Head Coach Ed Orgeron gives his thoughts on the win versus SLU.

As a sea of purple and yellow flooded into Death Valley, the  No. 11 Louisiana State Tigers and Ed Orgeron’s dominance over the previous No.8 Miami flowed into Baton Rouge as they faced Southeastern Louisiana.

Orgeron was happy with the outcome, but knew there are some areas that the team needs to improve in.

The Tigers started fast and the momentum slowed down in the second quarter, even though the Tigers added 10 more points to their 14 point lead; the last seven came on quarter-ending hail mary to junior wide receiver Stephen Sullivan on a 40-yard pass from Burrow.  

Burrow said he was not it was not as exciting because they were not as productive as he wanted them to be in the second half.

“It really wasn’t too exciting because we were not playing that well in the second quarter,” Burrows said. “I was kind of jogging down there like ‘alright cool we got a little touchdown, but we need to play better.’”

As the offense began to have their struggles against an inferior team, the defense enforced their will on the Lions throughout the entirety of the game, holding the Lions to zero points in the first half. The Tigers’ defense made the Lions look helpless as they accounted for 37 yards total in the first half on 31 plays.

LSU’s defense has lived up to their reputation in the season thus far. SLU only made it into the red zone one time the entire game and zero points were scored on the Tigers’ defense. This was the first shutout LSU at home since 2014.

While Orgeron acknowledged that the offense was not as productive, he was impressed with his defense.

“I thought our defense overall did a pretty good job,” Orgeron said.  

Even though LSU won in a dominate fashion, according to the score, there was one facet of the Tigers game that lacked in productivity: passing.

Burrow threw for a 150 yards, two touchdowns and completed 50 percent of his passes. Forty yards and one touchdown came on a hail mary at the end of the second quarter. LSU’ passing game and pass protection was lackluster at best against an inferior team.

“We were just out of sync a little bit,” LSU’s head coach said. “Our offensive line was penetrated and we couldn’t protect Joe [Burrows]. When we did protect Joe [Burrows], we dropped some balls. We just weren’t very good on offense tonight, but we got the job done.”

There some things in the passing game that you can fix with just some practice, and there some aspects that take a little more time. Not all of the fault is Burrows because there is room for improvement on all three levels: passing, protecting and catching. Coach O mentioned it when getting in the specifics of their faults.

“We missed some balls, and we couldn’t protect,” Orgeron said. “They were all over Joe [Burrows], and a lot of missed assignments and a lot of times we got beat one-on-one.”

With the Tigers traveling to No. 7 Auburn’s home next week, they are going to need to improve in the passing game faster than time will allow. Playing good defense and running the ball can get you a long way, but to beat a team of your own stature, they will need to be more unpredictable offensively.

Video: Fanatics View