If you’re asking what LSU’s D gameplan is, I will say that they should load the box and make Hendon throw it all over the field. Pitt had the best plan so far and they shut the run down pretty much.
If you’re asking what we should do to stop LSU on D, well, who really knows. Playing zone and not giving up the big play worked but as you can tell is wildly unpopular. Getting pressure by blitzing worked against Pitt but none of their Qbs were as mobile as Daniels. So there’s a huge risk in playing man to man so you can blitz from the back 7 and actually get to the Qb.
Now, if only our front 4 could get pressure without bringing an extra man, then you could really mix it up and try and confuse their Qb.
I expect the same game plan as Florida. We just aren’t good enough to man up in the secondary.
Good points. I will see say though, if something “worked but as you can see is wildly unpopular”, I am much more interested in the worked part. I actually agree with you that it worked. Had we finished the last several minutes of the game differently I doubt we would be seeing nearly as much angst. Few ways that could have happened:
- Our defense could have stopped them even once playing zone as they did.
- We could’ve brought pressure and looked good if it worked, and like a disaster if Richardson made us pay for it.
- We could have kept playing normal offense instead of running the clock and giving back the ball.
- Finally, had we been able to run the clock down like we tried by getting first downs that would have worked too.
We also could have recovered the onside kick, but I’m not including that in the list because even though it doesn’t get so scary they still scored twice and we would be getting a bunch of the same complaints even though it wins (Remember the super scary way with them scoring twice and recovering the kick we also won).
Anyway, all is that is to say I think the plan was sound, but obviously we still would have liked to see a better defensive performance. Even though it gets skewed by what happened at the end, we were not easily stopping them all night. Sure we got them to 4th down a lot, but they made almost all of those conversions. As far as scheme goes, maybe some blitz should have been worked in because of Richardson was in fact making the throws, but I think it was completely fair to worry about him running around in space. Could see arguments either way.
