Saturday, November 24, 2007

The Day After: Arkansas

That was just about the most disappointing LSU football loss in my memory. I'm going to avoid being overly critical, but I think it's very fair to ask what happened to our defense. Well, what happened to it?

I know that Dorsey is playing hurt and is not nearly at All-American calibre. I know that Beckwith is playing hurt. I know that Alexander is out. Still, Auburn was able to hold Arkansas to 7 points. We gave up 28 in regulation and got only one defensive stop in all of the 2nd half and the 3 OTs, plus the stop that came when Arkansas was in the hurry-up.

When Casey Dick was at quarterback, we never pressured him. I don't think we called a single blitz the entire game.

Yes, that was a very disappointing loss, but honestly, have we looked like the best team in the country lately? Not really. We just kept winning. No matter what happened, we just kept winning. Yesterday, we weren't able to do it.

There was a time yesterday, when we had scored in overtime to get within one point anticipating the extra point to tie, that I thought we should have gone for two to end the game. Our defense had shown little capacity to stop Arkansas's offense, and it just looked like they were going to keep scoring until their defense could stop us. A surprise two-point conversion, a la Boise State, may have been just the thing for us to do.

The National Championship is gone, but we still have a conference to go out and win. We will have to rebuild the defense and get them to go out and beat whoever we play.

5 comments:

Irish said...

I've been a Les Miles supporter since he got here. LSU strikes me as poorly coached on both sides of the ball. No one on the Tiger team seems to know exactly what to do. Please Nebraska, take Bo Pellini. I don't know who would replace Les if Michigan calls. Maybe they are not as interested as we think. Virginia Tech must really suck.

Anonymous said...

This whole season has been a season of luck for LSU. It was bound to come to an end. The team never looked like a national championship team. Where in the world was our defense yesterday? As for our offense, too many dropped passes and too many poorly thrown passes. Both sides of the ball performed too poorly to be in the national championship race.

jimherehi said...

I absolutely agree with Anon. No offense and no defense. Too much luck was involved in several of our wins. You don't win a championship with wins determined by luck. I always like Pelini, but now I just don't know.

I've enjoyed this blog. But, I am new to it. Will you be critiquing basketball?

jimherehi said...

I absolutely agree with Anon. No offense and no defense. Too much luck was involved in several of our wins. You don't win a championship with wins determined by luck. I always like Pelini, but now I just don't know.

I've enjoyed this blog. But, I am new to it. Will you be critiquing basketball?

Richard Pittman said...

I will be critiquing basketball a little, but I have gotten no chance to actually see the team play yet. This blog will be mostly dedicated to football and will discuss basketball only on occasion.