The LSU offense, normally a high-octane, ball-moving machine that helped the Tigers attain a No. 6 national ranking, was anything but its normal self in the 19-7 loss to Florida.
Coming into the game, the offense had averaged more than 40 points a game, but against the Gators was inconsistent, error-prone and never found a pulse in the game. A penalty call seemed to be the only consistent thing associated with the offense.
LSU had 13 penalties for 99 yards, including a holding call that negated a Michael Clayton 42-yard catch in the third quarter and Lionel Turner’s late hit out of bounds on third and long.
“We had 13 penalties and I swear we had more than that,” said LSU coach Nick Saban. “A lot of the penalties we had were a lack of discipline. We stopped ourselves numerous times in the game with penalties and mental errors that need to be fixed. I’m not blaming players for it. I take responsibility.”
While LSU compiled 287 total yards, the Tigers could not move the ball into Florida territory. The average starting position for the Tigers was LSU’s own 22-yard line compared to Florida, who started at LSU’s 30-yard line.
Penalties contributed to that as well, forcing LSU into long-yardage situations on many of its drives. With 9:22 left in the third quarter, the Tigers started first and 10 from the Florida 40-yard line. LSU then committed an illegal block and holding penalty, and two incomplete passes left the team in a third and 30.
Clayton, who caught five passes for 60 yards, said those situations caused by the numerous mistakes were hard for the Tigers to overcome.
“One play is one guy making a mistake, next thing it’s another guy, but it still hurts the team,” Clayton said. “We just have to minimize bad plays. When you’re facing first and 20 or third and 30, that’s one of the hardest challenges in football.”
Saban said the offense has been inconsistent at times, particularly since the Arizona game.
“I just don’t feel like we have any consistency in what we’re trying to do right now,” Saban said. “The players need to believe and have more confidence in what we’re trying to accomplish on offense.”
Skyler Green’s 80-yard punt return for a touchdown was LSU’s only score, but the team had several opportunities to put points on the board and failed.
With the score tied 7-7 in the first quarter, the Tigers were driving in UF territory when Matt Mauck’s pass was picked off by Keiwan Ratliff and returned 44 yards, which later led to a Gators’ field goal.
The Tigers crossed the 50 only three times the rest of the game, all in the fourth quarter. The first drive ended on fourth and two when Mauck fell short of the first down on an option run. The second was another Ratliff interception.
With two minutes to play and fans filing out of the stadium Mauck completed a pass to Devery Henderson, who fumbled the ball and kicked it around to the Florida 14-yard line where a Gators defender recovered it.
Mauck and the receivers often got mixed up on signals for various reasons. Mauck, who threw for 231 yards and two interceptions, said the mistakes were just miscommunications that never got corrected.
“There were a couple of times on a read route, where there was just some confusion on the coverages,” he said. “It hasn’t happened much all year, but for some reason today it happened over and over and it’s our fault for not fixing it.”
The struggles on offense forced the defense to stay on the field longer and put more pressure on Florida freshman quarterback Chris Leak. The defense sacked Leak six times, but was burned on two touchdown passes to running backs that slipped out of the backfield past blitzing LSU defenders.
Saban said Leak did a good job of executing the no-huddle offense, which affected the defense at the beginning of the game and got them out of sync.
“I think we got good pressure on the guy,” Saban said. “We had plenty of sacks and pressures on him. [Leak] did a good job of executing the short passes, screens and bubble screens.”
Leak, who finished with 229 passing yards, said UF came to Baton Rouge to win and the team played with everything it had. He said the LSU defense gave him some trouble, but he was able to persevere.
“That defense was tough but I just had to keep my composure and keep going,” Leak said.
Lionel Turner led the Tigers with nine tackles. Turner said the loss is disappointing but the defense put solid pressure on Leak, which was the game plan.
“Anytime you lose, you feel like anything you did wasn’t good enough,” Turner said. “We stuck together and we fought hard out there. It’s our job to stop teams from scoring, and we didn’t do that today. Anytime we give up 19 points, we don’t feel good about the game and that’s the mentality that we should have every game.”