Sports - Colleges - LSU

Thursday, Oct. 22, 2009

LSU defense making strides under first-year coordinator

BATON ROUGE, La. — LSU’s new defensive coordinator said he wasn’t the least bit embarrassed by the tears he shed after a game-saving, goal-line stand earlier this season.

“When I stop feeling the emotion and the excitement about what those kids got done, man, when I stop feeling that way, then somebody else needs to be doing this,” John “Chief” Chavis said this week, referring to the final minutes of a 30-26 victory at Mississippi State earlier this season.

“When I’m walking down into that stadium, if the butterflies go away, then I need to go away.”

Halfway through Chavis’ first season at LSU, it appears that the No. 9 Tigers are responding well to their new defensive coordinator’s scheme, as well as his passionate coaching style.

Although LSU yielded 478 yards and 23 points in a season-opening victory at Washington, the Tigers (5-1, 3-1 Southeastern Conference) head into this Saturday’s clash with Auburn (5-2, 2-2) having allowed averages of only 291.4 yards and 12.8 points in their last five games. LSU also has intercepted at least one pass in every game.

“We haven’t been as good as we’d like, but we’ve gotten better each week,” Chavis said. “There’s no question about that.”

Chavis spent the previous 14 years overseeing perennially tough defenses at Tennessee, so he was expected to get quick results. For the most part, the statistics indicate his unit is getting a lot tougher to score against.

One of only a few figures that really chafes Chavis is LSU’s five sacks, which ranks last in the Southeastern Conference.

Yet quarterbacks still have had trouble completing passes or putting up points against LSU.

“Certainly, when you’ve played six ball games, you need to have more than five sacks, but I think we’ve had good steady pressure,” Chavis said. “If you get good pressure and you look at the (opponents’) completion percentage (50.5 percent), you’re pleased with that. I’ll take steady pressure any day and we’ve been fortunate to have that.”

Defensive pressure was something LSU routinely lacked last season, when the Tigers twice gave up more than 50 points in losses to Florida and Georgia, then gave up more than 30 points each in losses to Mississippi and Arkansas.

For the 2008 season, the Tigers gave up averages of 24 points and nearly 326 yards. Those results led 2008 co-defensive coordinators Bradley Dale Peveto and Doug Mallory to seek work elsewhere, and head coach Les Miles acted decisively to bring in Chavis, who was ready to leave the Volunteers when he found out his longtime boss, Phillip Fulmer, wouldn’t be back as head coach.