Ed Orgeron talks facing Mississippi State's Air Raid after last year's shootout

The bigger they are, the harder they fall. LSU head coach Ed Orgeron learned that the hard way last year, when the Tigers, coming off a perfect 15-0 season and a national championship, laid an egg against Mississippi State in their season opener.

As it later became clear, the 2020 LSU Tigers were nothing like the 2019 team. The Week 1 loss became more believable each week, as Orgeron and the Tigers would finish just their season just 5-5. Now, in 2021, Orgeron hopes to follow-up a lackluster 2020 campaign by salvaging the 2021 season, a year in which the Tigers received a preseason top-25 ranking but lost it in a season-opening loss to UCLA. Fortunately, with the Tigers traveling to Mississippi State in Week 4 to face Mike Leach and the “Air Raid” offense, Orgeron believes he has a pretty good idea of what to expect.

“When [first-year defensive coordinator Daronte Jones] came in, he and I watched it. That was the first game we watched together,” Orgeron said Wednesday on the SEC coaches teleconference.

Orgeron and the Tigers lost 44-34 last year, and what Jones watched on film was a masterful display of passing from the Mississippi State offense. The Bulldogs needed just 9 rushing yards on 16 attempts to win in the shootout, and that’s because quarterback KJ Costello completed 36 of 60 passing attempts for a whopping 623 yards, five touchdowns and two interceptions. The Bulldogs had three targets — wideouts Osirus Mitchell and JaVonta Payton, and running back Kylin Hill — all cross the century-mark with ease; Mitchell had 183 receiving yards, Payton had 122 receiving yards and Hill had 158.

“I said, ‘these are the things as a defensive coordinator that you have to cover. These are the things you need to be prepared for, that you may have seen in the NFL and you may have not,'” Orgeron said of his prior conversation with Jones. “So, have we been practicing those things? Are we aware of those routes? Yes we are. Have we played all of them perfectly? No we haven’t. We still have work to do.”

LSU hasn’t faced an offensive scheme quite like the Air Raid in 2021. In fact, Orgeron and the Tigers only played one Power Five opponent this season: a Week 1 game to UCLA, which LSU lost 38-27. UCLA quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson threw for 260 yards and three touchdowns, completing nine of 16 passing attempts, but the bulk of the Bruins offense came on the ground: running back Zach Charbonnet had 11 rushes for 117 yards and a touchdown, while Brittain Brown had 17 carries for 96 yards and a touchdown of his own.

Mississippi State, the second Power Five team LSU faces this year, won’t look anything like the rush-heavy UCLA offense. The only question is whether Jones will have the Tigers more prepared than former defensive coordinator Bo Pelini, who Orgeron fired after his only season in the position.