re: This avalanche of good news for LSU football bodes well for the LSU program

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Just 20/20 hindsight after the hire is used to judge the employment of Matt Canada? 

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Aren't the merits of every season judged when it's over for every team?

I would say not yet. But, if Ensminger does a good job and the offense is what we think it can be, you will have a great point if this team can make a NY6 bowl.

Eta: NY6 bowl is too lofty of an expectaction for this discussion. 10 or 11 wins, preferably for a few years.

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LSU went 2-4 vs teams over .500

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You know what is worse?

The LSU head coach didn't do anything at all to change that fact. He didn't try to get a transfer QB and new kicker or OC to try to improve on the 103rd rating in the nation inside the red zone.

Nope he just stayed status quo and now LSU will have to pay for it.

By the way, this is "Rantardism" at the finest. Someone starts a thread about the avalanche of great news recently and you have the same idiots jump in and cry and whine about last season. Ha Ha Ha Ha !!!

Keep up the good work guys. Don't pay attention to the avalanche it won't affect you. Ha ha Ha Ha !!!

Gotcha. My warning was if you say, “it doesn’t matter how it looks the day the person was hired” then you excuse Alleva for the O hire.

Didn't Aranda vouch for Canada? Wasn't that the original spin?

No I’m responding to your argument about how great the season was last year

You keep celebrating 9-4 when the SEC was historically bad last year, to go along with two historic losses

O and staff deserve a lot of credit to win down the stretch but to act like it was a great season is absurd. It wasn’t horrible but not great.

O is making the right moves this offseason but it remains to be seen how this translates to wins and losses. Time will tell...

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O is making the right moves this offseason

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I mean... maybe. Hes doing a great job on the recruiting trail. The 800lb gorilla in the room is the OC hire. I guess people have convinced themselves it’s going to work out.

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No I’m responding to your argument about how great the season was last year

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I don't remember saying it was great. Link???

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You keep celebrating 9-4 when the SEC was historically bad last year, to go along with two historic losses

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Were you a drama major? Great, celebrating? What superlative will you come up with next?

I'm just saying that a first year head coach, playing over 30 true and RS freshmen with two freshmen starting and playing the majority of the snaps on the offensive line and the defense having true freshmen starting - Taylor, Delpit, Chaisson. It is not as horrible as the idiots here try to make it out to be.

Did you notice the transfer QB that LSU got recently? The two LSU starters that transferred from Tx Tech who will be making their first appearances in a couple months? The two other QB commits? The #1 rated CB in the nation that committed to LSU very recently? No?

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I guess people have convinced themselves it’s going to work out.

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Reasonable posters are in the “wait and see” mode” on E as OC. But, as always, excitement builds in the off season. First game or 3 will either be a springboard or deal breaker.

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Reasonable posters are in the “wait and see” mode” on E as OC. But, as always, excitement builds in the off season

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Well this did happen not that long ago.

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However, his most recent stint with the Tigers yielded unqualified results: over the final eight games of the 2016 season that Ensminger served as interim OC in place of Cam Cameron, LSU’s offense:

*increased scoring from 21 points per game to 32 — scoring 38 or more in five of the eight games Ensminger called

*increased yards per play from 5.7 to 7.1

*set a school record for total offense in a conference game (634 yards versus Missouri)

*set two different individual school rushing records (Leonard Fournette vs. Ole Miss and Derrius Guice vs. Texas A&M).

The reason this holds value is precisely that it doesn’t sit in a vacuum. Whether the offense should have been that good or not, 2016 LSU football team wasn’t going to put up those numbers under Cam Cameron. They weren’t even going to come close.

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However, taking the point further regarding the 2016 offense versus better defenses, let’s use Bill Connelly’s opponent-adjusted advanced statistics:

*under Ensminger, LSU’s average offensive percentile performance — i.e., a measure of how well a unit performed compared to an average college offense, adjusted for defensive quality — increased from 41 percent to 73 percent. That means the Tigers improved from a unit that was barely in the top 60 percent of all 130 FBS teams to one that was in the top 30 percent.

*LSU’s average offensive percentile under Matt Canada in 2017? 54 percent, with an S&P+ ranking of 42. In 2016, the Tigers finished 22nd in offensive S&P+, counting both Ensminger’s and Cameron’s games.

There is no credible way to deny, at any level, that Ensminger improved LSU’s offense over his stretch of running it.

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