re: Interesting parallel between Les & Steve Spurrier...

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As a Gamecock fan, I'll say that no matter what you guys think, Les Miles is one of the Top 5 coaches in the nation. Any team would love to have him. Nothing but respect for the mad hatter.

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If you like him so much can we please trade?

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This year, Les doesn't see fit to make a change. We enter into the heart of the SEC Darkness with a man whose offenses show zero signs of life or improvement. Whose receivers run basic routes which lack any sophistication or seeming conceptual basis.

We see a coach who although he had the same siren songs as Spurrier and decided not to listen, and has likewise won a national title, simply refuses to change his stripes based on the inevitable, inescapable truth:

His philosophy is stale, and he's begun to hold our program back...and has been doing so for much of his tenure in TigerTown.

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I thought your analysis was pretty spot on until you got right here and went off the rails on the crazy derp train.

Mett is the least mobile QB we've had since Rohan Davey (and maybe even less mobile than the Jamaican Tiger). 29 pass plays were called @ Florida, versus 25 runs - my assumption is that all 4 of the sacks/scrambles were passes called either from the booth by Stud, or from the sideline by Miles.

The OL has had to be shuffled twice already this year and they cannot consistently protect the QB (though, at times against Florida it looked like they were getting there). Mett is hot and cold, sometimes spot on, sometimes shaky and sometimes he makes bad decisions with the ball (or at least is very sloppy, at times, with ball security). When he is on, it seems like that is when the protection breaks down OR the receivers get the dropsies.

BUT, to say we haven't gone from whatever the heck the offense was at the back end of the season last year, to a straight, pro-style, heavy on the play action, balanced attack is to ignore the fact that more passes are being called now (or at least it is very close to even for the season). Should we run the wildcat with Mett? Should we change QBs? Should we have a different mix of receiver types? All those are valid questions and the responsibility of all of those answers are Miles' responsibility, but to suggest that things haven't changed when they most clearly have been changed from a style/philosophy standpoint (how many times has Miles gone for it on 4th down this year) seriously undermines some of the very valid points in your analysis.

Also to suggest that because outcome/offensive production has not improved, therefore it cannot improve is tenuous support, at best.

Keeping in mind that Miles has helmed 80 victories at LSU, more and faster than anyone, is the anti-Miles camp shifting from "Saban's players" to "game has passed him by"? After we won 13 straight games last year? Really?

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Ace Midnight

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What we are doing is yielding us the same results as last year, and the year before, and the year before that.

Our rankings in comparison with the rest of college football are static in that most of the rest of America is ahead of us. The assumption that the game has passed him by actually negates recognition that it seems to have done so several years ago, and he simply does not care.

I saw some signs early in the year that we had matured as an offense. Against UNT, we went boundary passes like crazy when they played off based on our deep routes in the Spring Game.

Then we went sluggo seam on two separate occassions with good results. We actually ran some conceptual stuff to play off the gametape that U-Dub saw and against them I thought our passing offense was coherent and still looked good.

I have seen us lose our way through the air, and on the ground, we won't take advantage of the lack of protection by the draw and screen game competently.

There's a lack of sophistication in the passing game. No deep ins, or square ins or dig routes in the intermediate and deep patterns. I hear you about protection, but we're still calling intermediate routes. They're just ALL to the boundary.

Bottom line is that I see a very simple, stale passing offense that seems to have been snuffed out since the Auburn game. As if we pulled the plug. We look very, VERY different conceptually since those miscues against them.

Something happened. What you want to attribute to that is up for discussion. But to say that we didn't reign things way in instead of adjusting to what the defense was doing is to ignore the results you're seeing on the field.

People who say the receivers are dropping the ball have a point. People who say they aren't getting open though? Those people are ignoring the real problem: The lack of imagination in the passing game and the thought process behind the playcalls w/respect to down and distance.

We can agree to disagree if you like. Either way, I appreciate the construct criticism.

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Then we went sluggo seam on two separate occassions with good results. We actually ran some conceptual stuff to play off the gametape that U-Dub saw and against them I thought our passing offense was coherent and still looked good.

I have seen us lose our way through the air, and on the ground, we won't take advantage of the lack of protection by the draw and screen game competently.

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I agree with most of this.

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Bottom line is that I see a very simple, stale passing offense that seems to have been snuffed out since the Auburn game. As if we pulled the plug. We look very, VERY different conceptually since those miscues against them.

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To a certain degree, I think it has been dialed back because of consistent opposing pressure on Mett. Combine that with his early poor decisions with the ball on the goalline (to his credit, he has gotten much better throwing the ball away), to that stretch where he was poor with ball security (to be determined), to a current fear that Mett's confidence might be a little fragile right now - if you look at the scripted portion of the Florida game, everybody looked in sync - it was only after we failed to score touchdowns (particularly the second drive stalled and we had to kick), that LSU's offensive game got sloppier.

A reversal of most of our games last year, against both Auburn and Florida, we got weaker and the opponent got stronger. Auburn ran out of time - Florida didn't.

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People who say the receivers are dropping the ball have a point.

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Obviously I agree with this point.

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People who say they aren't getting open though?

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This is where Mett needs to mature - when the play is not there, throw it away. If he cuts down on the number of sacks, particularly on first down, we look much better. If Krags is making him go 5-step, fine, 5-step, look and fire. And if he's throwing it away, he needs to really throw it away. Protection needs to get better, too. 5 steps and at least 1 second is a reasonable expectation. Mett is getting contact sooner than that on about half the sacks.

Your point about screens and draws is very pertinent here - if we could do that more competently, that would at least keep more of the pressure inside and more of the speed rushers would at least have to account for the screen before they charge. That alone could buy Mett half a second, or so, for some of the 2nd/3rd and 4 or 5 pass plays. Run the draw well enough and you can fake it, giving you some 3rd and long opportunities.