LSU Coach Ed Orgeron Says 2020 Tigers Not Worried About Preseason Doubters

Tigers have favorable schedule to ease young roster into life in the SEC

Ed Orgeron understands the line of thinking. He’s been around the game of football long enough to know that typically more experienced, veteran teams are the ones seen in the big game come January.

With the loss of 14 draft picks plus an additional six players who have left the program this offseason for various reasons, LSU has an uphill battle to climb with a young group. As a result, many pundits and possibly even fans are a little more tempered in their expectations for this 2020 team than even three weeks ago.

The Tigers were ranked by the AP as the No. 6 team in its preseason poll but that was before the loss of Ja’Marr Chase, Tyler Shelvin and so many others. Players like Myles Brennan, Terrace Marshall, Arik Gilbert, Racey McMath, Glen Logan and Siaki Ika will be relied on more.

Yet Orgeron isn’t bothered by what others perceive of this 2020 team. There’s not enough time in the day for thinking about that. Instead, Orgeron focuses on what he can control, which is having his team prepared for its week one matchup with Mississippi State.

“I think it’s going to be a natural tendency for them to predict us not having the success that we would have if we would have a lot of guys coming back,” Orgeron said Tuesday during his weekly Zoom conference. “But that doesn’t bother us. I think we have a great team and we’re going to use that as an advantage. We’ve been picked high; we’ve been picked low and none of them usually pan out.”

It’s true. A year ago this time, people were only just starting to catch on to what the 2019 Tigers team could accomplish. Coincidently the preseason No. 6 team in the country a year ago, the Tigers were coming off the most impressive win by any team of the season, beating Texas in Austin 43-37.

It was the first chance the Tigers got to show their spread offense in front of a national audience and immediately flipped the script of what many had previously perceived about the team.

“This time last year nobody picked us to go 15-0 and had a great season. We’re going to have to block out that,” Orgeron said. “I think those guys have legitimate reasons to say they lost this, they lost that, (they have a) new quarterback. I can understand where they may pick us not to have the success that we think we’re going to have.”

A favorable start to the schedule (Mississippi State, Vanderbilt, Missouri) provides an opportunity to settle the younger players into life in the SEC before the Oct. 17 matchup at Florida. Orgeron knows this team is young and will have its share of growing pains along the way. But he thinks most are underestimating just what this team will accomplish.

“I think we are underestimated because they don’t know the young talent that we have,” Orgeron said. “They don’t know the new coaches that we have. We have to go and prove it week in and week out. (We have) 10 SEC games, buckle up. It’s going to be fun.”