have their hands full controlling the line of scrimmage.
However, through camp, the line has impressed. While Austin Deculus is the only returning starter, all five starters this year have had significant playing time at some level of college football, with Dare Rosenthal, Ed Ingram, and Chasen Hines all getting some experience the past two seasons. Orgeron has confidence in all of his linemen’s abilities to win in the trenches.
“These are guys are very athletic, they’re strong,” Orgeron said. “I believe along with our running backs, we can do a good job. But every week in the SEC, you’re going to play some great defensive linemen. They’ll make some plays, we’ll make some plays.”
Meanwhile, Harvard graduate transfer Liam Shanahan has settled into the void left at center by Lloyd Cushenberry III, emerging as a leader on the line for making quick audible calls and pass protection adjustments. He has got the compliments of his head coach to back him up.
“He’s done well, surprisingly well,” Orgeron said. “Now he’s going to get tested throughout the year, especially when they put one of those 350-pounders right on top of them. He’s going to have to block them. But I think he can. In fact, I feel good about it. I’m very glad we have him. He’s been a big plus for us.”
One fun matchup to watch will be wide receiver Terrace Marshall Jr. drawing the attention of Mississippi State’s top cornerback, Martin Emerson. The sophomore is the oldest cornerback in the Bulldogs’ secondary but has matured quickly and become a leader after playing just five games last year. He should be shadowing LSU’s top returning receiver.
Of course, a lot of attention will also be focused on the debut of Arik Gilbert. The freshman tight end has not played a game yet, but the amount of buzz just by the mention of his name around football circles across the SEC is palpable. With the Bulldogs’ young secondary, Gilbert will find a lot of volume starting in game one, and it will be intriguing to see how Leach and Arnett decide to cover him. Gilbert is the only tight end ever to win the Gatorade National High School Player of the Year Award. Orgeron was asked who the most apt comparison for his freshman phenom was, and his answer is a name football fans will recognize.
“Some people compare him to Calvin Johnson,” Orgeron said. “I’m not comparing him to Calvin Johnson, I don’t want to put too much on him, but he’s that type of football player and has that type of body and can do those type of things. Now, obviously will he pan out to be like that? Nobody knows. But he is similar in stature, similar in skillset to Calvin Johnson.”
Look for the Tigers’ offense to run as much as they can though. Chris Curry, Tyrion Davis-Price and John Emery Jr. make up a terrifying backfield for the Bulldogs to cover, and if the offense can establish a strong running attack, it will only make it easier for Myles Brennan to make reads, find open receivers and get into a rhythm.
“I feel like whoever gets into the game, they’re going to be prepared,” Curry stated of his backfield mates. “Everybody is prepared like they’re the starter.”
Although this is only game one, the weight of the game feels much heavier than a season opener. The energy that many Tiger fans are feeling is matched by the energy of their Tigers.
“The first game is always the biggest game,” Stevens said. “It’s always the game that everybody’s excited about. Why? Because it’s the first game. I don’t think we’re going to struggle with coming out with energy for that game. It’s also special because we open up with an SEC West opponent, so there’s multiple things that are going to get us ready and hyped up for this game this upcoming Saturday.”
LSU kicks off their game against Mississippi State at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday afternoon. The game will be broadcast nationally on CBS and on local radio via the LSU Sports Radio Network.
“We’re ready to play,” Orgeron said eagerily. “We’ve been looking forward to this for a long time. I want to compliment our football team for not blinking, for always believing that we were going to play, always preparing like we were going to play. Our coaching staff, always preparing like we were going to play. Never took a day off, and we didn’t think about nothing else but the safety of our football team and starting the season off right.”