Offenses evolving for SEC’s top two

BATON ROUGE, La. — No. 1 Alabama and No. 2 LSU are in the process of turning long-held perceptions of the Southeastern Conference upside down.

They are the highest-scoring teams in the nation at the midway point of this college football season. That should shatter any lingering notions that the SEC features stifling defense and ball-control offenses heavy on smash-mouth runs.

“If you tell a guy to go huddle, you’d have to explain what a huddle is nowadays,” LSU Coach Ed Orgeron joked this week while discussing a transformation in his offense, which has produced a nation’s best 52.5 points per game this season for the unbeaten Tigers (6-0).

No. 1 Alabama (6-0) is averaging 51 points per game, slightly ahead of Oklahoma (50.2) for second nationally.

These are the same two teams that famously played to a 9-6 struggle won by LSU in 2011 — an overtime game in which not one touchdown was scored by either team. And the SEC is the conference that as recently as 2008 had a 3-2 final score — albeit in bad weather — with Auburn edging Mississippi State.

While Orgeron was a former defensive lineman in college and spent much of his career as a defensive assistant, he was convinced when he came to LSU that an up-tempo spread was the offense of the future, and that the Tigers had to adopt it to compete for SEC and national titles. That wasn’t simply because of schematic advantages on the field. There’s also the matter of using a scheme that appeals to elite recruits.

Alabama coach Nick Saban was quick to point out that the SEC has had prolific offenses well before this most recent trend, such as Steve Spurrier’s “Fun ‘N Gun” scheme with Florida, or Tennessee’s aerial attack when Peyton Manning was behind center.

But those appear to have been more exceptions than the norm in a conference that did not have a single quarterback taken in the first round of the NFL draft between 1976 and 1994, and hasn’t had two first-round QBs in the same year since 1952.

That streak seems bound to end next spring when LSU’s Joe Burrow and Alabama’s Tua Tagovailoa — both currently seen as Heisman Trophy hopefuls — will be eligible for the NFL draft. Burrow, who’s completed 79.6 percent of his passes for 2,157 yards and 25 TDs, is on pace to break LSU single-season passing records for yards and touchdowns, among others.