Just over a week ago, a moving truck towed away the national award LSU's offensive line won during the 2019 season.
None of the linemen saw it leave. Offensive line coach James Cregg broke the news in their position's group chat along with a challenging message: What are you gonna do to get it back?
The Joe Moore Award is no easy trophy to move. It's the largest trophy in college football. Fit for the position group it rewards, the gigantic wooden structure is six feet tall and weighs 800 pounds. It's as big as an upright piano. Five bronze linemen stand on its surface.
It's also the only trophy in college football that has no replica. It rotates from campus to campus, year to year. When a moving truck hauled it from the University of Oklahoma to Baton Rouge, LSU's starting right tackle Austin Deculus and his teammates knew it would eventually leave if they didn't win it again in 2020.
The offensive line's performance declined in LSU's 5-5 season, and, as if losing their trophy wasn't irritating enough, the movers took the giant structure from LSU's campus and delivered it to archrival Alabama.
Deculus wouldn't even name the trophy's next destination.
"They actually took the Joe Moore Award away from us to that other place," he said. "We're not going to say any names. That's our main goal in trying to achieve that goal and try and bring it back where it belongs."
Among all of the renovations projects that are going on within LSU's football team this offseason, improving the effectiveness of the Tigers offensive line is a major priority — particularly restoring LSU's efficient run game from the 2019 season.
Notable milestones were missing in 2020. LSU didn't have a 1,000-yard rusher for the first time since 2012. But the underlying issues involved an offensive line that too often lost its one-on-one matchups and didn't produce in crucial short yardage situations often enough.
LSU coach Ed Orgeron and several linemen have accepted this criticism, and advanced statistics also back it up.
One of the most drastic declines from 2019 to 2020 appears in a Football Outsiders metric called "Opportunity Rate," where the ball carrier gains at least four yards. LSU dropped from 12th nationally (53.1%) to 100th (43.7%) in 2020. LSU also declined in a more subjective metric "Line Yards per Carry" — which awards rushing yardage to the offensive line for runs between 0-8 yards — from 9th nationally (2.96) to 59th (2.65) in 2020.
This essentially means in layperson's terms that while it helps to have a playmaker like Clyde Edwards-Helaire — whose spin moves and elusiveness helped produce big runs in 2019 — LSU's offensive line wasn't as effective in the yardage where it had the most influence during the 2020 season.
So what changed?
LSU did lose multi-year starters in left tackle Saahdiq Charles, center Lloyd Cushenberry and right guard Damien Lewis. Their replacements — Dare Rosenthal (left tackle), Liam Shanahan (center), Chasen Hines (right guard) — also missed out on a spring football canceled by the coronavirus pandemic that would've aided their transition to an offense without former passing game coordinator Joe Brady.
Left guard Ed Ingram, a three-year starter, attributed many of the offensive line's mistakes to poor communication and signal mix-ups with a rotation of three new quarterbacks in Myles Brennan, plus true freshmen TJ Finley and Max Johnson.
"We just had so many errors and miscommunications between the quarterbacks and the offensive line," Ingram said. "We just need to regroup and create that chemistry with the whole offense so we can be dominant, because we have the potential to be."
Ingram has noticed that LSU's play-calling in the run game is becoming more diverse this offseason. Orgeron parted ways with passing game coordinator Scott Linehan after just one year. Linehan's responsibilities included third downs and red zone situations — two phases in which LSU significantly regressed last season.
New offensive coordinator Jake Peetz and passing game coordinator DJ Mangas — who both worked under Joe Brady for the Carolina Panthers last season — are installing the same spread schemes LSU used in 2019, and Ingram said he's noticed they're "mixing it up" offensively with a "spread out" run game again.
Peetz has spoken often about getting LSU's playmakers more involved again since his hiring, which will require personnel packages that will use skill players less for blocking and more for targets to make plays. Orgeron said he's challenged the offensive line to win their one-on-one blocks in the passing game again.
"We've got to have a five-man protection," Orgeron said. "We're not keeping a tight end. We're not keeping a back in. I want five guys out and let them roll. If we need to, we will, but we've got to win our one-on-ones."
The challenge is aligned with an old Joe Brady philosophy: if a team only uses five-man protections, it will give up fewer sacks because there are more passing options for the quarterback.
LSU gave up nearly the same rate of sacks per game last season (2.5) as it did in 2019 (2.3), but the Tigers often used skill players as extra blockers. Oftentimes, the added protection still didn't work. LSU kept a tight end and running back in protection against Auburn, and Finley's pass was still tipped at the line and intercepted in the second half.
There was still intense pressure when LSU attempted to spread its receivers out. Texas A&M had three sacks in its 20-7 win, and Finley threw a pick-six while getting hit by a defender when LSU attempted to go five-man protection on its own 9.
Orgeron summed up his quarterbacks' struggles after LSU's 48-17 loss at Auburn: "I can't expect them to perform well when we can't block."
Shanahan said LSU's linemen have accepted its criticisms and have a "new feeling of energy" in improving under Peetz's offense.
A "new feeling." That's what every offensive lineman is working toward. It's one of the main reasons all five of last year's starting offensive lineman chose to return for another season instead of pursue the NFL draft. It was at the root of the recruiting pitch Orgeron gave them when he fed them po-boys after the season in an attempt to convince them to stay.
Ingram said each player gave each other their space to make their own decisions. He returned home to Dallas, where he decided to return after Hines became the first player to announce he was returning. Deculus said he took his time to relax on a vacation with his girlfriend in Destin, Florida, before deciding to return. Ingram said Shanahan stole his idea to use a clip from the movie, "The Wolf of Wall Street," to announce on Twitter that the "show goes on."
Rosenthal was the last lineman to announce. Shanahan said once they all started to make their decisions, it "probably affected some of our decisions, which is pretty cool."
"We didn't come back just to go through the motions and mess around," Shanahan said. "We're trying to attack every day and be the best football team we can possibly be."
If they succeed, it's possible they'll see that moving truck return to Baton Rouge and place that 800-pound Joe Moore Award trophy back where Deculus and LSU's offensive line feels it rightfully belongs.
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