Saturday night the University of Louisiana Lafayette fighting crawfish march into Tiger Stadium and performed their best rendition of the Boudreaux and Robichaux show. In hindsight, ULL would have been better off if they would have sent in Clotide and Aunt Mess. LSU disposed of the fighting crawfish quicker than Mike Tyson did Peter McNeeley in his second fight back from prison – mere seconds. People who purchased the LSU game on pay-per-view should be demanding their money back. Do you think Don King was involved? It was a good thing that ULL printed all those T-Shirts that said “Oct 5, 2002: The Day The King Dies.” Rumor had it that the ULL football players wore these under their uniforms and had plans to unveil these after beating LSU. Has anyone told them the king never dies? Elvis is still living. Hell, you can still see him perform at the Grand Casino in Biloxi from time to time. On a more serious note, LSU took a step forward fine-tuning their execution for this weekend’s date in the Swamp. The 48-0 rout of the Cajuns looked pretty convincing on the surface but taking a deeper probe on the inside reveals some room for improvement. In my opinion (IMO), Florida presents LSU with a chance to get their first win against a formidable opponent since the Virginia Tech game. When you are the defending SEC Champions beating teams like Miami Ohio, The Citadel, ULL and Mississippi State should not be quality wins. Don’t get me wrong, Miami of Ohio has a decent team but to tag it as a quality win when you are defending SEC champions should not be. Quarterback: Grade: B Mauck turned in a solid performance Saturday. He started out 8 for 10 throwing 3 touchdowns and 0 interceptions in the first quarter. He finished 0 for 9 in the second quarter and one drive to start the second half. His totals for the game were 8 for 19 138 yards with 3 touchdowns and 0 interceptions in basically one half of football. Randall was limited offensively with the 41-0 halftime lead. Once again, I stand by my observation that Mauck throws the ball much better standing in the pocket set than he does on the run. LSU was 6 for 15 on third down conversions for a conversion rate of 40%. I would have like to see a slightly better rate against ULL being that we dominated this game. Mauck has yet to reach a 50% completion rate in any of his starts this year. On his 0 for 9 string, Muack missed several wide-open receivers. The most obvious one was when Addai was wide open, I mean wide open, down the middle of the field and Mauck threw the ball away. That is not necessarily bad but with time and more confidence he will be able to scan the field better and recognize these open receivers. Running Backs: Grade: B LSU rushed the ball 47 times for 205 yards for an average rushing attempt of 4.36 yards a carry. Anytime you rush the ball for over 200 yards you have to be pleased. LSU running back did fumble the ball 3 times losing 2 of them. One happened to be on the play that Toefield broke his arm. Does he just have to most unfortunate luck with injuries in his career? I hope the best for his speedy recovery. I believe that he will be sorely missed down the stretch. The other two fumbles were by Gilbert. Addai had the best game of his early Tiger career. He rushed the ball 11 times for 98 yards and caught 2 passes for 50 yards. Carey saw action in the backfield with 6 carries for 21 yards. Wide Receivers: Grade: B The receivers had limited opportunities in the passing game. Collectively they made 6 receptions for 92 yards. They did however make the most of their opportunities by collecting 3 touchdowns on six of those receptions. They did manage to drop a few well-thrown passes also. Clayton had the strongest game with 3 receptions for 52 yards and 2 touchdowns. Carey continues to struggle at the receiver position. He dropped a bubble screen in the first half. It is pretty evident that he is struggling because LSU is giving him a shot at tailback. LSU feels he is too valuable not to find a spot for him on the field. Offensive Line: Grade: B+ The O-line had a solid performance however at times they continue to struggle with defensive scheming and blitz pick-ups on passing situations. I think we can expect this group to continue to gel as the season progresses. LSU played a lot of players on the O-line in the second half. Saban commended the play of several young players who saw playing time for the first time this season. Satan also commented on LSU’s last scoring drive especially on the blocking for the 034-yard run by Addai for a touchdown. He scored on the option pitch from Randall and had several good blocks down field. Defensive Line: Grade: A Great Game! There is no doubt this was their best game of the season. The D-line recorded 7 sacks in the game. Bryce Watt, Melvin Oliver, Marquis Hill, and Chad Lavalais recorded 2, 1.5, 1, and 0.5 sacks respectively. The D-Line controlled the line of scrimmage and had very good penetration throughout the game. LSU had a total of 10 tackles for losses, which included 7 sacks. Bryce Watt led LSU with tackles ---1 6 unassisted and 2 assisted tackles. Linebackers: Grade: A B James was able to rest up for the second half other wise he would have been LSU’s leading tackle In one half, B James recorded 1 unassisted and 5 assisted tackles including 1 sack. Vaughn had his best game to date recording 5 unassisted and 3 assisted tackles for the game and also recorded a sack. He was LSU’s second leading tackler. Defensive Backs: Grade: A The defensive backs had another great performance. Lejeune was tied with Vaughn as LSU’s second leading tackler. D James also recorded an interception on a good defensive read of the quarterback. Perhaps the lone negative play of the game for the defense came on the first play from scrimmage when Hookfin was badly beaten by ULL’s Stamps but Stamps was unable to hold on to the ball. That missed opportunity could have resulted in a big gain and a shot in the arm for the Cajuns, which would have boasted their confidence early. Special Teams: Grade: B ULL decided not to punt the ball to Davis after the first punt was returned 41 yards. Corbello improved his kickoffs pinning all of them inside the 5 yards. And believe me, he had many of opportunities to practice this in the game. The kickoff and punt coverage was excellent. The lone sore thumb on the special teams continues to be the punting of Jones. Although, he was able to boom one good kick late in the game to improve his punting average, his overall consistency was not there. The ULL punter was able to kick it just as far as Jones and he was angling the ball towards the sidelines. It was quite obvious Saban was displeased with his efforts. After the first two or three punting attempts by Jones, Saban was quite adamant with him as he walked off the field. Corbello missed a 50-yard field goal and had another attempt blocked which almost resulted in a ULL touchdown if it had not been for a great shoestring tackle by B Bech after the block. Coaching: Grade: B+ There was no doubt the coaches had this team ready to play. The team looked well prepared despite the major distraction of Hurricane Lili during the week. The offensive and defensive game plans were solid. The only beef I had with the coaching all night was the missed opportunity to continue to work on the passing game. I know we had a big lead but I would have like to have seen LSU throw the ball more than 19 times. I also did not like the fact that LSU showed a new wriggle in the offense against ULL that could have probably waited one week to implement and surprise Florida. It was the play where Mauck fakes the hand-off of the inside draw to the running back in the shot gun formation in one direction and runs the ball in the other direction. LSU ran this play twice for big yardage. LSU’s RUN/PASS Ratio after scoring it’s 3rd touchdown with results was as followings: 7/2 TD, 1 / 2 Punt, 2/1 Punt, 3/0 TD, 2/1 Punt, and 3/2 TD. That is a total of 17 run plays to 7 passing play after the 3rd touchdown and until halftime. There was not that much of an attempt to work on the passing game from this statistic. Finally, I listed some season to date statistics: National Ranking: Total Defense: 1. LSU 202 yards/game Rushing Defense: 8. LSU 88.4 yards/game Passing Defense: 2. LSU 113.6 Scoring Defense: 3. LSU 11.2 points/game Total Offense: 89. LSU 341.40 yards/game Passing Offense: 108. LSU 133.4 yards/game Rushing Offense: 22 LSU 208 yards/game Scoring Offense: 41 LSU 31.0 points/game SEC Ranking: Team Total Defense: 1st Passing Defense: 1st Rushing Defense: 1st Scoring Defense: 1st Team Total Offense: 10th Passing Offense: 12th Rushing Offense: 4th Scoring Offense: 8th You can form your own opinion from these statistics. But does anybody find it funny that we rank last in passing when 2 option orientated teams like Vanderbilt and Alabama rank ahead of you?
