BATON ROUGE — Upset alerts and panic meters circulated through the leadup to LSU football's matchup with South Alabama from pundits and experts.

Many expected an LSU defense without its best pro prospect in Harold Perkins, who suffered a season-ending knee injury against UCLA last week, to give up a storm of points, which in turn would sound the alarms for what kind of shape the unit would be in as it would enter the meat of the team's SEC schedule following the upcoming off week.

But the No. 13 Tigers handled what was a fiery Jaguar offense coming in, silencing them in the 42-10 victory inside Tiger Stadium on Saturday night.

LSU (4-1), which played with three linebackers on the field with Perkins before he got hurt, rolled back to a 4-2-5 base, adding the Star position back to its formation with senior Major Burns and Dashawn Spears playing down in the box some.

Despite early-season struggles in that scheme, the Tigers orchestrated a far better performance in the 4-2-5 defense against a scrappy South Alabama offense.

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"They give you a lot of eye candy on offense," sophomore linebacker Whit Week said after the game. "For us to be able to eliminate big plays when there is that eye candy is a really good sign. We really locked in on our technique this week. Lock on on your eyes and everybody did their 1/11th and we figured it out.

"We had some of our best walkthroughs and practices this week. We had a lot of confidence coming into this game."

Weeks and senior linebacker Greg Penn III agreed after the South Alabama win that the coverage has greatly improved among the linebacker room. For LSU coach Brian Kelly, how the safeties have covered when asked to do so has been a problem that needs correcting.

Against South Alabama, senior safety Major Burns was beat off a late break in his pedal when Jags quarterback Gio Lopez hit Anthony Eager for a 23-yard touchdown in the third quarter. Later that period, sophomore safety Jordan Allen was caught flat-footed and Eager easily got behind him for a 38-yard catch over the top.

"It's an issue we have to continue to evaluate. Who's the right group that should be on the field?" Kelly said. "It's not like we're pressing them and putting them down on the line of scrimmage. I think we just have to be technically better. Not necessarily ask somebody to do something that they can't do. We were 12 yards deep and we were late getting out of our pedal.

"The guys can play the position, they just have to be technically better."

When Lane Kiffin and Ole Miss roll into town two Saturdays from now, the Rebels will bring the best offense LSU has seen to this point in the season. Ole Miss utilizes plenty of four- and five-wide receiver sets, which will require safeties to be involved in coverage.

LSU has spent the past four weeks rotating a number of safeties into games from Burns and Allen to Spears and Jardin Gilbert, Sage Ryan, Javien Toviano and Kylin Jackson, who played several snaps at the Star position against South Alabama.

Kelly said the staff now has film on all the safeties and they'll evaluate which combination of guys will help the team best.

Going forward, the rotating at the safety positions will cease.

"Tuesday, we're going to put the guys on the field that we think can win SEC games for us. So what does that rotation look like, as we've said, we've rolled a lot of guys in there. We get two weeks from today, there's not going to be a lot of rolling," Kelly said. "There are going to be guys that are going to be playing.

"This has been 'try to get in on film' and say these are the guys that should be starting."

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Cory Diaz covers the LSU Tigers for The Daily Advertiser as part of the USA TODAY Network. Follow his Tigers coverage on Twitter: @ByCoryDiaz. Got questions regarding LSU athletics? Send them to Cory Diaz at bdiaz@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Lafayette Daily Advertiser: Where LSU football must improve before matchup with Ole Miss