<p class="indent">LSU quarterback Joe Burrow was “black and blue” Monday, according to head coach Ed Orgeron.</p><p class="indent">It can happen when you get sacked five times and slammed to the ground even more times.</p><p class="indent">No problem, Burrow said.</p><p class="indent">“I bruise like a peach …” he said, insisting that he was little worse for his Saturday ordeal in The Swamp where he threw the first two interceptions of his career and the Tigers lost for the first time this season, 27-19, to Florida.</p><p class="indent">“Doesn’t complain a bit,” Orgeron said. “Smart. Makes great decisions. But he’s not Superman. Nobody is … There’s a lot of things that he can get better at, but we need to help him out too.”</p><p class="indent">Mainly, protect him.</p><p class="indent">And it won’t get any easier this week when No. 2 Georgia — from the Peach Tree state, no less — visits Tiger Stadium.</p><p class="indent">The good news?</p><p class="indent">For the first time this season, LSU will start an offensive line combination that it has used before.</p><p class="indent">The bad news?</p><p class="indent">That combination gave up the five sacks and struggled to keep the Gators off of Burrow the rest of the day.</p><p class="indent">Saturday, Orgeron admitted that particularly the left side of the line had problems — where Adrian Magee was playing guard for the first time and tackle Saahdiq Charles was back after missing the two previous games and only returned to practice late last week.</p><p class="indent">LSU considered trying the seventh different combination this week in the season’s seventh game.</p><p class="indent">“We had that talk last night and we want continuity,” he said of staying pat this week.</p><p class="indent">The Tigers will still be without normal starting left guard Garrett Brumfield for third straight week. Orgeron hopes to get him back next week for Mississippi State.</p><p class="indent">“That would give us some flexibility … but right now we can’t do anything.”</p><p class="indent">“Obviously Adrian made some mistakes at left guard but he had two days of practice at it. That’s kind of tough. We thought about switching him back to tackle (but) we didn’t think that would be fair to him or the offensive line to be able to block another great front, another different position, so we wanted to keep it the same this week.”</p><p class="indent">He also said Charles, considered one of the Tigers’ best, had problems.</p><p class="indent">“He knows that … again, you don’t practice, he had a pretty tough injury to get back from. Not making excuses for him but he was a little rusty.</p><p class="indent">“The speed in which Florida hit us hurt us. We got to match that speed during practice.”</p><p class="indent">A blind side sack forced the lost fumble by Burrow with LSU driving with a 7-0 lead late in the first quarter that Orgeron thought might have been the game’s turning point.</p><p class="indent">But, he stressed, “It takes you 11 to protect the ball … (Burrow) never saw it. So that’s something that we have to avoid by the protection.”</p><p class="indent">Orgeron went through a long list of the technical aspects of offensive line play that were lacking, but called them all “things that we can fix.”</p><p class="indent">He said the interception that Burrow threw for a picksix that all but sealed the deal was probably thrown too late in the flat.</p><p class="indent">“Maybe he shouldn’t have thrown it, he was trying to force it in there,” Orgeron said.</p><p class="indent">“I know (offensive coordinator) Steve Ensminger thought like he got rattled a little bit, but I was joking with Steve, I said, ‘I think I would have been rattled too.’ Sometimes he was running for his life back there.</p><p class="indent">“But, yes, he should have gotten rid of the ball a little faster.”</p>
Saturday 2:30 p.m. | CBS
