re: Now that LSU football has fallen back to the pack

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i'm sure your grandmother would love to know you equated poor clock management with her death

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If she were still here, she would agree with it. That's because she could read and reason, and knew that saying everything is OK except for the one glaring problem that ruins everything is pretty stupid.

no one is saying EVERYTHING is ok.

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So?

I still want to know how you feel now that we are an average program.

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Wow, I never realized a #13 ranking was average!!! I guess you analyzing statistics based on the premise that every team besides the top ten and the bottom ten are average.

uway, you are right in thinking that it is a little unusual to not be that upset about 3 losses. I guess the way i see it just this year, is that 2 of those losses were to the number 1 and 2 ranked teams at the time. Both of whom have a combined 1 loss and that was when they played each other. I guess we might not be having this conversation had we only lost those 2 games. But, because we lost another game and the way we lost it, it seems like we are falling back into the pack. The thing i really think has happened is not so much that we have fallen back, its that other teams in our conference have done a good job of getting people in their program that will bring them up. Look at what Alabama did, if they dont' hire Nick Saban, we play for the championship game this year for sure. Look at Ole Miss, they hire Nutt, who i don't think is a very good coach, but still brings them up a little. Arkansas, which has always been a tough win for us, hires a very good coach in Bobby Petrino, and Even Miss. State has a good team that played some really good games, So i don't think its necessarily us coming down as it is this conference is starting to become the best all around conference and there really aren't any easy wins. I know that is hard to believe when you look at Alabama going undefeated 2 years in a row and florida going undefeated this year, but they both could have lost some games this year. Alabama- 2008: Kentucky, Ole Miss and Us. 2009: Tennessee, Auburn and you can even throw us and almost South Carolina in there. My point is that even with some of these other teams stepping up, we are still consistently beating them and i believe are still in the upper class of the SEC.

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At 9-4, I would say they were a medicore team at best when he inherited them.

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We were 9-3 in 2004.

Which is better:
2-loss regular season with bowl loss on last second play with lame duck coach, one year after a 13-1 national championship year

or

3-loss regular season after a 5-loss season

Realize also that 2004 was an 11-game regular season. Add Tulane to that schedule (to make it comparable to now) and it was a 10-win regular season.

If 04 was mediocre, 09 is definitely mediocre.

Yeah, I caught the record mistake already, thanks for pointing that out.

If we run away with the Penn State game, I will say that this year is better. We made improvements over last year. Sure, we didn't improve as much as most of the rantards think we should have, but we still improved. And as for the last second loss in the bowl game, why were we even in the situation to lose it? We should have beat that team by double digits.

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i don't think its necessarily us coming down as it is this conference is starting to become the best all around conference and there really aren't any easy wins.

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Alabama and Florida are a combined 31-1 against the other 10 teams in the conference the past two years. It can't be that damned tough. Certainly not so tough that going 8-8 in that same time frame doesn't represent a serious falloff for a team that used to talk about national championships and even win them sometimes.

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even with some of these other teams stepping up, we are still consistently beating them

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Over the past two years:

1-1 vs. Georgia
0-2 vs. Ole Miss
1-1 vs. Arkansas
2-0 vs. Auburn
1-0 vs. South Carolina

That's 5-4 total against teams of the caliber we used to regard as the mediocre middle tier of the SEC. That's not consistently beating them, that's proving we're ONE of them. Add in 0-4 vs. the top teams and 3-0 vs. the bottom ones, and you get 8-8 with no big upsets either way, which is pretty much the definition of mediocrity.

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The point is 2004 was not a terrible season

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That was my point by saying it was mediocre (sarcasm). If that year wasn't mediocre, than this year wasn't either. Everyone wants to throw out words like downslide, average, decline....and of course only want to look at the last 2 years. But if you look at JUST the last 2 years, we did not take a downward turn. It may have been ugly, but we still got better. Hired a real D-Coord, 2 less losses during the regular season, and now hopefully (yet to be seen) a move on the offensive side of the ball. Anyone who thinks things can be fixed in one season are crazy. We all wish it could be, but it can't. Noone really expected to lose less than 3 games this year, but when they saw how well some of the players were playing at the beginning of the season, they got their hopes up. Now they are suddenly disappointed and need someone to blame it on. I agree that Miles screwed up the OM game, but outside of that one, it really wasn't that bad of a season. I look for next year to be a good year. Theres too many people here that actually wish for the future to be bad so they can finally say they were right about Miles.

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Anyone who thinks things can be fixed in one season are crazy. We all wish it could be, but it can't.

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He's had two. And don't tell me two isn't enough because I have been watching Alabama the last two years.

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He's had two. And don't tell me two isn't enough because I have been watching Alabama the last two years.

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And what's the common denominator in those two years? Rookie, freshman QB's. How many teams have flourished with rookie QB's? Go ask how USC or OU how easy it is.