LSU Coach Ed Orgeron Talks Breakout Players for 2020 Season, Tells Heartwarming Story About Hard Work
Ed Orgeron remembers the Mondays he would walk into South Lafourche High School and all of the students would tell him about their weekend, traveling up to Baton Rouge for LSU games.
Orgeron had never been to an LSU game so he went home and asked his father, Ed Sr., better known as "Ba Ba," why it was that he had never seen the Tigers play in person.
"Boy we can't afford that," Ba Ba told Ed. "But let me tell you something, you keep on working, you won't need a ticket into Tiger Stadium."
He’s now entering his fourth year with the LSU program as its head coach and is set to be awarded three rings for the 2019 Tigers' SEC, Peach Bowl and National Championship wins. Orgeron said he often thinks about that conversation he had with his father.
"His motivation and his foresight to push me to work hard and achieve great things is something I still think about," Orgeron told "Off the Bench" on Tuesday.
It's a big day for the program with many of the players from last year's team making the trip down to Baton Rouge for the ring ceremony.
“What a great night for our football team. I'm happy for our players and our coaches to be able to get this,” Orgeron said.
Part of the success that comes along with a championship team is signing dynamite recruiting classes and the early returns for the 2020 freshman class look promising according to strength and conditioning coach Tommy Moffitt. While Orgeron and the coaches aren't yet allowed to have contact with the players, Moffitt is on the front lines and has told Orgeron about a number of 2020 freshmen that will compete for starting positions.
Just a few that Orgeron mentioned were Arik Gilbert, Kole Taylor, Josh White, Jaquelin Roy, Jacobian Guillory, Phillip Webb and Kevontre Bradford.
"Tommy thinks this is one of the best freshman classes he's seen at LSU," Orgeron said. "As far athletic wise, as far as character wise and the ability to work. A lot of them are coming in and competing for starting positions."
The two veteran newcomers to the program, Jabril Cox and Liam Shanahan, continue to impress the staff as a whole. Cox is viewed as one of the projected starting inside linebackers this season while Shanahan's versatility on the offensive line was viewed as a huge plus for depth purposes.
It seems as though the coaching staff is starting to zero in on a position that could stick for the Harvard transfer.
"We think that maybe Liam could be a center," Orgeron said. "What we're hearing is that he's snapping well with the quarterbacks, the other offensive linemen like him. He's very smart and he could make the calls and be a leader for us. He's a tough young man and he's really impressed so far."
With football camp now just over two weeks away, the coaching staff is in preparation mode, making sure all of the practices and installations are scheduled and mapped out ahead of time. When the time does come for the team to hit the practice field, the wants to be ready.
The last few years under Orgeron, the staff has put a premium on carving out time for work on fundamentals. With such a young, inexperienced team for the most part, it’ll be imperative that the unit is fundamentally sound once the season kicks off.
It’s one of the three most important areas the coaching staff will look at when evaluating the practice film, the other two of which are turnovers and ball security and skill development.
"We've got to get everything ready for football school, all of our scripts, all of our individuals gotta be ready because installation takes a lot of work," Orgeron said. "We're going to have an extra 12 practices with this new time they're allowing us starting on July 24 so we've got a lot of work to do."
