Tuesdays with Ed: McNeese State

Ed Orgeron had his first meeting with reporters of the 2021 football season and recapped the loss against UCLA and previewed the home opener against McNeese State.

“They gave us some challenging stuff,” Orgeron said. “Almost every down they were sliding the front, protecting the back end, so it was a challenging offense and we knew that going into it. All the things we saw on tape, and we spent eight hours on the tape on Sunday, everything was fixable. Every one can be fixed. They outschemed us in a lot of situations on offense and defense and we spent a lot of time on Sunday going through those things.”

“We have to be able to stop the run,” Orgeron continued to say. “Whatever that takes. We have to play gap football and stop the run. Then we gave up too many explosive plays. We allowed 11 explosive plays, that’s way too many.”

Orgeron went on to talk about those darn crossing routes that continue to be the bane of LSU’s existence.

“We went back and we looked at why we were unable to cover them” Orgeron said. “We had an extensive meeting on that. We came up with some drills to help our guys cover those crossing routes. We saw some stuff they hadn’t seen. We saw some things we hadn’t done in practice and that’s coaching. We made adjustments and added some calls to where they get in formations, we can take the heat off of the crossing routes. It’s our first game with our defensive coordinator, so we have to make a big jump this week.”

Orgeron also looked ahead to this Saturday’s opponent the McNeese State Cowboys who are quarterbacked by his son, Cody.

“I may tone down a couple words I use because it is my son, but besides that, Cody knows, we’re coming, man,” Orgeron said. “We’re hungry. We have distaste in our belly and we’re coming and McNeese is in our way. He understands that.”