re: .

quote:

---

we literally could not stop them

---

Primarily in the 2nd half. Ever since they converted on a 4th down in the 3rd, they salted us away with their running game.

quote:

---

2008 and 2011 were the 2 worst things that ever happened to Les in terms of being an elite-ish coach

2008 gave him shell shock and PTSD and 2011 gave him false confidence in bully ball

---

Exactly!

After 2008 Les hired a new DC and decided he was never again going to be put in a spot where interceptions could decide the game. He would rather grind out a 21-20 win against a team LSU was clearly superior to than put the ball in the air (especially over the middle of the field) and potentially blow someone away early.

In 2011 he had a dominant defense and their simplistic offensive approach worked the first two months of the season. But you could see the NC game result coming from a mile away. LSU's offense didn't do anything at Bama. It took a herculean effort by the defense, coupled with Bama missing FG's to get out of there with a win. The next week Jefferson became the full time QB and LSU played an ugly first half (offensively) against WKU. They throttled Ole Miss (who had completely quit) then looked terrible to start against Ark. Thank God Mathieu sparked everything with the punt return, because the offense was as ineffective as it ever was. Then they couldn't even get a first down in the first half against UGA. Mathieu coupled with UGA flat out dropping a pair of potential TD's kept LSU in a game they should have been getting blown out of. Les refused to acknowledge the writing on the wall.

2013 was such an anomaly not so much because of Mettenberger, Bekham, Hill and Landry, but because LSU's defense was so weak, Les had no choice but to open us the offense. Those same 4 players were there in 2012, but Les kept things safe.

Why don't you ever change?
Why do you keep starting shitty posts?
When will you learn?
I can see your end is near.

I was a fan of Miles as a person. Couldn't have asked for a more upstanding person. He cared about those kids. His coaching skills were not up to LSU standard. Just don't like seeing him criticized anymore. He's gone.

There's a line in a movie (The Pirates of Silicon Valley) Bill Gates says "success is a menace it convinces smart people they can't be wrong".

That fits Les to a tee. Haters may not like to admit it but he had a lot of success here. In his day 17-14 games were the norm and he'd rather win 9-6 than lose 45-42 is his mentality.

quote:

---

Alt26

---

One topic that you are touching on with your post is Les' inability to self-scout. That 2011 UGA SECCG is a great example. We won, thanks to Honey Badger and, as you pointed out, two huge drops by UGA. So we won, nothing needs to be fixed.

It has already been revealed that the team wasn't spending near about enough time in the film room. Hard to self-scout when you've convinced yourself what you are doing is good enough, and good enough is as far as you need to go, but when you're not even utilizing the tools it's even harder. The great coaches are some real bastards, but they are bastards to themselves as well as others. They are experts at critiquing; themselves and everyone around them. Yeah, there's Saban. Spurrier was as hard on himself and heisman winning QBs as he was overweight DL.

I see things that led Les to be especially stubborn and resistant, stubborn and resistant to likely diminished what should've been a very good legacy and get fired.

1. He is naturally stubborn; if someone was telling him do A, he was going to do B just to make a point.

2. Didn't hold coaches around him as accountable as himself.

3. Inability to be critical of a positive outcome and self-scout

4. Fear of change, especially when the net results (9-6 or UGA game) give him a reason not to change (good enough is good enough). Unfortunately, the opponents were changing as they saw the film.

5. Inefficient practices and since there was no need to change, just execute the same thing better, failure to game plan for specific opponents. Just do your thing and everything will be fine. They were adjusting, we were not because of not being self-critical, and it bled over to practices. Unfortunately, this likely led to the poor QB development also.

You combine all these and they are going on at the same time, you end up with ultra-stubbornness and those flaws combined to be fatal flaws. As a coach and a person, I don't think Les was that resistant to change. He let these things steer him; he let events control him instead of controlling events.

I think overall Les did a good job for LSU. He just wouldn't change with the times it's that simple.

quote:

---

In 2011 he had a dominant defense and their simplistic offensive approach worked the first two months of the season. But you could see the NC game result coming from a mile away.

---

This, you could see the beginnings of this in the SECC game vs. Georgia. Our offense was going nothing and was terribly predictable and ineffective. We were stuffed on several "here it comes" 3rd and short and fourth and short plays.

Then a couple of special teams plays by Honey Badger turned the tide and the Dawgs quit.

The result looked great, but if you looked closer there were huge red flags.

quote:

---

Les was ok with losing a game or two here and there. Nick never was and never will be. That's what separates good from great coaches, the fear of losing.

---

Seemed like he was at LSU. He lost at least 3 games and at least 2 SEC games every year at LSU except 1

quote:

---

quote:

---

Why didn't Les change?

---

That's the equivalent of asking why a remedial student didn't change his approach to studying, or test-taking. Miles had no acumen for tactics. He didn't know how to effectively change. He wasn't intelligent enough to objectively assess his strategy and adapt. He was a recruiter and a motivator.

---

That's a bad analogy. If you're going to use an education analogy, at least use one that makes sense. The man was such a football idiot that he managed to be the LSU coach with the highest win percentage in history, gave us our first undefeated regular season since 1958.

A better analogy would be to say he was like a 3.8 GPA student trying to get a 4.0. His success convinced him the methods were good, just the execution needed improvement.

Unfortunately for Les and LSU his style of play did little to attract the one thing they needed most, better QB talent. At least that is my take.

And accomplished the SEC and NC successes Les did in less than half the time, without enduring the SEC and NC game losses!!!