re: Bo Pelini or Matt House

Pelini/Linehan was an early indication that O mailed it in.

House was actually decent in ‘22 then fell into the Grand Canyon.

LSU had 3 NFL superstars on their offense and couldn't even sniff the playoffs due to how bad their defense was. My vote goes to House. You have to be historically bad to have someone like Daniels who no defense could stop and still couldn't come close to a playoff bid.


Also, House was overrated even in 2022. The second half of the year teams figured him out and if you watched the games his defense fell off a cliff. They were getting thrashed with big scores in games. That was your indicator right there it would fall off in 2023 and it did. Some of it was attributed to lack of talent at LSU so they got wore down in the second half of the season but in reality, it was Matt House looking back.


Pellini was a retread when LSU snagged him that nobody else wanted. That was pretty much O giving up because nobody wanted him to come here with a noose around their neck to be tied to O's sinking ship. Pellini had great defenses in the past and at least had the excuse Covid messed everything up for them chemistry/scheme wise since they were zooming sessions on formations.


He was a lazy hire but in my opinion House was much worse considering how good LSU was on offense and couldn't hold a prayer to stop anyone under any circumstances. At least Pellini had extreme circumstances working against him while House had no excuse. I don't think they got a timely stop all year or it felt like it. House did have a defense historically bad too so that says a lot.

quote:

---

Statically, he was MUCH better than Matt House.

---

Was he really?

quote:

---

Teppers second year, the D ranked 42nd in the nation.

---

I used total defense as my metric.

Houses first year the D ranked 41s in the nation after ranking 64th the year previous and 124th two years before under the two previous DCs. LSU was 108th in 2023. Those are out of 131 teams Back to 61st last season. I expect much better this season.

I don't know where you got 42nd from but LSU had the 91st-ranked defense in 1998. That was out of 112 teams.

In 97, they had the 42nd-ranked defense, but that was Carl Reese, 31 in 96 under Reese.


I'd say they were at worst pretty close to the same for one year, though House had 1 decent year. Tepper did not have a good year and his performance was in what was probably a much weaker schedule and a weaker SEC when looked at from top to bottom.

House was good in 2022. People conveniently forget this because of 2023.

House’s defense bailed out our offense on multiple occasions. It allowed for comebacks in multiple games.

Your posting.

Bo had great defenses in 05, 06 & 07 with a National Championship in 07.

House had a decent defense in 22, however 23 was a total disaster, House was the worst hire.

quote:

---

Pellini was a retread when LSU snagged him that nobody else wanted. That was pretty much O giving up because nobody wanted him to come here with a noose around their neck to be tied to O's sinking ship.

---

Ed Orgeron hired Pelini 14 days after winning a title. There was no "sinking ship" at that time. Orgeron could've gotten anyone he wanted.

Instead, he got a retread because he wanted to run a 4-3.

House would be okay at just coaching linebackers.

He gets himself in big trouble when he is placed in charge of the entire defense.

This is from a post I did a while discussing Tepper.

….


Tepper's first year was terrible, but the defense improved a lot b/t 1998 and 1999. It is hard to remember b/c in 99, the Bob McConnell offense sucked worse than either of Tepper's defenses. The fact that our defense was #42 in the nation in 1999, was almost impressive considering they were on the field the whole game. The offense was so bad, it felt like we couldn't get a first down. We had Rondel Mealey and Domanick Davis running the ball and still ended up 108th in the nation in rushing.

Total Defense
1998 - #91
1999 - #42

Scoring Defense
1998 - #55
1999 - #45

Total Offense
1998 - #41
1998 - #96

Scoring Offense
1998 - #31
1999 - #97


Tepper's scheme was complicated and designed for upperclassmen that had learned it for a few years. It was hard to implement back then and it certainly won't fly in today's college football. Back then he said it would take like 4 years to fully implement it. Ain't nobody got time for that. But back to my original point...

Tepper's D 1999 >>>>>>>>>>>>>> Tepper's D in 1998

Yep i remember saying the same thing in 2022, that our opponents found a way around our defense and he had no plan B and a very vanilla playbook. It reminded me just how good Dave Aranda was as our DC. He could blitz ttf out of any team and play call better than any DC we’ve ever had!