Louisiana (Lafayette) receives an opportunity for somewhat of a fresh start Saturday as it opens Sun Belt Conference play.
On the heels of a heartbreaker at Eastern Michigan and amid a tough opening month overall, a bit of a reset may be exactly what the Ragin’ Cajuns (1-3) need.
Coach Michael Desormeaux pointed out Monday that the difference between a winning and losing record thus far has been razor-thin and that the focal points for improvement are clear as the team prepares for Marshall (2-2) and the rest of the league schedule.
“We’re certainly not in the position that we were planning on being in through Week 4, losing two games by a field goal or less,” he said. “And the worst part is it’s a lot of self-inflicted things… Good football teams don’t beat themselves. And right now the difference between being 3-1 or 1-3 are self-inflicted wounds that we’ve got to clean up and get better.
“So, talked about having to get better every week all the way up to conference, and I do think we’ve cleaned some things up and we’ve gotten better in some areas. But some of these issues that are lingering have got to get taken care of, and we’ve gotta do it with a sense of urgency, because here we are.”
A specific shortcoming on each side of the ball particularly stood out to Desormeaux as he broke down the 34-31 loss in Ypsilanti, Mich., and the overall performance thus far.
The Cajuns’ defense has not tackled as efficiently the past two weeks as it had the previous two weeks, the coach said.
According to PFF (Pro Football Focus) metrics, the team’s number of missed tackles increased 70% from its 1-1 start against Rice and McNeese State to its back-to-back road losses at Missouri and Eastern Michigan.
“Some of that is I don’t think we always did the best job communicating kinda where the fits were, but some of it’s just you’ve gotta run through tackles — bring your feet, wrap up, run your feet and you’ve gotta get ’em on the ground,” Desormeaux said. “We’ve gotta do a better job of that, so we’ve gotta go back to the tackling fundamentals, which we work every week, but we’ve gotta overemphasize it.”
Additionally, Louisiana has tied for No. 92 nationally among Division-I FBS programs with an average of seven penalties per game and No. 67 with an average of 54 penalties yards per game.
Desormeaux pointed specifically to miscues that have stalled the offense, adding further hurdles to a unit already trying to work in redshirt freshman quarterback Daniel Beale on the fly following a Week 1 injury to starter Walker Howard.
“Offensively, there were a lot of things that were a lot better,” the coach said. “But the self-inflicted wounds, the penalties, those are the things that when you have eight of ’em on offense, I mean, that affects everything. It affects your red-zone scoring. It affects your points at the end of the game. It affects your efficiency. It affects your negative-play percentage. It affects your conversion rate. It affects everything that you do.
“And we’ve gotta find a way to stop doing it. It’s things that you’ve gotta coach the discipline — knowing when to let go. A lot of it, most of it, all of it is technical. And it’s things that we’ve gotta clean up.”
The Ragin’ Cajuns will work to sure up those issues knowing that a good Marshall team — the reigning conference champion, albeit with an overhauled roster following a coaching change — arrives capable of stressing opponents in a variety of ways and capitalizing on those types of miscues.
But the fresh slate that comes with conference play also provides some solace and excitement that, even with the tough state, the program’s goals remain largely intact in front of it.
“That’s the thing that we’ve talked about,” Desormeaux said. “You’d feel a whole lot better if you were 3-1 right now. you’d feel a whole lot better if you had found a way to win those two games. But the reality is that is has no bearing on the second half of the season, it has no bearing on the conference part of it. So for us, you’ve got eight games left, and they’re all conference games, and they all matter for us.
“So you’ve gotta flip the page, and there’s a lot of things to take from the first four games that you want to do well and need to replicate, need to do better, need to do more consistently, but there’s things like I said that kinda keep lingering. But you feel like as soon as you get ’em fixed, you’ve got a chance to turn this thing around pretty quick. But we’ve gotta do it now, becuase this is the first conference game, and they matter.”