With a quarter of the 2010 football season now in the books, the LSU football team has a recipe for success that would make even celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse proud.
 
Take a large piece of a dominant defense and a hearty portion of a dominant special teams — despite a poor offense — and the Tigers have established a 4-0 record and a top-12 ranking.
 
The defense ranks fifth in scoring (12 points per game) and ninth in total defense (254 yards per game) in two games against ranked opponents and two games against Southeastern Conference foes.
 
While the offense continues to struggle, new questions have emerged about whether  LSU can keep relying on a suffocating defense to keep that shiny 0 in the loss column.
 
Three days after shutting down a historically potent West Virginia offense to 177 yards, the players are ready to ride the wave.
 
“I’m hoping that we rely on that the whole time,” said junior linebacker Ryan Baker. “We feel that each and every game we should hold the opposing offense under 100 yards. Anytime that we don’t do that we look at it as a failure.”
 
That lofty 100-yard goal was plausible last Saturday with the way the defense has been playing, but a slew of penalties — 12 for 120 yards to be exact — kept the defense on the field and the offense off for longer than expected.
 
The defensive unit spent Monday morning, as they do every week, going through film study of the West Virginia game with defensive coordinator John Chavis.
 
Chavis came into the film study with an all-business mentality because he knew the 177 total yards given up could have been fewer.
 
“He could have came in, everybody could have laughed, talk about how we held them to 177 yards, but that’s not what he did,” said senior linebacker Kelvin Sheppard, who leads the team with 38 tackles. “He turned the film on and said ‘There are some plays you’re going to be happy with and some you’re not.'”
 
Regardless, the defense has allowed LSU coach Les Miles to simplify his offensive game plan and let the defense do the rest.
 
“The scenarios that we’ve seen in the last four games, that defense has played so dominantly that the offense did not necessarily need to exhibit every ability it has,” he said.
 
LSU held West Virginia to 2-of-13 on third down and kept senior running back Noel Devine in check with only 37 rushing yards on 14 attempts.
And the defense is determined they haven’t played their best football yet.
“I don’t even think that we’ve been on our ‘A’ game,” Baker said. “There’s more improvement to make.”
 
Junior running back Stevan Ridley agreed.
 
“I’m never satisfied, the team’s never satisfied, the coach is never satisfied,” he said. “A win is a win. Ugly, pretty, whatever. It could’ve been better, but at the same time we’re still 4-0. We’re not going to get caught up in that though. We can’t just jump up and ‘hooray’ because we’re 4-0.”
 
The next five weeks don’t get any easier for LSU. On Saturday the team gets into the meat of the schedule with Tennessee then heads to Florida on Oct. 9 and Auburn on Oct. 23 before returning home Nov. 6 to host Alabama.
 
Alabama and Auburn currently rank No. 6 and No. 17 in the country in yards per game, respectively, while Florida is averaging a whopping 37.8 points per game.
 
“At some point we’re going to need the offense to put up points,” said junior cornerback Patrick Peterson. “We need to keep pepping those guys up and putting those guys in good field position.”
 
 
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Contact Sean Isabella at
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