Tigers suffering from post-title drop-off
COLLEGE STATION — Texas A&M’S Jimbo Fisher is one of five coaches in college football who know exactly what LSU’S Ed Orgeron is dealing with this season — a target on his program as wide as the Mississippi River.
In 2014 Fisher, as the leader of defending national champion Florida State, had more success ducking and dodging the arrows than Orgeron is now, right up until the first College Football Playoff That’s a hard thing to do, keeping your guys hungry,” Fisher said of an encore performance to a national title. “They think, ‘Well, we’ve done it before,’ but you can’t just turn it on and turn it off. You’ve got to keep an edge, and come with an edge. You’ve got to (play) like you’ve never been there before.”
The reigning champion Tigers, who play at No. 5 A&M (5-1) on Saturday night, this season have occasionally looked like they’ve never been there before — and not in a good way. The lowest point for LSU, which at 3-3 has three more losses than it did in 15 games last season, occurred in a 48-11 loss at No. 22 Auburn on Halloween that left Orgeron, the king of college football less than a year ago, searching for answers.
“We were embarrassed by our performance at Auburn, and I took the blame,” Orgeron said this week. “We’ve got to be better, we’ve got to practice better, we’ve got have better leadership and we’ve got to coach better.”
LSU, which whacked A&M 50-7 last year in Baton Rouge, La., showed signs of shaking from its championship doldrums with a 27-24 comeback victory last Saturday at upstart Arkansas.
“It felt like it,” Orgeron said when asked if that performance better resembled what fans should routinely expect from the Tigers. “And it not only felt like it during the game, but it felt like it in the (previous) three weeks of practice. … We weren’t playing like an LSU team should play. At some (points) we looked like LSU football, but we still have a ways to go.”
Thanks to the lopsided loss at Auburn, a stunning home loss to Mississippi State and new coach Mike Leach in the season opener and a four-point loss at Missouri, LSU on Tuesday became the first reigning champ in the seven-season history of the CFP to not make its initial top 25 ranking.
LSU went from a standout senior quarterback in Joe Burrow, who won the 2019 Heisman Trophy, to at one point trying to find warm bodies to play the position during drills this season because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In Orgeron’s defense, LSU’S stacked roster from last season was drained by the NFL draft, opt outs because of the pandemic and otherwise and injuries.
Orgeron even once turned to punter Zach Von Rosenberg during drills to simulate a secondstring quarterback, and the eyebrow-raising result encapsulated LSU’S misery this season.
“He was scoring points against our defense,” Orgeron said with a slight chuckle. “I was getting worried.”
With Orgeron joining the exclusive club, six active coaches nowknowwhat it’s like to try and defend a national title: Fisher, Orgeron, Alabama’s Nick Saban (at LSU and Alabama), Clemson’s Dabo Swinney, North Carolina’s Mack Brown (at Texas) and Kansas’s Les Miles (at LSU).
Brown’s Longhorns followed their sterling 13-0 season of 2005 with a solid 10-3 finish in 2006 but closed out the regular season with narrow losses to Kansas State and A&M. Only two of the championship coaches, Saban and Swinney, have won more than one title. And only one, Saban, has successfully defended a title.
The celebrated coach has won six championships (five at Alabama and one at LSU) and his 2011 and 2012 Crimson Tide squads were the first to ring up consecutive titles (either BCS or AP) since Southern Cal in 200304. It hasn’t happened again in the last seven seasons, and it won’t happen again this year, thanks in part to a program dealing with the after party — a celebration some try extending 365 days.
“You take things for granted,” Fisher said. “All the sudden there are so many outlying factors, and people want to be a part of your program or be a part of your players. That clutter … that goes with the territory when you have success.
“People want to be around winners, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But you’ve got to know how to control it.”
Fisher did a good job of controlling it all the way until the first CFP in 2014, when his defending champion Seminoles lost 59-20 to Oregon in the semifinals.
“We ended up winning 29 games in a row,” Fisher recalled of that memorable stretch for Florida State. “It’s very challenging — you’ve set the standard at that time, and people were trying to knock you off. When you (win) against the reigning national champion, it gives you credibility, confidence, a lot of things.
“It measures your work and the things you’re doing — and we got everybody’s best shot.”