Ed Orgeron says LSU held players-only meeting ahead of Florida
The losses are starting to pile up for Ed Orgeron and LSU, as the Tigers had no answer for Kentucky last week, falling in deflating, 42-21 fashion, and dropping their record to just 3-3.
With another week came another brutal loss for Orgeron, who can claim an overall record of just .500 in games since the 2019 national championship run. And frankly, with No. 20 Florida, No. 13 Ole Miss, No. 5 Alabama and No. 16 Arkansas in four-straight weeks, things could get a whole lot worse for LSU.
The Tigers have to find a way to stop the bleeding, and they have to do it fast. If they don’t, and if LSU picks up another loss, Orgeron could very well be fired; in fact, most analysts believe that athletic director Scott Woodward will have to make that call in the coming weeks, and some voices, like Paul Finebaum, have already begun pondering LSU’s future without Orgeron at the helm.
LSU has taken blow after blow, not just in the loss column but in terms of injuries, too. Now, the Tigers are banding together as they try to stop the bleeding, and that began with a players-only meeting ahead of the home tilt with the No. 20 Florida Gators.
“[Senior linebacker] Andre Anthony had a players-only meeting on Monday,” Orgeron said in Thursday’s press conference, describing the meeting just after a loss to Kentucky. “And the team has been on fire all week. We have a saying here: next man up. And I told the team at the beginning of the year, everybody is going to have to play, everybody is going to have to be ready. So we have some guys that are eager, that were playing second-team and now are going to be playing for the Tigers. They brought some energy this week, and they’re excited about playing.”
Orgeron had the LSU Tigers slowly on the rise since his arrival in 2016, a season in which the Tigers went 8-4 and won a Citrus Bowl title. They improved to 9-4 the next season; albeit with a loss in the Citrus Bowl, and Orgeron took yet another leap at LSU in 2018, finishing 10-3 and winning the Fiesta Bowl. It wasn’t until 2019, however, when he solidified the Tigers’ spot atop the college football world with an emphatic season: LSU went 15-0 with the likes of Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Joe Burrow, winning bowl the Peach Bowl and College Football Playoff national championship.
But then, the wheels fell off, prompting pressing discussion on Orgeron’s future. LSU lost tons of talent to the NFL Draft after its national championship and went 5-5 in the 2020 season. This year, things are only getting worse, and LSU is 3-3 with losses to UCLA, Auburn and Kentucky. It seems like a matter of when — not if — LSU will make the decision to fire Orgeron in his sixth season.
If Anthony’s meeting says anything, however, it’s that the LSU players will do anything in their power to prevent that from happening. But they’ll need to prevent another loss to make good on their promise.