re: The legacy of Lee and Les and how they're intertwined

Well, I guess there's no response when I prove the assumptions about my opinion are incorrect.

Here's my level-best, honest assessment of the situation:

I stand by Miles. I've been remarkably consistent in my opinion that JJ should have been the guy because that's what Miles believed. Miles is privy to more information on these two and he gets to see them a lot more firsthand than any of us. Certainly that doesn't mean his opinion is infallible.

My take was/is that, with all the information (years of information) before him, Miles certainly believed JJ was more capable of leading the team than Lee.

Obviously, he made a mistake not giving Lee a shot in the MNC game. He likely made a mistake shelving Lee for the back half of the year.

All that being said, I still maintain neither player was very good. I think many LSU fans, including myself, became so accustomed to poor QB play than even marginal games became overly celebrated.

For instance, let's take a look at the two games most often celebrated in Jefferson's career: '10 Alabama and '10 A&M. For a while I had convinced myself that JJ played "well down the stretch last year." After reviewing the numbers, I was wrong. I mean, I guess he "played well for JJ" but I wouldn't consider that playing well. His stats in both games are meager. I mean, really. We're celebrating a game where he went 7/10 for 150ish yards, most of which came on one big play (which was a great play by him) that was mostly Randle's freak athleticism on a run after catch.

eta: Just a note. A guy can have meager stats and play a pretty good game. Those games are typically defensive battles where they hang tough/battle to get whatever they can. See Tebow vs. LSU in 2009. The problem is, this happened far too consistently and not always in games where it was a defensive battle or even where we struggled to move the ball.

My contention is that our QB play was so porous for 4 years that even the slightest bit of positive performance caused people to say, "Man, he played a great game" when, if you were looking at any other team/player, you'd likely think they were modest performances, at best. When you standard for great QB play is "well, he didn't turn it over" it's an obvious admission of the fact that your expectations aren't very high.

On a national level, the QB play was substandard. And that's not because "Miles hates to throw" (easily proven wrong by looking at how he allowed Russell and Flynn to fling it around more). Miles clearly didn't trust either QB to take the game on their shoulders and throw it 30/40 times a game and win the game for LSU.

That being said, I think a lot of people dislike JJ for a lot more reasons than simply his play on the field. Oftentimes he'd make a throw, it would be dropped and people blame him. Lee makes the same throw, it's dropped and suddenly it's the WR that sucks. It's a double standard. Not all drops are created equal. Not every ball that's near a WR should be caught. WRs (good ones) catch poorly thrown balls all the time. WRs drop well thrown balls all the time. They also catch well thrown balls and drop poorly thrown ones.

Both players had moments where they flashed their ability to be good players, but both players were marked by a consistent inconsistency that prevented either from ever becoming very good.