Miami fan here, I come in peace, I promise. Loved watching you guys beat Florida this year and hope you do the same next year.

So it looks like you guys are getting Blake Baker, wanted to give you a perspective from a Canes fan.

First I'll explain why Baker is hated by Miami fans. TBH as a DC Baker was just an instrument for Manny Diaz's defense and ran specifically what Manny wanted. The defense is a "TFL defense." Every plays purpose is to attack a gap and get up field as quickly as possibly regardless of the situation. This leads to a ton of TFL and puts a lot of strain on the LBs. When you verse bad teams you will feast hence why the numbers throughout the years have been good. But when a good team runs counters and draws, they are able to easily destroy the defense, just see the UNC vs Miami game. Our lineman would blindly rush upfield, then UNC's OL would just chip them and move towards the linebackers/safeties. The runningback would slip right through for huge gains. But again its Mannys defense, the difference with Manny and Baker was that Manny was able to react and change things. Baker could not and was a horrible play caller on top of that. He would put our DBs and DL in tough position to make up for any errors our DLs might make.

Now since you guys are getting Baker the LB coach none of the above matters. For a position coach you need to be a good teacher and a good recruiter. With regards to recruiting from everything said by former recruits (or not said) and HS coaches in the area, he is not very good at all. A DC's main responsibility is not to recruit so it is possible that he improves with you guys, but our LB room is by far the worst group not just on paper, but in-game and he is responsible for it. There isn't a single big recruit that Baker had any part with getting to Miami, and believe it or not we have had some big recruits these past couple recruiting cycles.

With regards to coaching Baker also had the linebackers coach title at Miami. The linebackers were slow and hesitant. I don't recall a worse linebacker unit. He really likes experience and dependability, those are the players that are going to get the majority of the snaps. 5th year senior McCloud was our starting LB and averaged by far the most snaps per game and he is extremely slow and could not get the proper angles. But since he is a smart and good kid that has been around forever he would get preferred treatment. Now the good news is that this could very well be a Manny thing and not a Baker thing. Maybe it wasn't up to him who got the snaps.

Obviously reading the above it seems like I'm a hater since I am just saying he is horrible at everything. And he was, AT MIAMI. That does not mean he will be at LSU. He is still young and I'm sure he has ideas that he wasn't able to fully teach because of the defense Manny wanted to run. I'm sure he can improve and be a better coach. Recruiting will be interesting since it is said it does not come natural to him. But with people like Raymond at his side helping him that could easily improve ten fold.