Video: LSU head coach Ed Orgeron weekly press conference (Southeastern La.)

ORGERON WEEKLY PRESS CONFERENCE:

LSU ATHLETIC COMMUNICATIONS
For Immediate Release September 4, 2018

LSU COACH ORGERON PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT – Southeastern Louisiana game week

Opening Statement
“I’m very proud of the effort and the energy that we played with. I’m proud of the leadership on our football team and the preparation by our coaches. I thought those guys were very well prepared for an outstanding opponent in Miami. We played seven true freshmen. We plan to play more. Those guys played very well, worked hard, and we look forward to playing more this year. I’m very proud of winning the turnover margin, zero turnovers on offense was a phenomenal feat on a defense that thrives on causing turnovers and +2 turnovers for our defense. Special teams, I thought was excellent. Cole Tracy was 4-of-4. The first blocked punt we had called, we had a guy wide open. We need to get better at practice at blocking those punts. That was perhaps a touchdown there. We made a couple of errors in the kicking game that I know Coach (Greg) McMahon is going to fix this week. We should have fair caught one of our kickoffs. It would have given us better field position, but other than that I thought Coach McMahon did a superb job of putting our guys in special, special situations. I was proud of (running back) Nick Brossette. Nick has waited his turn here. I thought he did an excellent job in the game, both blocking and running. I was proud of (linebacker) Jacob Phillips. I thought Jacob had an excellent game. I know that we want to eliminate the penalty that he had, but I thought he stepped in and did very well.

“Onto Southeastern Louisiana. Obviously, we are very excited to play at home. Tiger Stadium, that’s what we wait all year for. It’s going to be a great crowd. Our players are going to be excited. We have a lot of new coaches. It’s going to be their first time in Tiger Stadium, a lot of new players and their first time in Tiger Stadium. The Tiger Walk is going to be phenomenal, and we are going to have a great week of preparation. Today is ‘Tell the Truth Monday’. We are going to treat it as such. Tomorrow will be a combination day between Tuesday and Wednesday. Then, we will get back to ‘No Repeat Thursday’ and ‘Focus Friday’ and get ready to play the game on Saturday.

“A little bit about Southeastern. I’m friends with Frank Scelfo. He’s a fantastic coach. He’s a great man. He’s a good recruiter. He’s going to do great things in Hammond. He’s already started. They played ULM very tight. He has an offensive scheme that they run all the right plays, all the right formations, all the right motions. He does a lot of things that gives us problems. We are in there working on them right now. He operates out of a spread. He has Chason Virgil, a dual-threat quarterback with a good arm, Devonte Williams, a good player and has good players all over the field at Southeastern Louisiana for his league. On defense, they are very multiple, 3-4. They only have two returning starters Matt Wright is their safety and Tamarcus Russell’s – two of their best players. On special teams, we just watched them this morning. Their punt coverage was ranked 14th in their division last year. They have some good players, some good skill players. We know that those guys are going to come in here and give us their best shot. It’s not about them. It’s always going to be about the LSU Tigers. Our goal is to prepare each week the same, treat every opponent the same and prepare at a championship level each week.

“One of the things that didn’t go right in the game was that we lost K’Lavon Chaisson for the year. He will be out for the year. I just met with K’Lavon. I talked with his grandmother. I feel badly for him. He’s a great young man. He had totally dedicated himself to this year, but he’s going to get through this. This is going to pass for him, and he will have a career down the road. I know his teammates are very sad that he’s going to be out the rest of the year, but we are going to have to step up. Guys will step up at that position.”

On an update on Adrian Magee …
“He’s out for two or three weeks.”

On the first quarter stops against Miami …
“Momentum. It was critical. We knew the strong part of our football team would be our defense to start off. We had to go out there and stop them. Our defense did this. On offense, we were struggling a little bit to start off with. One of the things was the new rule on the kickoff and the 40-second clock starts right away. We have to get used to that. We weren’t used to that, so we had to call a couple of timeouts. I was most proud of our offense that we made that adjustment. We didn’t panic. Coach Ensminger didn’t panic. We didn’t panic on the sideline. We got it fixed. We had an explosive second quarter.”

On who is going to step up in Chaisson’s spot …
“We have several guys there. Ray Thornton can play both sides. Andre Anthony can play. Travez Moore can play, and we have Jarell Cherry there, a freshman who can play. That is a spot that we have some depth at, and we are going to see this week who is the best guy to put at that position.”

On Joe Burrow’s autonomy to audible at the line …
“There are several plays that we will double call, and Steve (Ensminger) will give him the play at the line of scrimmage. Every play, especially on third down, he is able to change the protection if he needs to. We have confidence that Joe can do that. I do believe that Steve is going to give him more autonomy as the season goes on because he’s a quarterback that’s able to do that.”

On placekicker Avery Atkins …
“First of all, every coach is in charge of his area in recruiting. Everybody has an area. Then, everybody is in charge of their position on the board. I tell them to take control of their position. Well, Coach Greg McMahon has done just as good as anybody I’ve ever been around of taking control of his position. Coach went out and found Avery Atkins and told me, ‘Coach, I have the best kicker I’ve got for you in the country. Avery, he came as a preferred walk-on. I gave him the opportunity to later on earn a scholarship when it comes available. I have to give the credit to Coach McMahon. He identified him, went and got him. I want to thank Avery’s parents on allowing him to come here. I think he’s going to be very successful at LSU.”

On running back Lanard Fournette getting the start…
“There are certain plays our guys do really well and that’s something that Steve Ensminger does really well. He puts guys in positions that they can perform a certain skill or play and that’s what you saw. Fournette was in the first play and Chris Curry was in the second play. Nick Brossette is our starting at tailback so you go figure it out.”

On how he thought Lloyd Cushenberry played on the offensive line…
“A-plus. I thought he played the best of any offensive linemen except for Damien Lewis. I thought he did very well. Now, those guys were moving. There wasn’t a zero nose tackle. Those guys were moving. He’s agile, and he can pick that stuff up. We’ll see when he plays a zero.”

On what being able to play many players means for team morale…
“We want to play a lot of guys, and we want to put them in specific positions where their skill set fits our offense. That’s one thing that Steve (Ensminger) does a bunch. We have a lot of good athletes. I want our guys to stay fresh.”

On the decision to go for it on 4th-and-1 from the Miami 49 in the second quarter…
“We’ve been practicing our 22 Package, going straight ahead all offseason, going against a pretty good defense. We have an analytics program, and the book tells us to go for it if it’s 4th-and-1. We do a comprehensive study during the week, and then on the sideline analytics will tell you if you should go for it or not. I make the decision. I don’t know if the book said to go for it or not. We were going for it that time.”