For many fans, worrying about how a program has competed against another program over five decades is irrelevant.
As it turned out Saturday night at The Rock in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, the historical paranoia old-school UL fans were saddled with going into the matchup with Southern Miss was the only thing that made any sense at all after the Cajuns fell 35-31 to the Golden Eagles, dropping to 2-25 all-time on that field.
“We didn’t play well enough to win,” UL coach Michael Desormeaux said. “Too many mental mistakes and critical errors.”
The matchup was supposed to be the Cajuns’ 200-yard rushing attack running all over the Southern Miss defense, which ranked dead last in the league at 252 yards allowed a game. Instead, UL didn’t eclipse the 100-yard rushing mark until the fourth quarter and only finished with 118, even with JJ Garner’s 42-yard touchdown run.
“They started doing some different things the last couple weeks,” Desormeaux said. “Against Arkansas State, they played some different stuff and had a little bit of success with it. We were prepared for it. It was stuff that we worked on and prepared for. We didn’t win the tear-off on some stuff.
“To get into the technical approach, we were too lateral on a lot of our runs. The zone runs were too lateral, not denting the front.”
For most of his tenure as UL’s starting quarterback, Lunch Winfield’s best attribute is his running ability. In recent weeks, defenses and nagging injuries have taken that away from him. Winfield had only seven yards on 13 carries in this game, with three sacks.
He threw for a career-high 299 yards on 22 of 41 passes, with two touchdowns and one costly pick-six interception.
Even worse, the Southern Miss offense came into the game 10th in the league with 133.7 rushing yards a game. The Golden Eagles looked like 1970s Oklahoma against a UL defense that was giving up 104.3 rushing yards a game.
“It’s gap integrity,” Desormeaux said. “They went back to some stuff that gave us problems in the past. Things that hadn’t given us problems this year. We fixed it and thought we had it cleaned up, and tonight it showed back up.”
The Eagles ran for 286 yards and four touchdowns. Jamarice Wilder had 154 yards and the game-winning TD run on 13 carries, while Steven Robinson had 145 and three touchdowns on 22 attempts.
“They went to some simple split flows on schemes that we had done a really good job against,” Desormeaux added. “We had enough people in the box for it. We just were getting cut out of our gaps and getting kicked out. You’ve got to dent the front, you got to knock it back. You got to hold your gap, and then you got to tear off and we weren’t able to do those things.
“It wasn’t a light box type of thing.”
Offensively, UL should have been able to run all over the Southern Miss defense — on paper anyway.
But again, this was The Rock, where the Cajuns never seem to have the upper hand.
Another disturbing trend played a critical role in the Cajuns’ loss. For the fourth time this season, UL’s opponent scored a touchdown with the offense on the field.
Leading by a touchdown with 10:05 left, Winfield was intercepted by Koly Peavy on a third-and-7 play and returned 25 yards for the game-tying score.
“It’s third down and it was a play we felt like was a pretty safe call that would allow us to get the first,” Desormeaux said. “It’s an option route and we didn’t break in. We should break in, and the inside is open. At quarterback, if you don’t like it, don’t throw it.
“So we just didn’t execute a play that we put in pretty early on in fall camp. We didn’t execute it very well, so obviously we didn’t do a very good job of teaching it and getting it ready to go.”
Another troubling aspect of the Cajuns’ loss was a trio of 3-and-outs directly linked to heavy pressure on Winfield.
“The pass pro stuff was just, it was one person here and there,” Desormeaux said. “One time, the back wasn’t on the same page. I mean, it’s clearly communicated and we let a free runner through.”
Even with all those issues, the Cajuns drove 74 yards on 17 plays in the fourth quarter to reach the gold zone, but had to settle for a 22-yard Tony Sterner field goal.
On the first down play, “We missed the block on the edge, you know? It’s a damn man block, and we just missed him. It’s one of those things you’ve got to execute in critical moments. It says one-on-one; I thought we could get the ball to the safety. It was in the middle of the field, and we missed the block at the point of attack.”
Then on third down, “They were in zero coverage and we tried to hit them with a play-action pass over the top and we weren’t able to complete it.”
After that, the Eagles ran the ball right at UL’s defense to get the game-winning score with 50 seconds left.
Indeed, yet another dreary night at The Rock.
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