LSU Football Players Ready to Put Mississippi State Loss Behind Them, Move Forward to Vandy
The common themes out of the LSU players' mouths on Tuesday were accountability and learning from mistakes. It's something that coach Ed Orgeron preached almost exclusively during his weekly press conference previewing the Vanderbilt game.
The players felt the hurt as much as the fans and the coaching staff did after a 44-34 loss to Mississippi State in week one.
"It was a tough start to the year for us, I'd say we struggled to get into a rhythm early," center Liam Shanahan said. "Yesterday we got on film, made a lot corrections and I think we fixed some stuff and will continue to fix things throughout the week.
"It's a bit of a wake up call for us where we can't take anything for granted. We can't go through the motions in practice or on film. We really have to be attacking everything that we do, every single day to make sure we're ready to be the best team we can be on Saturdays."
The mistakes on film were plentiful for the Tigers on both sides of the ball. Offensively, a slow start and inconsistent play across the board hindered the team's ability to take control of the game. On the defensive end, a poor showing from the secondary was the glaring weakness that the Tigers weren't able to overcome.
In speaking with players on Tuesday, the feeling is that they know they got punched in the mouth by the Bulldogs. Now it's up to them to start getting some of these errors rectified. For Shanahan and the offensive line, it wasn't about scheme or gameplanning but more about execution and technique on the line of scrimmage.
"We got a lot of movement from the Mississippi State defense, a lot of twists and blitzes which we expected going into the game," Shanahan said. "We've gotta execute better on the offensive line, being on the same page as Myles, as the running backs and tight ends. We had the right calls but a lot of it was execution and technique."
Brennan was sacked seven times in the loss to Mississippi State and was constantly forced out of the pocket. Some of that was due to pressure but Orgeron said Monday that some of it was also Brennan being a little too quick to escape the pocket.
Shanahan says the focus this week for the offensive line will be to get with Brennan and ask him what he's seeing and how they can better protect him this weekend and beyond.
"We've gotta make it easier on Myles, he had a decent game, he's getting a lot of unfair criticism," Shanahan said. "We really have to help him and make it easier and that's what we're working on this week. I'm going to meet with him individually to make his life as easy as possible."
Safety JaCoby Stevens said defensively, getting an all world talent like Derek Stingley back for Saturday's game will help with the confidence and the production out of the secondary. The conversations between the players and the coaches over the last 72 hour have been overwhelmingly positive in attempts to fix execution issues.
Like Shanahan with the offensive line, Stevens said that most of the problems he feels cropped up, were less about scheme design and more about execution and trusting the gameplan.
"I think coach [Bo] Pelini put us in a position to make plays and at the end of the day it's on the players to make the plays," Stevens said. "Coach O and coach Pelini, they're always going to blame themselves for a loss. It has to be the players to be the student of the game, it has to be the players that do extra studying and extra film so when it's time to make a play, you're already there."
Being No. 7 and one of the unquestioned leaders of the team, Stevens says the message he has for Elias Ricks, Jay Ward, Cordale Flott and the other young defensive backs trying to find their way is that they understand just how difficult football in the SEC can be.
"I think we can look at that game and although there were some negatives, we can take some of the positives out and really just press on to Vanderbilt," Stevens said. "Hopefully the preparation and the mentality will be a little bit better going into this game."
For the young players like Ricks and Ward and Flott who made mistakes in the game Saturday, Stevens being that vocal presence will help with building that confidence that is required for the younger players to have success.
"That's the importance of bringing older guys back, to kind of be that resource to the things that you've seen when you were coming through the ranks," Stevens said. "The best thing is to give that information to the young guys on what to expect or what to look for while in the game. John Battle did it for me so as a senior this year, it's my responsibility to do that for the young guys."
