Legit, In-depth analysis of Miles as a Coach

this is essentially a vision quest attempting to find all of the positives (if they exist) about Miles by going over every major area of a CFB coach and discussing miles within each category

let's go over the major areas that a CFB coach has to run: recruiting, hiring coaches, game management, game preparation, raising money, and being the public face of the program, and i put it in that order

i'll rank them out of 10

1. recruiting/development: 6.0

les is EXTREMELY overrated as a recruiter unless you believe recruiting services are the bible (which is hilarious, b/c everytime miles recruits a 2-star, who later gets the LSU bump, our fans say "i trust da hat" and laugh at the services).

our DL and OL are almost all miles' recruits. our OL and DL are horrible. OL is a talent issue, and DL seems to be a development issue. other than black, would you say that any of our current 5 OL look to be drafted right now? our OL had 4/5 returning starters last year and didn't live up to hype against big teams. we return 3/5 this year and it's downright horrible. can't move the pile in the running game inside and our OTs are just plain bad in pass protection (which we witnessed yesterday)

the "QB gap" after RP is also pretty inexcusable, as well as the very slow development of JJ and the lack of any development of Lee

the only DB who has lived up to his hype is PP (which is insane considering the hype he had to live up to). hawkins is just a guy. jai is a total bust who hasn't lived up close to the #1 CB ranking he had on Scout. Chad Jones is a COMPLETE bust. he's slow, goes for the big hit, and is often out of position.

our skill position guys on offense have panned out about 50%, but the guys who have panned out are explosive

our LBs aren't great recruits and are playing at their recruiting rankings (other than sheppard)

2. hiring coaches: 3.0

les brought porter over from OSU, and while porter isn't a good coach, he's an amazing recruiter. that's a win

DJ Mccarthy was a solid recruiting option to replace monken, however he's a horrible coach and needs to learn how to follow rules better. he's getting fired this year

stud: huge and utter failure

crowton: failure. did well when he used jimbo's playbook, and as he's moved from jimbo's playbook, our offense has gotten worse and worse

i won't rank the current defensive coaching staff yet, as it's early and the returns have been very mixed

malleveto: F-

earl lane: good recruiter who simply refused to coach.

the last don/robinson: F------ WHAT DO THESE GUYS DO?!?!?!!?!?!?!

mile is pretty bad at hiring coaches. he was forced into hiring a DC after last year by the boosters, and he picked the conservative choice. the jury is still out on that one, but miles has a history of bad hires

3. game management: 2.0

utter failure from almost day 1

miles tried to call a timeout after an interception against UTenn in 2005. /argument

4. game preparation: 6.5

if we get time to prepare, we do well. 1 week off before AU = arse beating. 4 weeks off before miami, OSU, GTech, etc = arse beating. i respect miles' ability to use this time to prepare the team, and it shows me that his coaching staff IS capable of it

however, week-to-week prep is horrible. we rarely prepare for teams themselves, and it seems our coaches focus on motivating our players. miles wants a conservative, simple scheme on offense and defense, and that's what we get. for the most part the preparation isn't ultimately important

execution is important. we suck at execution

5. raising money: 7.0 (for now)

he hasn't ever done something as proactive as the academic building (thanks Saban), but our revenue stream seems to be pretty consistent...for now. last night's game may have ended miles' support with a bunch of our top boosters, however

6. being the public face of LSU: 5.0

his public face is that of a more dumb george bush. his comments to tracy after the game last night were mind-numbingly stupid to the point where i thought he was playing a joke on me. it was as if reality ceased, and i entered into a bad acid world where miles conroled my thoughts

HOWEVER, his private face is fine. he doesn't get involved in scandals, he's a part of the community, and he seems like an OK guy.

so basically we have a (possibly) nice guy as our coach without many other redeemable characteristics