Dan McCarney thought he was dealing with some big guys a couple of weeks ago when his defensive line had to go toe to toe with that huge offensive line at Tennessee. Those guys were big but the guys he sees on the left side of the LSU offensive line make those Tennessee linemen look like card-carrying graduates of Jenny Craig.
It’s no wonder that Charles Scott is leading the SEC in rushing (133.8 yards per game). At 5-11, 233, Scott is big, strong and fast but he must look like he’s been shot out of a cannon when he roars through one of those train-tunnel size holes in the defensive line created by left guard Herman Johnson and left tackle Ciron Black.
Black is 6-5 and maybe a biscuit or two shy of 350 pounds, one of the larger left tackles in the Southeastern Conference. He must look like a little brother standing next to Johnson, the largest offensive lineman in the SEC at 6-7, 375. Johnson and Black aren’t simply big guys who occupy a lot of space. They have quick feet and plenty of strength.
What they do best is collapse an entire side of the line and that allows Scott to hit the hole in full stride. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that he’s averaging 7.5 yards per carry and putting up the kind of numbers that could elevate him into the thick of the Heisman Trophy race by the time November rolls around.
Scott is what McCarney calls “a great back” but Florida’s defensive line coach knows that it all starts up front for LSU. That means that Saturday night’s SEC contest between the 12th-ranked Gators (4-1, 2-1 SEC East) and the third-ranked Tigers (4-0, 2-0 SEC West) will be won in the trenches.
“We have to be at our best and we have to play better defense than we have all year,” said McCarney, in his first year as the defensive line coach at UF. “My defensive line has to play better than they have to this point. If we do that it’s going to be a heckuva game. If we don’t, they can just wear you out.”
That’s pretty much the LSU game plan under coach Les Miles. The Tigers like to wear teams out up front and they pound away on that left side occupied by Johnson, a first team All-SEC guard, and Black, a second team All-SEC tackle.
“They can just thrash you and toss you around and bowl you over and out-physical you at the line of scrimmage,” said McCarney.
Even though the Tigers run the ball 70 percent of the time (average 206.5 yards per game), there is tremendous balance in the offense. LSU is so good running the football that opponents are forced to load up in the box and take their chances with a set of long striding wide receivers who all seem to have go the distance speed.
Early in the season that seemed like a bright idea since LSU’s quarterbacks were unproven but now that redshirt freshman Jarrett Lee has established himself the Tigers are throwing the ball for an average of 220.8 yards per game. Lee ranks second to Florida’s Tim Tebow in passing efficiency (146.5 to Tebow’s 148.0) in the SEC. He’s 45-77, good for 643 yards and six touchdowns.
Lee’s backup is Andrew Hatch, the starter in the first three games of the year. Hatch has thrown for 218 yards and one touchdown.
“Both quarterbacks can play,” said McCarney. “One (Hatch) runs the ball more than the other. They both have accuracy; one’s 58 percent (Lee) and the other is 51 percent but they’re smart and tough.”
Ideally, LSU doesn’t want Lee or Hatch in the position to have to win the game throwing the football. The Tigers would prefer to pound teams into submission by lining up and knocking the other guys off the line of scrimmage.
LSU prefers to go left with the running game but the other three members of that offensive line are really good. McCarney says that center Brett Helms, a 6-3, 278-pound center, is “the best we’ve seen all year” and that includes Jonathan Luigs, the Arkansas All-American that won the Rimington Trophy last year as the nation’s best center. Flanking Helms on the right side are guard Lyle Hitt (6-3, 290) and tackle Joseph Barksdale (6-5, 315).
But when the Tigers need to get tough yards, there is no question which side they’ll go to.
“In a lot of critical situations, they do favor running to their left side more and I would too,” said McCarney. “It’s not that the right side is weak. It’s just that the left side … when you’re 370 and you’re 350 and when you’re athletic and tough. Who are we kidding? We have a great challenge ahead.”
The thought of stopping LSU or even slowing the Tigers down is perhaps the greatest challenge of the season for the Gators, who were gashed for 133 yards last week by pint-sized Michael Smith of Arkansas, the third-leading rusher in the SEC. Florida’s defensive line had all sorts of problems with trap plays that Arkansas ran over and over again.
While it might have looked like Arkansas was blowing the Gators off the line of scrimmage, McCarney says it was more like the Razorbacks were fooling the Florida linemen.
“You watch the tape and they ran three traps which is really kind of an influence play,” said McCarney. “It wasn’t like there were four guys getting knocked on their backs. We have to play better. We’re going to have to be more physical.”
Although Arkansas rang up the Gator defense for 354 total yards, McCarney says the Razorbacks didn’t win the only statistical battle that counts.
“The most important statistic on defense is points given up,” said McCarney. “Do we like all the first downs and moving the chains and the yards we gave up? No, but I’ve been doing this a long time. Seven points we’ll take it on any Saturday.”
He will get some help for his defensive line this week from sophomore Torrey Davis (6-3, 300), who played his first snaps of the season last week against Arkansas, and Brandon Antwine (5-11, 300), who will be taking the field for the first time in more than a year after a mysterious and debilitating back injury that threatened his career.
He will need those guys and all the help he can muster from tackles Lawrence Marsh, Terron Sanders, Javier Estopinan along with ends Carlos Dunlap, Jermaine Cunningham, Justin Trattou and Duke Lemmens if he intends to slow down the LSU running game.
McCarney says it’s not a case of shutting LSU down. It’s a matter of slowing them down enough that the Gators can pull out a win.
“We have to do all that we can to slow them down,” he said. “We’re not going to stop them. Who are we kidding? That stuff sounds good. We’re not going to stop them. We have to slow them down and we have to be good on third down again and hopefully get some turnovers but they don’t do much of that. They’re taking care of the football and that’s why you see them 4-0 right now.”
It is games like this one that McCarney chose to come to Florida. He was the defensive line coach and assistant head coach at South Florida last year. He could have stayed at USF where most of the team is coming back including his All-American defensive end George Selvie, but he chose to come to Florida for a chance to be a part of SEC games that have a playoff feel to them every week.
He’s coached in the Big Ten, the Big 12 and the Big East conferences, but he admits he’s never seen anything like the SEC.
“Any Saturday that with the talent and the coaching anybody can get anybody else,” he said. “This is truly an unbelievable conference.”
So how can the Gators trip up the defending national champions, a team loaded up with players that had plenty to do with that title run last year?
“We have to have at least one more point than they do come Saturday night,” said McCarney. “That’s what we’re going to try to do.”