My thoughts on the Kevin Steele hire

We won't know for sure until they step onto the field but I'm with you on this. With phenomenal recruiting and excellent position coaching I can't be more excited about the way things are shaping up. I see it like this. He's a proven college football coach and has a ridiculous amount of talent chomping at the bit to show out. I think the D will be special and elite for yrs to come.

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Thanks Kevin Sumlin!

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Best part of the OP

The old saying Jimmy's and Joe's beat X's and O's has some merit. While LSU's defensive schemes of the past were pretty good, there was a noticeable scarcity of talent at key positions on defense since the 2012 season. Chavis was not a dynamic recruiter, whereas Steele has been throughout his career. LSU appears to be getting the Jimmy's and Joe's it wants with the hire of Steele and Orgeron. We will have to wait and see if Steele's X's and O's are as good as his ability to get Jimmy's and Joe's.

While LSU fans have been focusing on the recruiting side of the coin, Texas A&M fans are convinced Chavis will fix their defensive deficiencies with X's and O's. I'm skeptical about that. I'm not convinced A&M has enough Jimmy's and Joe's. How will Chavis instill physical toughness in the defensive players when they practice against offensive players who do not focus on a physical style of play? His schemes can get players into positions to make plays, but if they can't make the plays what good has it done them?

The impact of X's and O's might be more immediately apparent, but over time the Jimmy's and Joe's will make more difference.

The comment that talent is everything is bullshite. I can give you many examples of where teams were loaded with talent and they sucked on defense. You need not look further than when Malveto was here under our own defense. The correct statement would probably be it's somewhere in the middle. You need both coaching and talent. It's true talent can sometimes alleviate mediocre coaching and vice versa but I believe a premiere defense is in the middle.

All that being said, I think Steele is a competent enough coach if he's loaded top to bottom with blue chip talent which he's definitely getting now, we'll be okay. I was down big time on the hire but I'm more optimistic now because I realize with the recruiting staff we have it's possible his entire defense could end up 5 star talents. Hard to screw that up unless you're completely incompetent.

Talent is huge but it isn't 99% of it.

Pendergast was target #1. He has really sick family in Arizona(?). I think that played a role in his decision to turn down LSU. He wound up heading back to the NFL in SF; closer to home. Not saying LSU couldn't have landed him, but it's possible he didn't want to be taking care of his family while also working 365 days a year trying to deal with 18 year old kids. It's not like he turned us down for a lesser gig or even an equal gig.

Bob Shoop was was choice number 2 (or 1A). The rumor was that he was really interested, but LSU wasn't going to commit to him immediately. James Franklin essentially told him that if he went down to BR at all, he wasn't going to have an office in Happy Valley when he came back (this is also what the story allegedly was when Jack del Rio was interested in replacing Saban). He'll be great at Penn State, but I doubt he turnS down a solid $1million+ offer from LSU, had they made it.

Steele is a good hire, and might very well be great. People are kidding themselves if they think he was target number 1. But Les knew his job past 2016 depended a lot on this hire. He was going to be deliberate during the process (now, should he have had a list already in mind and been ready to open the check book immediately? I'd say so. It seems like the writing was on the wall about Chavis for a while. A back up plan should have at least crossed his mind).

Anyway, getting a linebackers coach specifically was key. Even though Chavis claimed that as his specialty, it always seemed to be a thin area on the squad--a good to great MLB generally, but uncertainty on the outside. Hopefully Steele can Bring the level of recruiting in that area up to par with the D-Line/Secondary. With the way the DLine had been going lately--talent with below average results, Coach O was key. LSU now essentially has the three best coordinators in CFB at their positions. Steele just needs to manage all of the parts. If he can field a top flight defense with the talent presently here, he'll be shown the door quickly.


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Geaux Tigers

I dissagree with talent being 99% of it. Im happy with the hire. I think our defense will look somewhere in between what bama and lsu have done in the past......could be a very good thing. But what he does as an actual def coach resultswise is a big question imo.

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they could've went with a bigger name

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Stopped there

could've gone

please tell me you don't have a degree from LSU

Bama currently has 15 5 star guys.. Lsu has 5.

Bama has more.

I'm hoping to see a much higher energy level from both the players and the coaches along with some variance of defensive schemes late in the fourth quarter which Chief never provided.