I've reviewed what their new OC Steve Ensminger does, based on the mid to latter portion of the 2016 season, and I'll be pretty blunt in saying this, I am happy, for our sake, that Ed Orgeron fired Matt Canada and replaced him with Ensminger.
Based on stats alone, this common theme stated by Orgeron regarding how the offense in 2016 had a significant uptick with him Ensminger calling the plays with the same playbook at Cam Cameron is skewed big time based on who they played. Let's look at the first four games (these are the games Cam Cameron was OC):
LSU vs Wisconsin - 16 - 14 L (Dave Arranda DC)
LSU vs Jacksonville State - 34 - 12 W
MissSt vs LSU - 23 - 20 W (This MSU team was lousy and Dan Mullen was the HC, and after the year they got drained of some NFL talent)
LSU vs AU - 18-13 L
As you can see they played a hefty front end loaded schedule with some very strong defense. UW had Dave Arranda as their DC and were firing on all cylinders then, as he grew his reputation. AU traditionally has a strong defense and a ball control offense (less opportunities to put up pts and yards).
The opportunities to pad stats were vs MSU and JSU, but this team had Fournette with Guice backing him up. So they would run the ball ad nauseum and why not? Especially with a trash QB and garbage WRs.
Schedule with Steve Ensminger:
Mizz vs LSU - 42 - 7 W
Southern Mizz - 45 - 10 W
LSU vs Ole Miss - 38 - 21 W
Alabama - LSU - 10 - 0 L
Arky vs LSU - 38 - 10 W
UF vs LSU - 16 - 10 L
TAMU vs LSU - 54 - 39 W (Always had terrible Defense with Sumlin especially Run D)
Louisville vs LSU - 29 - 9 W (UK put up 41 on them that same year!)
Chattanoga vs LSU - 45 - 0 W
As noted above when they played a competent defense who could stop the run they were fudged. Now it clearly shows a noticeable uptick with pts (and likely total yards) but consider who they played with the notes above.
I'm expecting the same type of offense we've all seen during the Les Mile's era. He's a classic old white guy that runs under center with I formations. Run Iso's and tosses and runs bootlegs and Play Action deep balls.
Don't expect anything fancy. If rumours are true, they're going 4 or 5 wide, then I expect QB Leads, QB Sweeps, Jet Sweeps with tonens of quick WR screens and slants with the occasional deep shot. If you look at his resume he has not been around any variations of the Spread other then last year with Matt Canada.
My expectation is, if we can stop the run on 1st and 2nd down, I expect I'll be having my arms up at the end of the game. If we can't control the run game, then it's gonna be a long day for the Hurricanes and we're going to have to rely on a shoot out type day.
I expect a Win for the The U something around 27 -10. We're just too dam fast to not get some deep shots, like last year.