Ed Orgeron Talks About MSU's Passing Attack, LSU's Scheme, & What Surprise Him The Most

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Ed Orgeron: On defense, you know, they had 383 yards after the catch. Obviously that's tackling, that's assignments to any guys running free. We gotta work on our coverage. We had some mistakes in our coverage in leverage and technique and assignments. Some of the positives, we had five sacks. We caused four turnovers and we scored on defense. That was very positive. I thought the pressure on the quarterback was there at times, could get better.

Q. You mentioned about on Saturday that maybe you guys would need to play more zone. I know you said Derek Stingley may be back here. After watching the tape, what prevented some of those in-game adjustments there, and do you expect any changes against Vanderbilt there?

ED ORGERON: Yeah. You know, all those are Bo's decisions. We talked about it. And they were hitting us on some pick routes, some over routes. Some of it was scheme. Some of it there was some kind of adjustments that we can do, not necessarily play zone, but you can do some adjustments in man and passing guys off, not passing guys off. We may do that, may not do that at all. It depends. You know, having Derek not there really hurt us, obviously, but I'm glad that he's healthy. His safety is of foremost importance to us, so I'm glad that he's healthy and he's okay, number one. Jay Ward was out for practice two weeks. We didn't even know he could play. He played a lot of snaps. I thought he did a fairly good job, but obviously was a little rusty there. So I think there's some combination of things. We were short on corners. Not having Derek hurt us. We had a game plan that we were going to play man and man them up, and we thought we could man up with the receivers. We should have made a couple of more adjustments during the game.

Q. I was looking at the depth chart, and in the secondary, it's mostly sophomores or less. Is this maybe something that kind of, again, we have to get used to with the roster that this year's team has?

ED ORGERON: Yeah. You know what happens is our corners are three-and-out here. Most of our guys go three-and-out. We have a lot of young guys. A lot of young guys played for the first time. And there was a lot of one-on-one situations. You gotta give credit. Mississippi State's receivers came to play. Their quarterback was on fire. Coach had a great scheme, put our guys in some difficult situations; and sometimes they did and sometimes they didn't, and when they didn't, it was touchdown. You know, one of the things that we gotta get better is on third down. Third down and 20 and they get a first down on us. We gotta stop them. There were some third downs where they made some touchdowns on us. So those young guys, they're going to grow up, but that's who we have. We believe in those guys. Cordale Flott had an excellent camp. He did some good things in the game, did some things he's gotta improve on. I think you're going to see a better Jay Ward now that he's healthy and practicing.

Q. Coach, of the things that went wrong Saturday, which one surprised you the most?

ED ORGERON: The yards passing, yards after the catch. I've seen it. I've seen outstanding defense in camp, and you know, we had pressure on the quarterback, but the bust, you know, the wheel route going 75 yards down the field, the crossing routes, us playing behind the crossing routes. The third down, those things really surprised me, because we were excellent in camp against all of that. So I was really surprised that they gained that many yards on us.

Q. Obviously Saturday the passing yards were an outlier, but I was just curious if you or anybody on the staff in talking about it had been in a game quite like that where you put up 400 yards, you create four turnovers. You get a defensive score, time in possession. So many things that you point to and say you have to do these things well to win, you did, but you didn't. Can you or anybody on the staff remember a time where you went through a game like that here or elsewhere?

ED ORGERON: We were talking about that today. No. I haven't seen it. Haven't seen it. And it was the breakdown of the passing game on defense. That's what it was, and one-on-ones and missed assignments, and they had a good scheme, but we should have made some better adjustments throughout there. And we all know having Derek not there really hurt us. Derek is a force. He's a great player. And our guys not being healthy -- I'm not making any excuses for them, but that really hurt us, and that gives me hope for this football team. I think that when we get Derek back and we get our guys healthy, we're going to be fine.

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