GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
COLLEGE STATION, Texas – Alabama quarterback Jalen Milroe would likely prefer not to have an open date this weekend.
After watching film of Texas A&M quarterback Marcel Reed shred LSU’s defense in just a handful of series on Saturday night in the Aggies’ 38-23 win, Milroe would probably like to play at LSU tonight.
But Milroe, who is the No. 3 rushing quarterback in the Southeastern Conference with 380 yards on 102 carries and 12 touchdowns, will have to wait until Saturday, Nov. 9. That’s when the No. 14 Crimson Tide (6-2, 3-2 SEC) play at No. 16 LSU (6-2, 3-1 SEC) at 6:30 p.m. on ABC.
Reed, a redshirt freshman who was only the No. 20-ranked quarterback out of Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville in 2023, came into the LSU game with three starts out of five games. He had 226 yards rushing and two touchdowns on 43 carries at the time and had completed 45 of 81 passes for 655 yards and six touchdowns. So, plenty of film on him.
COLUMN: LSU DESTROYED IN SECOND HALF AT TEXAS A&M
On the third A&M possession of the third quarter with LSU in control and ahead 17-7 lead, Reed replaced struggling sophomore starter Conner Weigman, who was 6-of-18 passing for 64 yards with four sacks and six rushes for -14 yards.
Reed entered with the Aggies on LSU’s 8-yard line after the first of three interceptions by Tigers’ quarterback Garrett Nussmeier with 8:17 to go in the third quarter. And Reed scooted left for a touchdown to cut LSU’s lead to 17-14.
And he was off.
After LSU botched a field goal attempt like it was a junior high team, Reed rushed for 4 yards, then 20 and another 8-yard touchdown to take a 21-17 lead with a minute left in the third quarter. A&M ran on all seven plays of the 60-yard drive. So it wasn’t just Reed gashing defensive coordinator Blake Baker’s unit, which suddenly became the 2023 defense of coordinator Matt House. Tailback Amari Daniels did gain 91 yards on 12 carries for the Aggies, who also got 83 on 14 rushes from tailback Le’Veon Moss of the Baton Rouge area.
Reed is getting a lot of attention, but it may have been A&M’s offensive line destroying the Tigers’ run defense. The Aggies did rush for 242 yards on 49 carries, including 98 on 22 rushes in the second half. Reed had 62 of those on nine carries with three touchdowns. But Daniels averaged more than 10 yards a carry in the second half, gaining 53 on five rushes. And Moss added another 29 on five carries in the second half for nearly six yards a pop.
Reed also threw only two passes, but he completed both, and each were significant.
After Nussmeier threw another interception, the Aggies took over on the LSU 25. Reed completed a 16-yard pass to Moss as the third quarter ended. Reed rushed for 4 yards, then a 4-yard touchdown to increase the Aggies’ lead to 28-17 with 14:07 to go.
The Tigers answered with a 78-yard drive of their own with six passes out of nine plays to cut the deficit to 28-23 with 9:57 left following a Nussmeier incompletion on the two-point conversion attempt. Still plenty of time.
But on Reed’s very next play, he found wild receiver Noah Thomas deep and alone for 54 yards to set up another touchdown and 35-23 lead with 8:09 to play. After another Nussmeier interception, A&M kicked a late field goal for the final.
LSU JUST COULDN’T STOP MARCEL REED
All totaled, that’s five possessions (excluding Reed kneels at the very end) by Reed, who produced four touchdowns and a field goal. He finished with 11 touches for 132 yards, including 2-of-2 passing for 70 yards.
“Yeah, you could say that,” Reed said when asked if he provided a spark. “Took me a couple seconds. Ran a play, got in the end zone.”
Lake Charles American Press sports writer Scooter Hobbs asked LSU coach Brian Kelly after the game, “How much did you prepare for the RPO (run-pass option)?”
In reality, there was virtually no RPO. Reed threw only twice, so in truth he beat LSU with the RO – run option. And Kelly knew it.
“Well, it wasn’t the RPOs as much as it was the quarterback run game,” he said. “And I mean, it’s the million-dollar question. I would say that we need to spend more time on it each and every week. That has got to be part of it. Because, right now, I would run the quarterback on us.”
Milroe will be ready, and he may recognize the defense from last year even with Baker replacing House. Milroe rushed 20 times for 155 yards and four touchdowns from 23, 21, 11 and 4 yards out in a 42-28 win over LSU in Tuscaloosa. He did use a lot of RPOs and completed 15 of 23 passes for 219 yards.
Amazingly, Baker and LSU had no trouble with quarterback runs the week before A&M at Arkansas. Razorbacks’ quarterback Taylen Green, who is the No. 2 rushing quarterback in the SEC with 395 yards and five touchdowns on 95 carries this season, gained -10 yards on six carries with three sacks in a 34-10 loss to the Tigers. Without the sacks, he gained only 14 yards on three carries.
The difference was LSU prepared for Green. Kelly and Baker did not prepare as much – if at all – for the possibility of Reed, even though he had played in five of the Aggies’ seven games coming in.
“We didn’t really prepare for it, honestly,” LSU senior linebacker Greg Penn III told reporters after the game. “We didn’t think that he was going to come in the game, so him coming in the game caught us off guard. We didn’t really know what runs they were going to run.”
And Kelly and Baker and Baker’s defensive assistants did not seem to make any adjustments, or any that worked.
“Them doing that opened the game up for them in terms of what they were doing on offense,” Penn said.
“We played such good defense (pre-Reed),” Kelly said. “In the first half, it was so good to see our defense playing. And then, they go to a running quarterback, and it just goes away from us.”
And where did the coaching go?
“I feel as though from a coaching standpoint, we need to help our team,” Kelly said. “And I didn’t feel like we had the answers necessary on defense, nor on offense, to help our group out. We need to coach better.”
In LSU’s defense, Reed had barely played in the Aggies’ previous two games after Weigman returned from missing three games with a shoulder injury. In A&M’s 41-10 win over Missouri on Oct. 5, Reed rushed once for -4 yards and did not throw a pass. In the 34-24 win over Mississippi State last week after an open week, Reed did not play.
Weigman, meanwhile, completed 18 of 22 for 276 yards against Missouri and even rushed five times for 33 yards. He completed 15 of 25 for 217 with a touchdown in the win over Mississippi State, but threw two interceptions.
“We just thought Conner Weigman was going to get the majority of the snaps,” Penn said. “He’d been playing pretty well. We just thought he was going to be the guy.”
When Reed started the Arkansas game on Sept. 28, he completed 11 of 22 passes for 163 yards and two touchdowns. But he rushed just 10 times for 13 yards. He did run very well in wins over Bowling Green (12 rushes, 91 yards) and Florida (13 rushes, 83 yards). But LSU’s coaches basically ignored Reed in game week.
“We have a plan for the running quarterback,” Kelly said. “I don’t know that we executed at the level we needed to. Should we have spent more time on it? Sure looks that way.”
Teams should not have to prepare for everything each week this late in a season, however. LSU had obviously prepared for running quarterbacks in the past against Arkansas and against South Alabama.
“I don’t believe that three was a sense that we weren’t capable of doing it after feeling really good about how we played the running quarterback last week at Arkansas,” Kelly said. “Because we had a similar plan.”
But plugging in that plan on the fly did not work Saturday, if it was indeed tried.
“We didn’t run the same calls that we ran on Taylen Green,” Penn said.
Then again, LSU’s defense may have just got manhandled, regardless of who was doing the running.
LSU now has an extra week to prepare for one of the most basic plays since the earliest days of college football and even more so in recent years – a running quarterback.
Rest assured, Penn and company will prepare a lot for Milroe runs over the next two weeks.
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