re: The reason for a down season? No simpler than the 2012 recruiting class...

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How dare the staff not understand the incentives created by the 2011 collective bargaining agreement

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WHat? Only taking 1 DE and ZERO DT's in a class is stupid regardless of the new Collective bargaining agreement. This is the SEC. Championships are won in the trenches. It was lazy recruiting. It's as if the staff said, "OH well. No LA talent in this class, might as well go after only 5 stars with no 3 stars as a backup plan." And when spence and edwards passed on us, we were screwed.

This is all disregarding the fact that Chavis has our DL entirely too small. Most other 4-3 DL's in the SEC average 280-290. Ours is hovering around 270. YOu can't give up 20 lbs in the SEC.

When will peopl realize tha its not all on recruiting and that you need coaches to develop talent. Which is rare for us rececntly. I cant recall the last player that truly developed year to year. Most of our guys are just naturally gifted and are good players from the moment they step on the field. But we havent had a guy that you see get better and better each year that I can remember.

And go look at Miss St recruitiing under Mullen. Their average finish in the SEC is 10-11 out of 14 teams, with their best finish being 8th, which is the worst LSU has finished in the SEC in recrutiing during that timespan. But they still are really good this year. Thats because they are either really good at developing talent, or they do a great job at finding these hidden gems in recruiting. Because the hardest place to recruit in th SEC outside of Vandy is Starkville.

Getting the talent here is part of the battle, and we consistently do that. The other part is actually developing that talent. We arent good at that part.

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I am with you on most of this, but how can you call Danielle Hunter a disappointment? I think he is one of the bright spots of the defense.

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Agreed. He gives max effort with solid execution. Leads linemen in tackles. DH would be a much better fit as an outside rush backer in a 3-4 alignment, IMHO.

In addition to the guys we had on defense in 2013 we should also have had the following:

Montgomery, Mingo, and Brockers and Bennie Logan all seniors. Minter at MLB, a Senior Honey Badger and Eric Reid at Safety, and Simon at CB. That defense with the offense we had would have been undefeated and won the whole thing.

2012, if we would have had Brockers, Claiborne, Reuben Randle on offense, and if Honey Badger didn't get in trouble we def swing those Florida and Bama games.

I will say as bad as I think Miles is from a Xs and Os standpoint, the early departures killed the last two seasons. We could have won 2 in a row.