RABALAIS: LSU still trying to get its act together

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Sheer talent won’t do it for LSU this week.

by Scott Rabalais
Tiger Rag Featured Columnist

The LSU Tigers are looking at September in their rear-view mirror with a 4-0 record, a 2-0 SEC mark and a No. 4 national ranking all tucked neatly in the trunk of Chico Moore’s purple and gold Cadillac.

And yet, there is no joy in Mudville, just the sense of trouble right here in River City.

Never have so many been so unhappy about having so much.

This isn’t a rant against you Tiger fans out there. There is plenty to be worried about, chiefly the fact that LSU was about three inches from being the fifth top-10 team of the weekend to be upset before Ryan Baker and Mr. Versatile Chad Jones (much more on him later) shut the door on Mississippi State quarterback Tyson Lee with 1:08 remaining.

The Tigers wore their purple jerseys to Starkville, but it was a white-knuckle finish as LSU had to hold off a much-less-talented but determined Mississippi State squad to win 30-26.

It will be fashionable (and not altogether untrue) this week to say that first-year Mississippi State coach Dan Mullen outcoached Les Miles on Saturday. Mullen bedeviled LSU by turning Scott Field (I love that name) into a house of mirrors, keeping the Tigers off kilter much of the game.

Three things allowed LSU to escape with victory:

1. The Tigers have much more talent than State;

2. State, as undermanned teams often do, committed football hari-kari by losing the turnover battle 4-0 (LSU has had just three turnovers in 2009, perhaps its best stat);

3. Mullen, for all his cleverness all game long, outsmarted himself when it counted, as so many football coaches often do. Instead of slamming 235-pound tailback Anthony Dixon into the LSU line from inches away on third- and/or fourth-and-goal, he decided to get cute and have Lee try to surprise the Tigers with a quick pass to tight end Marcus Green.

Unfortunately for Mullen, the former play caller at Florida, the 5-foot-10 Lee is no Tim Tebow (of course at this moment, Tebow may think he’s Manny Ramirez after that concussion he suffered Saturday at Kentucky). Lee had about a half-dozen passes batted down Saturday, including this one by Jones. Then on fourth down, Lee tried to score on a keeper instead of handing off to Dixon, and got his door slammed by Baker and you know who.

Jones is making his bid to go down as one of the most versatile athletes in LSU history.

There are some lingering questions about his down-in, down-out coverage ability, but there is no question that Jones has a nose for the big play matched only by that wicked 90 mph left-handed slider he unleashed in the College World Series. Remember the fumble he forced from John Parker Wilson to set up the game-winning touchdown at Alabama two years ago? How about the two interceptions he had against Louisiana-Lafayette on Sept. 19?

At Mississippi State, Jones went all Billy Cannon on the Bulldogs with his fielded-on-a-hop, broken field 93-yard punt return for a touchdown to open the fourth quarter. It was shades of old No. 20 himself and the 89-yard punt return he had against Ole Miss 50 years ago this Halloween night.

Like Cannon, Jones sealed his play’s place in LSU lore by contributing to a game-saving goal-line stop in the final moments (Cannon and fellow White Teamer Warren Rabb stopped Ole Miss QB Doug Elmore on the 1 back then).

Unfortunately for the Cannon and the Tigers, they lost a week after his immortal punt return 14-13 at Tennessee, a defeat that almost certainly kept LSU from winning back-to-back national championships way back when.

Individual efforts couldn’t save LSU at Tennessee back in 1959. They were enough to save LSU against the Mississippi State Bulldogs this time, but probably won’t earn the Tigers a “W” against the Georgia Bulldogs this Saturday in Athens.

Certainly, Georgia will be the most talented team LSU has faced thus far. It will probably also be the most erratic. Georgia couldn’t move the ball in a 24-10 loss at Oklahoma State, couldn’t stop South Carolina or Arkansas in a pair of SEC wins (41-37 and 52-41) and eked out a defensive grudge match 20-17 against Arizona State last Saturday on a last-second field goal.

Clearly LSU has the ability to go to Athens and win. Just as clearly, there could be a painful defeat awaiting the Tigers between the hedges at Sanford Stadium, as painful as the 45-16 beatdown LSU suffered in its last visit there in 2004. After Starkville, the latter appears more likely as the Tigers look like a prime candidate to make it five straight weeks that at least one top five-ranked team goes down in flames.

LSU could finally get its act together and play its best game of the year. But the production must go way, way up on the offensive side. Right now, the Tigers’ offense looks like a Ferrari that’s stuck in first gear. There’s a lot under the hood, but it’s going nowhere fast if you don’t shift up.

Thirty net rushing yards and 16 offensive points (LSU of course also got a TD Saturday on Patrick Peterson’s nifty interception return) won’t be enough for the Tigers against these Bulldogs. While I expect LSU’s “D” will do a commendable job, the Tigers should expect to have to score points to keep up with Georgia.

Sheer talent won’t do it for LSU this week. The Tigers will have to have a better plan and better execution if they want to take a perfect record into the Oct. 10 showdown with Florida.

Maybe then, Tiger fans would have something they can be happy about.

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Scott Rabalais is a veteran sports writer who has covered LSU football for two decades. He is the author of The Fighting Tigers: 1993-2008, the updated version of Peter Finney’s famous epoch. Reach him at srabalais1014@gmail.com.