EXACTLY!!!
We were NOT down big...until the Offense kept going 3 and out...
No one is saying the offense was perfect. But when the other teams starts running the clock out by just running up the gut... and they get 10 yards every time... when you KNOW they are running. It sure is hard to get things going. Both sides of the ball need work. But look at the stats. We had a top 10-15 offense this year, and if you take into account the bowl game, our defense probably sits at around ~60th in the country.
Defense takes much more priority over offensive worries in my book. The offense played a pretty good first half. From a execution standpoint, it would have been prefect if people would have made normal, easy plays. i.e. that drop by Freeman. And the ball that hit the Shark in the frikking head in the end-zone. Those two things go right and we have 300 yards of offense in the first half against an amazing defense.
The second half wasn't great and I still think a lot of it just hinged on poor execution.
Plain and simple, we need more depth, we need better athletes, we need a swagger. A lot of that swagger naturally comes form the better athletes. And they tend to show up big in big games. We also need a motivator. And lots of teams get great motivation from their defensive coordinator. Minter lacks a lot in both coordination, and scheming. As well as recruiting. Plain and simple, he didn't land any of those big defensive commits that we were just looking at this weekend. Notre Dame does a lot of the recruiting for him.
Again, if we have time to worry about anything, it should be defense. Our offense wasn't perfect, but it was a top 10-15 offense. In the Sugar Bowl, we gave up 6.6 yards a carry against LSU and 9.8 yards PER pass attempt against LSU.
577 was the most yards LSU gained this year... against any team. That includes the absolute pancakes on their schedule.
Guess what? 617 was the most yards OSU put on a team last year too.
Alabama and Arkansas were the only teams that LSU played that put up more yards than the 291 that ND put up on LSU. And 250 of those came in the first half. Which is the most by any team this year...