LSU football focusing on personnel, schemes and preparation

LSU is coming off a crazy 36-33 win over South Carolina, which gave the coaching staff plenty of stuff to correct.

A lot of the focus remains on the defense.

LSU ranks dead last in the Southeastern Conference in points per game allowed and they rank third to last in total defense, allowing 380 yards a game. But Coach Brian Kelly says the defensive line is playing fundamentally sound, alleviating the concerns they had in the preseason.

Kelly also believes the secondary can play at a higher level.

“It’s about continuing to build the back end of our defense and continue to contest catches, be sound in run support with our secondary, but more than anything else, it’s create havoc and we did that,” Kelly said.

The Tigers had nine tackles for a loss, five sacks, four forced fumbles and an interception.

BK also likes his linebackers, they started three backers in the South Carolina game, Whit Weeks, Greg Penn, and Harold Perkins.

Perkins played strongside linebacker and had three tackles, one for a loss and a fumble recovery. Kelly called it progress for one of their best defensive players.

“I thought he started to feel a lot more comfortable, he was in the action a lot more, I know he felt better and more comfortable, I think he would like to have a couple plays back, maybe the first tackle of the game, had a chance for a safety, but I thought by and large, he started to feel a lot more comfortable and making some plays and playing with great energy,” Kelly said.

Kelly believes LSU is close to playing the football needed to win the SEC. He says they are looking at personnel, preparation and the coaching of the schemes to get LSU to that point.

“When you have two first-year coordinators, they are learning their personnel, who they want to use, who are the best eleven in each situation and then what schemes put us in the best position to succeed and now we have to go prepare accordingly, I wish we could have done that during preseason camp, but we didn’t know a lot about who were those best players for that situation,” Kelly said.

One situation Kelly brought up, LSU’s failures on offense in goal line situations. He said the coaching staff needs to change up the scheme.

The Tigers have a lot of work to do and they have two winnable games to fix the problems with this team before Ole Miss comes to Tiger Stadium on October 12th.