BATON ROUGE — Ed Orgeron believes that his team’s pass rushing issues can be fixed.

LSU had problems protecting its own quarterback in the 27-19 road defeat at Florida. Tigers quarterback Joe Burrow was sacked five times, hurried eight times and lost a fumble on a sack as the team gave up 11 tackles for a loss.

“Their speed got us,” said Orgeron, who has used six different starting combinations across the offensive line this season. “The guy delay-blitzed, we missed it and then we got beat around the edge a couple times. So it was some technical errors, things that we can fix.”

No. 13 LSU (5-1, 2-1 SEC) will look for better pass protection as its plays host to No. 2 Georgia (6-0, 4-0 SEC) at 2:30 p.m. on CBS this Saturday.

After giving up only two sacks and zero quarterback hurries in each of the previous two games against Ole Miss and Louisiana Tech, LSU struggled with pass protection as it had earlier in the season. In the first three games against Miami, Southeastern Louisiana and Auburn, the Tigers gave up six sacks and 10 quarterback hurries.

Orgeron was disappointed by the line’s regression against the Gators.

“Very frustrated,” Orgeron said. “It takes 11 to protect the ball. And it starts with pass protection. That first sack fumble was devastating to our team. We go up 14-0, that sack fumble got their crowd back into the game. But it’s coming from Joe’s blind side. He never saw it.

“So that’s something that we have to avoid by the protection. Then the interception, he threw it too late. Maybe he shouldn’t have thrown it, he was trying to force it in there.”

This week LSU will have to pass protect against the SEC’s leader in total defense, a team that also ranks second in the nation in scoring defense, but is surprisingly last in the SEC in sacks. 

Orgeron knows there is no room for error come Saturday.

“We have to quit shooting ourselves in the foot,” Orgeron said. “We get a big first down, we got a holding penalty. Turnovers. We go down the field and we get some sacks. Any time you get one or two sacks it’s hard to score. They get a negative plays. 

“We had 11 tackles for loss against us. So now we have to eliminate the negative plays, protect the quarterback better, sustain drives, and not have penalties that end the drive.”

The Tigers defense meanwhile came up with zero sacks and only two tackles for a loss as the Gators rushed for 215 yards. After racking up nine sacks in the first two games, LSU has recorded only four since, and last Saturday’s loss was the first time the Tigers had a sackless game since the 2014 Music City Bowl. 

Orgeron indicated that the different combinations LSU used against Florida will be used again this week, and he hopes it leads to better results.

“We’re going to continue to try to do that,” Orgeron said. “Now we didn’t have the sacks that we wanted but we went back and we had some pressures and we had some guys that had some good rushes, but it wasn’t good enough.”

The struggles on defense are not a new development. 

LSU’s defense enters the game ranked an uncharacteristic 34th in the country in total defense, and No. 9 in the SEC, as the Tigers are giving up 343.3 yards per game with 221.7 of that on the ground, which  also is ninth best in the SEC.

Georgia, meanwhile, comes in averaging 485.17 yards per game (fourth best in SEC), while averaging 245. 17 yards on the ground. 

“We have to keep our guys fresh,” said Orgeron, who is 6-0 at LSU following a loss. “But we have to make sure that the guys that we rotate can handle the player that they’re playing against. So I think that it’s a fine line there. We just can’t rotate to rotate. We have to look at the matchup, see if we put some guys in. 

“We feel that we have three corners that can go in at any time. That’s going to be important to us. We have some defensive linemen that have done a good job, not a great job but they can go in. We are thin at linebacker. We’re thin at outside linebacker. So it all depends on what position you’re talking about. We’re going to have to mix and match the things that we do on defense to match their personnel the whole game. It’s going to be another chess match.”