Recruiting and Money

LSU needs a premier coach too and they don't have one.

Underwood? Dudes shown nothing. Much less 12 mill good.

Truth of the matter is, LSU has the athletes. LSU has the talent all over. The problem is the coaching and Nuss. You see that clearly offensively. LSU is handcuffed by Sloan and the blocking by the OL. Of course Nuss looks terrible, but at the same time, we have playmakers everywhere. With a good OL, we'd easily have a top 25 rush offense. As far as QB goes, Nuss needs a perfect environment. People complain about him having to do everything offensively, but he's not though. He's not making the plays that are there, so he's not doing everything.

Take John Mateer for example. Guy does everything for Oklahoma because they don't have a run game either. Doesn't stop them from scoring.

Ty Simpson doesn't have a run game at Bama either. Sure they ran for 200 yards vs ULM, but remove that game and see what they are really doing. They are averaging 92 rush yards per game vs power 5 opponents. Ty Simpson is 3rd on the team in rushing with 57. However Simpson has thrown for 1140 yards with 11 TDs and 0 ints in 4 games. He has completed 70% of his passes despite ZERO run game.

Fought also is the O LINE COACH!! Same ok story every year. Can’t run block !!

Yeah like Lane Kiffin!!!
Dumb take

Bad oline means you've gotta have a running qb in. Love nuss but with the oline we got, I think MVB would be more effective.

Since Neil, this is all being run like a business. So if a recruit breaks a commitment, then it should be treated as a breach of contract.

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Truth of the matter is, LSU has the athletes.

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On defense, absolutely.

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LSU has the talent all over.

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Do we, though? Healthy ones, I mean. I’m not sure we have the talent on the OL even at full strength. I think we missed on the Thompson evaluation. He’s probably serviceable to even good when surrounded by better players, but he’s being asked to be the 2nd best player on the line, and he’s just not.

In fairness, it has to be hard for him when he’s sandwiched in between a hobbled Moore on his left (Moore was bad Saturday, which got overlooked, but was a big part of the OL struggles) and a redshirt freshman in Davis for the 1st 4 games, and a true freshman making the 1st start of his career on the road in a hostile SEC environment after a week of not getting 1st team reps to prepare.

I’m not championing for Brad Davis—he’s obviously not been great—but he’s got 1st year starters at LT, LG, and RT, and though they may be “talented,” they are still young and inexperienced at the 1 position where that probably matters the most, save for maybe QB. And his “best” guy—Moore—is being severely limited by his ankle. Has he done a great job at developing guys who were highly ranked coming out of high school? Probably not. But you typically have more than a year or 2 to develop starters on the OL. That’s a position where you want your starters to be 3rd, 4th, even 5th year guys that are 21, 22, 23 and are grown men. 3/5 of our guys are 1st or 2nd year players who are 18 and 19. That matters.

Our best RB—by far—has an ankle injury and didn’t play Saturday. Our best WR—who’s probably our best overall offensive player in Aaron Anderson—missed most of the game and the entire 2nd half with 2 injuries. He’s Nuss’s go-to on big 3rd downs. Nuss played terrible—he’s clearly injured, I can’t believe anybody can watch him and have that not be blatantly obvious. Just how injured is a fair question, though—and was, what, 3 for 11 on 3rd downs? No matter how injured Nuss is, I have to believe with a healthy Anderson, that 3-11 is probably 5/6-11. And just those extra few 1st downs to extend drives and keep the defense off the field could have been the difference in the outcome.

We have 2 WR who are over 6’0”. Nic Anderson—who I still think is going to emerge in this offense—missed all of last year with an injury and was slow coming back and missed a ton of practice time and reps in the spring and fall. And with our WR room being so deep—if not top heavy (there’s no Chase/Jetts/Boutte/Nabers/BTJ on this team)—those missed practices and reps prevented him from developing the rapport with Nuss that you want to have with your QB and a starting WR.

Treydez Green is the other WR over “6’0”, and he’s a converted TE. Still may be officially listed as a TE, but we use him as a WR, and he’s injured too. He missed a couple games with a knee injury (pretty big deal for a skill position player) and clearly wasn’t 100% against Ole Miss. Regardless, he’s still raw and early in his development, and I’m not sure Sloan/Hankton/BK still really know exactly how they want to use him in this offense. Is it just in the red zone?

Back to RB, Johnson is not one. He’s good with the ball in his hands and has a role for sure, but it’s not as a traditional RB taking handoffs next to or behind the QB. And he was our RB1 Saturday.

Should have probably been Berry, but I guess there’s a reason he hasn’t got any more snaps than he has so far. My guess is it’s playbook and pass pro and the plan was always to ramp him up during the bye week to get him ready to take over RB2 starting against SC. Had they known Durham would have been hurt, I think they would have had him ready earlier. That’s on them, though. Should have either sped him up or taken a portal guy. Kinda hard to get a good portal guy, I’d imagine when you have guys as highly ranked as Durham/Berry/Lindsey who were all gonna be 1st or 2nd year players. (Lindsey’s situation is brutal for depth, but it happened too late to address in the portal). The OL sucked, but that was an embarrassing RB group we had out there Saturday.

And again, Nuss is hurt. So again I ask, do we really have “talent all over” the offense? Not simply based on their high school recruiting rankings or their NFL projections, I mean actually healthy talent. What good were Durham and Anderson’s talent when they were standing on the sideline? What good is Nuss’s when he can’t throw? Moore’s when he can’t move? Greens when he’s super raw and has a knee injury? The other Anderson’s when he’s coming off a major injury and hasn’t had the reps with his injured QB?

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nderwood? Dudes shown nothing.

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He has the tools to take over and win games something we are currently lacking. If he was on the team how many Tiger fans would be calling for him to start over Nuss.