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Ed Orgeron had his weekly meeting with reporters. He recapped LSU’s conference play opening win over Mississippi State and looked ahead to Saturday night’s matchup with Auburn.
“Like I said after the game, good team win. I thought our coaches did a tremendous job of getting our guys up early and ready to play. Started fast with the turnovers, scored early, obviously coming in the second half scoring on the first drive was tremendous by our team being ready to play.”
“Again, a big week for improvement. We are nowhere near the football team that we want to be, but we’re getting there. We took a next step, we gotta take a big step this week with a big-time opponent coming in,” he would go on to say in his opening statement.
“First of all, on offense we’ve got to improve our production on first down. Whether that be on the run or the pass. Protection wise, blocking, we need to get better at and we need to get better schemes on first downs so we can move the football and be ahead of the chains.”
Early Auburn Thoughts
“Onto Auburn, what a great night Saturday night. Can’t wait, 8 o’clock Tiger Stadium. We’ve had some battles with Auburn. It’s always a great game and it’s going to be another great game. On offense, West Coast style. It’s 21 personnel, 11 personnel, 12 personnel. Going to see two backs in the backfield, we haven’t seen that in a while. Play two tight ends on the line of scrimmage so good ol’ fashioned football. I don’t blame them. They have two great running backs. Tank Bigsby and Jarquez Hunter. We recruited Tank, he runs low. He breaks tackles. Jarquez Hunter is a freshman running back averaging 10.6 yards per carry.
Both quarterbacks are very capable.Bo Nix who we know about, and TJ that came in there and what a tremendous job he did to win the game. Made some tremendous plays. As we know, TJ is a great young man, great young quarterback. He looks like he’s having a lot of success there and we’re happy for him.”
“On defense, Auburn always has a great defensive line. They’re a 4-2-5. They have seven starters returning, only giving 15 points per game, only 99 rushing per game, which is excellent, especially the teams that they’ve played. Roger McCreary is an experienced cornerback. TD Moultry is an experienced defensive end. Leads the team in sacks with 3 and Leota at defensive end, 95. They have big defensive tackles that can move. Very, very experienced defense, a tough defense to run the ball against and a lot of speed. A lot of speed on special teams. Very explosive. It’s going to be a great week for us. Tell The Truth Monday today. Our guys are going to be ready for work, ready to get better.”
Derek Stingley Update
“We haven’t heard anything yet. He’s going to see a doctor this week. He has not seen the doctor so it’s still the same right now.”
Running Game Woes
“We’re disappointed in it. I think we have some outstanding backs, we just don’t have any room to run. We have some guys that are getting knocked back. Sometimes we have holes, sometimes we don’t have holes. We just need to be more consistent and we need to choose the runs that we can run well. I think our counters, first time we’ve run our gap plays. We had some success in our gap plays. We had some big plays. We have to stay with that. We have to do the things that we know to do well and do them better.”
TJ Finley
“First of all, TJ came and talked to me like a man in my office. He didn’t want to leave, he was crying. LSU meant a lot to him and I knew that, but it was a decision that was made that was best for him and so he left. He looks like he’s doing well so we wish him the best, not obviously against us, but hey, TJ’s always going to be a part of our family. He’s from Ponchatoula, he’s got a great family, so hey, after the game we’re going to shake hands. Just like us playing Cody, it’s family, but once we compete, we compete. We wish him the very best and I hope he does very well and we’re going to shake his hand after the game.”
John Emery Update
“We’re supposed to hear something soon. He’s going to practice. If they make a decision and they say that he can play, he’s going to be ready to play and we’re going to continue to practice him like that until we hear any different.”