Ed Orgeron Says LSU Had Best Week Of Practice This Season, Ready to Take on Depleted Arkansas Team

Game could potentially be postponed with COVID-19 spike in Fayetteville

Arkansas is in a very similar spot to LSU this week and the time is ticking on whether or not Saturday's game will still kick off. On Thursday Arkansas coach Sam Pittman announced that the Razorbacks would have to wait for results on Thursday's round of COVID-19 tests to tell if this weekend's game with LSU can still take place.

The Razorbacks are dangerously low on bodies just inside of 48 hours from kickoff and was unsure if the team would have enough bodies to suit up. That was news to Ed Orgeron, who on Thursday told reporters the Tigers had their best week of practice this season and are ready to play.

"As far as I know we're getting on that plane and we're going," Orgeron said. "It's a fluid situation, I've been in that situation two weeks ago but it would've been dangerous for our team to play and according to the rules we couldn't."

It's a very real possibility now that the Tigers could be going on a month without playing a football game during the college season which is just the times we're living in a COVID run world. Orgeron says it's completely out of his control as to whether or not the game will be postponed.

"My job is to get this team ready to play, I felt like we had a great week of practice, we're ready to go," Orgeron said. "It's 2020, you gotta deal with it. If they tell us we can't play there's nothing we can do about it."

As far as the game is concerned, Orgeron said in all likelihood that TJ Finley would draw the start at quarterback, though he did say he will play Max Johnson as well. Johnson just got back to practice this week but Orgeron said he ran the two minute drill beautifully in practice and earned playing time. 

The team also got offensive tackle Dare Rosenthal back at practice this weekend, which Orgeron said was a much needed addition to a depleted group.

"Dare came back in good shape, he's had a good week of practice, he's still on the second team but he is gonna play," Orgeron said. "Dare's a team leader, everybody loves him and gives a lot of confidence to the offensive line, quarterback and the head coach."

With just five games remaining, the sense of urgency, particularly after such a long layoff between games, has only intensified which is why Orgeron believes this was the best week of practice and his team is ready for a bounceback performance.

"It started Monday in the weight room and these guys decided that the standard of performance is unacceptable," Orgeron said. "We're hungry to go prove what we've been doing the last three weeks, we've been working our tails off."