Where did Miles go wrong?

miles has protected the offense's weakness the last few years.

Since losing Mett, Landry, and Beckham to the draft our offensive line, wide receivers, and quarterbacks have struggled tremendously. Blame it where you want. Coaches, talent, scheme. The fact is the talent at the wide out position hasn't been great as well as the line and the qb position.

1-9

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1-9

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Miles' screw-ups were WELL before 1/9/12.

I agree his scheme was never good, except 2005-2007 his scheme was fine. While I think the offense was good but not as explosive as it should've been in 2005-2006, it was fantastic in 2007 and looked nothing like this mess we have now.

It's hard to say when it went wrong. 2008 was TOO open, in that JL was asked to throw too much. 2009 was just an undersized OL that couldn't run block.

When he hired a friend that got fired for crappy offense, instead of finding a new innovative offensive minded coach.

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Folks often say Miles was ruined by all the interceptions in Lee's freshmen year,

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I'm pretty certain this was it. That 2008 season set the offense back 70 years, and since then, the more the pressure turns up, the more he resorts to risk-averse, mostly boring offensive strategy. Under ideal conditions it can still win, but those conditions are difficult to replicate.

Even in the most "prolific" offensive years of 2012 and 2013 with Mett and crew, we threw the ball 40% and 38% of the time, respectively.

Miles is a great recruiter and assistants love working for him.

His downfall is that he is too stubborn to hire an innovative OC that still uses a power run game and keep his hands off the offense.

That 2011 season gets more and more special with each passing year. That team averaged over 38 points per game until the BCS NC despite throwing the ball less than 33% of the time during the season.

I think the combination of Lee and 2008 plus the uber conservative yet successful 2011 season essentially was the dagger for Miles and modern offenses.

The offense deteriorated under Crowton in 2009 and 2010, and we all blamed the QB play. Crowton was unable to develop a replacement for Flynn/RP. Plus in 2009 the OL was small and weak. It was those years, and following the 2008 interceptions, when the offense got more and more bland.

I imagine Crowton didn't really want to run the puckered a-hole offense we have now, but Les figured the defense/ST would win if the offense merely didn't make mistakes. And the strategy worked, for a while, when the defense was top notch.

They continue to do that stupid pitch to the RB running play. It doesn't fool any defense because you can't play action out it so defenses are on top of it.

The only way that the pitch to the RB play works is if the OL out physicals the opposing defense at the point of attack. Usually we have the talent to do do that.

It's just a dumb fricking running play. I guess the only benefit to the play is the QB can block the backside pursuit.

When we face good defenses that can match us physically (e.g., wisky, bama, hogs, etc.) and we run pitch back to RB play it's usually a wasted down. And if the wasted down occurs on first down we are usually screwed and it's a three and out. First down success is very important for this offense.