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

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Very reasonable take.

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I think it explains the emotional attachment people have to Lee as fans and the disconnect they had with JJ.

If JJ plays his cards right then he isn't the object of such ridicule. Throwing passes in the dirt and claiming you played like Unitas isn't going to get you much. People like modesty when modesty is appropriate.

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I'm wondering if everyone remembers that 1 "bad" INT Lee threw against Tenn last year. It was a fade route with, was a good play made by the corner. It wasn't some really bad, careless throw like many are making it seem.

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Eh.

LINK

It was a pretty terrible play call, but they had a corner on Ridley.

It's here at 6:11. LINK

The LB immediately locates Ridley out of the backfield, and plays perfect coverage on him, turning to react once he sees Ridley turning to make a play on the ball.

He was covered all day long and Lee tried to force a throw in there. It was really unnecessary.

I understand throwing jump balls and letting a guy make a play on it, but you don't do that to your 5'11 RB who has zero experience trying to make plays like that (and I'm commenting here on both the playcall and the execution).

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Lee is just more likable

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I don't disagree.

There are other issues as well that I think play into it as well.

The bulk of people on this site support one side or the other. From what I've seen there's a lot of people who care a lot more about Jarrett Lee than LSU, which I don't understand.

Also, there's very little admittance on the Lee side that he often put himself into the bad positions he was (the constant turnovers in '08, the fact that he was never in good shape until this year, etc.). And you can say what type of shape he's in doesn't matter, but if you are the coach overseeing offseason workouts and months and months of hardwork and one guy is coming in and busting his arse in the weight room, staying fit, trying hard and the other guy is pudgy and lackadaisical it's definitely going to play into your decision... just as it should if one guy is out getting into trouble at bars.

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From what I've seen there's a lot of people who care a lot more about Jarrett Lee than LSU, which I don't understand.

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Yeah, that's kind of what I was alluding to in my first post. It really is a strange situation. I understand people have favorite players and love to support them. But some seem to take it over the top.

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You don't understand because you have a false view of their opinions. Many people legitimately believed that Lee starting gave us a better chance of victory. And looking back on the season and how it played out they have a pretty solid argument.

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I'm not trying to speak for Dan but I'm saying there are some that are over the top about it. But of course they are probably outliers overall when it comes to the fan base as a whole.

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When JJ started against any team with a pulse this year the offense was very slow to take off.

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The offense was slow to take off no matter what.

JJ also so happened to draw starting against the two best defenses in the SEC that were not our own.

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You don't understand because you have a false view of their opinions.

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I've read enough of them that I think I understand them fine. Everyone knows Lee should have been given a shot in the MNC game. Miles had his reason for not playing him, and it's unfortunate that he didn't yield on that point so we at least could have seen what happened.

What I'm saying is that if I posted this and asked people to tell me if they thought it was a great player who had a great 4 year career:

317/565, 56%, 3949 yards, 31 TDs, 21 INTs, 120.125 Rating. 26.9 ATT/INT, 10.22 ATT/TD

Would anyone say "Man, that is one great player!"

No.

How about this, by comparison:

658/1164, 56.5%, 7826 yards, 45 TDs, 30 INTs, 120.6 RTG. 38.8 att/INT., 25,866 ATT/TD

Are those great numbers?

That's John Parker Wilson's career numbers. A guy most LSU and Alabama fans would consider to be laughably bad... and his numbers compare to Lee pretty favorably.

Yet, on this board, Lee is treated like he's an elite college QB.

Now, a lot of this has to do with the fact that he's juxtaposed to another guy who is equally porous. And a lot of it is tied to the old "backup QB is everyone's favorite player."

To me, the LSU fans have significantly lowered their standards for quality QB play because they've had to endure such poor play from both guys for the past 4 years.

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What I'm saying is that if I posted this and asked people to tell me if they thought it was a great player who had a great 4 year career:

317/565, 56%, 3949 yards, 31 TDs, 21 INTs, 120.125 Rating. 26.9 ATT/INT, 10.22 ATT/TD

Would anyone say "Man, that is one great player!"

No.

How about this, by comparison:

658/1164, 56.5%, 7826 yards, 45 TDs, 30 INTs, 120.6 RTG. 38.8 att/INT., 25,866 ATT/TD

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I just did a quick comparison of JJ and Lee's 4 year numbers ... both are remarkably similar.
JL: 56% completion, 6.97 YPA, 17.66 ATT/TD (lower is better), 26.9 ATT/INT (higher is better)
JJ: 59% completion, 6.98 YPA, 19.94 ATT/TD, 33.9 ATT/INT.

YPA a wash, JJ has slightly better completion percentage and INT rate, JL has better TD rate.

eta: someone may want to double check my numbers

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The offense definitely did change when JJ took over. I really wish we would have continued to start lee and play JJ situationally. That looked great. Worked well for us in the auburn and Tennessee games this year. I thought the offense was unstoppable when we did that.

The JJ offense only showed flashes of brilliance but was plagued with inconsistency. I know what we were trying to do and what we were trying to run. JJ just wasn't good enough of a qb to run that offense.

Overall I hope they both have success going forward in the future. Both guys are tigers for life and i am proud of them.

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Both guys were cursed by incompetent offensive coaching for most of their careers. I feel badly for both of them. Neither were consistent which is why it boggles my mind that Miles put so much faith in one over the other when it was painfully obvious that neither could carry a team. This was a two QB scenario if there ever was one, but just didn't play out that way late in the season this year.

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Both guys were cursed by incompetent offensive coaching for most of their careers. I feel badly for both of them. Neither were consistent which is why it boggles my mind that Miles put so much faith in one over the other when it was painfully obvious that neither could carry a team. This was a two QB scenario if there ever was one, but just didn't play out that way late in the season this year.

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Crowton's play calling over this time span definitely limited both QB's. After 4-years of watching this very mediocre tandem QB performance I can only say JJ was an athlete attempting/forced to play QB and was more similar to M. Randall in skill set than not, and the coaching staff continued to believe he could become upper tier. JL was too limited athletically versus better D's and would have still resulted in losses. It is amazing the coaching staff could not have found a better play caller at a JUCO or FCS level after the first two years of this mediocre product. What did they have to lose? Still goes back to a bad OC and poor recruiting/coaching at QB.

2008 must still haunt Miles, otherwise the JJ experiment would not have continued with very limited passing.