The LSU football team didn’t run many plays on the offensive side of the ball (47 to be exact) because of a lack of third- and fourth-down conversions (2-for-12) and time of possession (23 minutes, 30 seconds) Saturday against Florida. But the few plays the offense did run came under much scrutiny by fans, media and LSU coach Les Miles.
A post on TigerDroppings.com depicting a fictional playsheet of LSU offensive coordinator Gary Crowton mimicked the play calls by having such notes as “run up the middle” on basically every situation, “what is this?” under “Red Zone Offense.” The audibles were PlayStation controller buttons.The predictably unpredictable plays LSU ran against Florida were a capstone to what has been a lack of offense this season for the Tigers, leading Miles to question his own decisions on certain called plays.Specifically, Miles said he should have gotten the ball in the hands of senior running backs Charles Scott and Trindon Holliday more often. Scott and Holliday averaged 4.1 and 6.5 yards per rush average in the game, respectively.”You think to yourself that maybe you should hand those guys the ball a little more,” Miles said. “Then you get behind two scores, and 10 points in a game like that with few possessions, it seemed like a lot of points.”But Miles blamed the execution rather than the play calling for the lack of success in the offense.”What we have to do is execute,” Miles said. “It’s a much shorter game when you play a quality opponent … You have to bring your best stuff, you can’t wait for the next drive. It’s got to be things you can execute, and we didn’t do that.”Senior wide receiver Brandon LaFell kept a little optimism.”We’re really close but not close enough,” LaFell said. “We need this bye week. We need to go in there and focus, watch film together and get better.”DEFENSE SHINES BRIGHTIf anything stood out as a positive in the mind of both the LSU players and Miles, it was the play of the Tiger defense.The defense allowed 327 yards with a 5.1 yards per touch average against the Florida offense, but it only allowed 13 points to a Tim Tebow-led Florida team.”I don’t think anybody else is going to hold them to 13 points this year,” said junior cornerback Jai Eugene.Miles also lauded the play of his defense.”Our defense played like heck and played hard,” Miles said. “We held a team that was scoring a lot of points and moving the ball routinely and held them down.”Junior safety Chad Jones wasn’t ready to give the defense a pat on the back quite yet.”Obviously it wasn’t good enough,” Jones said. “We definitely played well, and we feel good about how we played, but we also could have played better.”AUBURN KICKOFF SET FOR 6:30 P.M.The Southeastern Conference announced Monday the LSU game against Auburn in Tiger Stadium on Oct. 24 will have a 6:30 p.m. kickoff on either ESPN or ESPN2.The network will have a decision between putting either the LSU matchup or the Florida at Mississippi State matchup on ESPN. That decision will come after this upcoming weekend’s games.The game will mark the fourth time this season LSU has played on the ESPN family of networks. The Tigers are 3-0 this season on the network.–Contact Andy Schwehm at [email protected]