re: An Open Letter to Les Miles

Mike, I appreciate your perspective but I couldn't disagree more.

I read today's paper and I see a couple major issues you didn't hit on at all:

1) Offensive penalties put us in too many long yardage situations

quote:

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"Jefferson seemed to come out in rhythm early in the game, but a spate of penalties constantly forced LSU to work from behind the chains.

The Tigers were flagged for seven offensive penalties: three holding infractions, three false starts and an illegal formation.

As a result, the Tigers ran eight plays when more than 10 yards were needed for a first down. On 13 third downs, the average distance to go was 9.2 yards and LSU converted only 3 of 13, nine on six first-half chances."

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2) Receivers not running the correct route or worse yet, dropping the ball or deflecting the ball to the waiting hands of a defender.

quote:

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Not that Jefferson was solo in his struggles.

"On the first offensive series, senior Terrence Toliver botched a catch on a well-thrown Jefferson pass inside the WVU 20-yard-line and the Mountaineers’ Keith Tandy picked off the carom."

"Inside receiver Russell Shepard also was targeted on a few throws when it appeared his route might not have been run as precisely as necessary."

"Another 20-yard strike to Toliver was wiped out by a holding penalty on P.J. Lonergan."

“It’s a lot of little nitpicky things,” Ridley said. “In the first quarter we had so many penalties, all because of little things. But they add up and that’s aggravating.”

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Jefferson clearly has his problems and Lee will likely see more playing time. But I hold out little hope that Lee is some messiah that will energize our offense. The fans seem to have some mystical faith (not unlike the people who voted for a certain candidate in 2008) that Lee will come in and be our savior. Folks, the QB cupboard is bare. We are stuck with the mediocre QBs we have this year. This isn't the NFL -- we can't make a midseason trade for Michael Vick. Lee and Jefferson are all we have unless they convert Shepard back to QB. And if Lee was all that fantastic in practice, he would have won the starting job. He will get his chance - at a minimum I see him playing a lot against McNeese or earlier if LSU falls behind early against Florida or Tennessee. Soon enough, you'll get to see Lee play some serious minutes. But all this bitching and moaning in the middle of a thus far undefeated season is highly unproductive. It's a self fulfilling prophecy -- we keep telling the QB he sucks and he lives up to your expectations that he should suck. Frankly, I think the fans would be more disappointed if they had nothing to boo about. So many of them hate Miles (and conversely lust over Saban), that they want reasons to boo so they can run Miles out of town and go get the next new shiny Saban wannabe. It's human nature to bitch, bitch, bitch. And Tiger fans are expert bitchers.

And I'll bet that as the season goes on and Petrino and Arkansas look better and better, there will be a lot of threads on TD talking about how Petrino is the new shiny Saban wannabe that we must immediately hire for a gazillion dollars. Not only are LSU fans expert bitchers, we're also experts at coveting every shiny thing our neighbors have that we don't have.