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What to Expect From LSU Football Spring Game

Tigers going to keep scrimmage relatively vanilla while also striving for a highly competitive afternoon

Ed Orgeron wants Saturday's Spring Game to be competitive. He wants his players and the visiting fans to have fun but most importantly he wants fundamentally sound football. 

LSU has spent the last five weeks laying the foundation for what this new offense under Jake Peetz and new defense under Daronte Jones will ultimately look like. Whether it's third down, redzone, goal line or two minute schemes, the Tigers will be running all kinds of situations on Saturday as a final scrimmage before the summer. 

While Orgeron wants to get the most out of the experience for everyone involved, don't expect too much craziness in terms of playcalling. The word to best describe how the variety of playcalling is "vanilla."

"We're going to run our core runs. We need to get our core stuff down. We're going to have core formations. There might not be a lot of motions and shifts, nothing too tricky there," Orgeron said. "We don't want to give that stuff away. We're going to play base defense. We might play one front, one coverage the whole time. We're not going to blitz at all so it's going to be very basic."

Getting the core principles down has been the primary focus this spring. The team will have all offseason to install the nuances and situational football schemes for the players. 

Making sure some of the big chunks are taken care of and that there's no confusion on either side of the ball is what this coaching staff wanted to accomplish with the new pieces and schemes.

“When you have a new offense going in, a new defense going in, you'd like to put the basics in, the core. Core run plays, core pass protection, the core routes, the core defenses. One or two defenses, one or two coverages, one or two blitzes.. That's all we've done all spring and I think our guys enjoyed that, be able to get their cleats in the grass and we play fast," Orgeron said. 

"It may not look the same game in and game out but when the ball is snapped it’s gonna look the same. There's gonna be new installation but I think with this football team, we’ve got a good football team that’s very talented. Let’s figure out what they can do let them do it best.”

The spring game will be boradcast on SEC Network so its fair summize that a number of programs from across the conference and country will be tuning in to get a first look at what the Tigers are trying to do. While expectations should be tempered in terms of just how much will be revealed, Orgeron believes there are two schools of thought. 

One is to make the opponents guess and be rather bland with what the team shows off during the scrimmage. The other is to put it all on tape and make the team prepare for all situations, most of which will look much different by the fall.

"I don't want to put our guys in a bad position. I want to eliminate mental errors on defense. That's one of the things we talked about when we hired Daronte," Orgeron said. "We want to play base defense and let them play. Same thing on offense. Let's play base right now and let's let them get it down and really focus on the fundamentals and really the energy of the crowd.