ORLANDO, Fla. — Where did the time go?
LSU tight end DeSean Smith can’t believe this is it. The end.
Could it have been just four years ago that he committed to LSU after an All-American career at Barbe High School.
But his late-blooming college career indeed gets its final chapter this morning when the No. 19 Tigers (7-4) take on No. 15 Louisville (9-3) in the Buffalo Wild Wings Citrus Bowl.
“It’s gone by so fast,” Smith said after the Tigers went through final game preps Thursday. “It definitely went by faster than high school for me. I can’t believe this will be my last game here.”
Yes … and just when things were starting to really look up, too, particularly for Smith and his fellow tight ends.
After spending three years in LSU’s version of the witness protection program — glorified offensive tackles — the tight ends were welcomed back into the passing when Ed Orgeron took over as head coach four games into the season and named Smith’s former position coach, Steve Ensminger, as offensive coordinator.
“Coach O allowed the tight ends to exist again at LSU,” Smith tweeted shortly after his final regular-season game against Texas A&M. “Would have never known we were there if it weren’t for him.”
But, perhaps surprisingly, Smith has no regrets about his four-year stay with the Tigers.
“They’ve given everything they could to me,” he said. “It’s definitely been a blast. I’m looking forward to one more game with this team.”
They just didn’t get the ball to him much — pre-Orgeron, at least.
In fact, if any player could be excused for feeling like he wasted the athlete side of the student-athlete hyphen in college, it might be Smith.
But that’s not the way he operates. Not the way he was raised in a strict household with mom Colleen and dad Gary, a Louisiana state trooper.
Smith doesn’t focus on lack of passes in his college career.
“It’s a brotherhood,” he said of life as a Tiger. “You wake up at 6 a.m. and you’ve got workouts and you’ve got school all day. You’ve got tutoring. You’ve got practice, you’ve got film study.
“Doing that every day and being around those guys every day, you build that brotherhood.”
Smith was always going to be a Tiger, he said, and never mind if the LSU offense didn’t particularly jive with what he ran at wide-open Barbe, where he was far better known for his sure hands in an offense that treated tight ends like split ends.
He’s been no stranger to the field since arriving on campus as one of the top recruits of the 2013 class. But with four catches today, over half of his career receptions will have been in the final eight games with the tight ends unleashed.
He goes into the finale with 18 for his career, nine of them this season, although two — including a 46-yarder for his lone touchdown — came before the mid-season tight end enlightenment.
“I wish I could stay another year,” Smith said. “These guys are so lucky to have Coach O for the next coach. If I could do it one more year, I definitely would. That’s how much I appreciate him and how he treats the team.”
It probably didn’t hurt that Ensminger was formerly coaching the position.
“Absolutely,” Smith said. “He knew that we’d been wanting the ball the past four years. He’s added us to the game plan more. For a while tight ends didn’t exist at LSU. But now they’re here. It might not be my time, but I hope the tight ends behind show out and have great years and become All-Americans.”
Given his background at Barbe, Smith knew he was in for change at LSU, where tight ends were issued pads and told to check their egos (and, for practical purposes, their hands) at the door.
Blocking wasn’t a big part of his package at Barbe when Ensminger was recruiting him.
“In high school, he was a receiver,” Ensminger said. “Here he’d have to block. There was no doubt in my mind he could do it. I said to him, “You’re going to have to grow up and learn how to block.’”
It wasn’t always easy, although he said he’d prepared himself for the new challenge. Then he often found himself going against veteran defensive linemen. Danielle Hunter and Jamauria Rasco.
“It was mind-blowing to me because I’d never done it before,” he recalled. “That’s something from the first day I knew I had to work on if I was going to be play at the next level. Coach Ensminger helped me tremendously.”
Ensminger said Smith’s last game, against Texas A&M, might have been best as a blocker — while also catching three passes for 33 yards.
“It’s amazing how far he’s come in four years,” Ensminger said. “His blocking, he’s shown he can sustain them … and he’s still an outstanding receiver.”
“I thought Missouri was my best,” Smith said.
Or maybe the best is yet to come.
The statistics may not be there to attract the NFL draft, but Smith definitely has designs on the next level.
“There’s no doubt in my mind he will have a chance,” Ensminger said. “I’ve talked to scouts. Like I’ve told him, at that level you’ve got to be able to catch the football — he can definitely do that — but you’ve to block.
“He’s come a long way. Somebody will give him a chance.”
That’s in the near future. Long-term, sometime, he plans to follow his dad as a state trooper.
“I look forward to cleaning up the streets and being a good person overall and being a good trooper,” he said. “I always had that strict background growing up. That’s what kept me out of trouble. Hopefully I can keep some kids out of trouble some day.”
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