i had thought about this comparison before, that a run and gun QB like RP would put him over the top. We'll see. http://cfn.scout.com/2/557921.html A fascinating pair of coaching stories took new and substantial turns at the same time this past Saturday. Two men at high-profile programs find themselves on opposite sides of the career mountain, and the way they develop will be one of the big macro-level stories of the next few college football seasons. By Matthew Zemek The scenes were striking and significant as they emerged through the lenses of ESPN and CBS cameras on Saturday: in Dallas, Mack Brown owned the sideline of a Red River Rivalry game with an easy confidence--and without Vince Young--all because his team is now the one that doesn't make the mistakes in the Cotton Bowl in early October; in Gainesville, Les Miles paced a sideline with expressiveness and energy but no answers. It's as though the cosmic balance has shifted but maintained equilibrium at the same time: Brown has shed his reputation as the not-ready-for-prime-time coach at a marquee program, and Miles has temporarily filled the slot vacated by Texas' head coach. The hopeful part of this story--which makes it something other than a hatchet job against Les Miles (for anyone worried about attack journalism emanating from these pages)--is that the LSU coach, with a gifted player or a turning point moment, can metamorphose into the figure Brown is today. But before appreciating what Mack Brown has become, one must recall what Mack Brown used to be. It's hard to recall a college football coach who fell short more consistently while having as much talent as Mack Brown had over the past several years before 2005. One strains to find a comparable story that can rival Brown's trails of tears. Tom Osborne and Bobby Bowden had many big-game failures over many seasons before they finally won a national title, but they won conference crowns and prevailed in their fair share of backyard battles. The iconic coaches of the sport have usually made a mark soon after arriving at their schools. Brown, however, starved for a long time in Austin--and this was after failing to win an ACC title with North Carolina, despite a few big-time seasons that John Bunting could only dream of. The title drought--and we're merely talking about a conference title (John Mackovic won a few of those, remember)--lasted so long at the University of Texas that waiting for the next Brown letdown became a painfully predictable exercise. Watching him on television in Red River games of the past, and occasional Big XII title games as well (especially versus Colorado in 2001), one got the sense through the tube that Brown--while a perfect gentleman and a thoroughly honorable public figure--was a small man when it came to coaching a high-stakes football game suffused with pressure. Think of Philip Fulmer against Florida before 1998 as a similar football example. Vince Young, however, enabled Mack Brown to ride high in the saddle for the first time in his coaching career. Brown spoke often and openly last season about the ways in which VY and the rest of a special, swaggering team enabled him to relax, make better decisions, and find the coaching boldness that had eluded him for so long. This past Saturday, though, Brown entered the brave new world of life against Bob Stoops without No. 10. It would be the ultimate litmus test of his (and offensive coordinator Greg Davis') coaching credentials. Sixty minutes later, after watching Oklahoma implode, Brown has affirmed and nailed down his coaching metamorphosis, which will gain a final measure of completion when--not if--his Longhorns win a second straight conference crown in December against Missouri or Nebraska. The man who spent so many seasons in the shadows has not only scaled the mountain, but stayed on top of it without his A-grade hiking gear. In Colt McCoy, Brown has successfully coached a quarterback who possesses a lot of youth and a lack of extreme, jump-off-the-charts talents. By developing a freshman signal caller into a turnover-free winner against the hated rival from the Sooner state, Brown (with help from Davis, another validated man these days) has earned the stature and heft befitting an elite head coach. Mack Brown is big-time, and there's no question about it. Before 2005, one couldn't have known how quick the trajectory of Brown's coaching career would change. Therein lies the hope for LSU fans and the career of their current coach, Les Miles. While Brown cemented his place in the college football pantheon in Dallas on October 7, Miles spent those same afternoon hours (3:30 to 7 p.m. Eastern time) watching his own reputation sink further into a Swampy soup. Miles has become what Brown once was: the small man coaching a very talented team in big game after big game on the national scene. It's weird, isn't it, that LSU offensive coordinator Jimbo Fisher--who called much more creative games when Nick Saban was his boss--seems to be a shell of his former self now that he's working for Miles, the former Oklahoma State coach who had some nice seasons in Stillwater, but hardly anything worthy of reverent, open-mouthed awe. It's hard to get around or deny the fact that JaMarcus Russell--a great athlete and physical specimen--has made essentially zero progress as a student of the game in his years under Miles' tutelage. There was Russell on Saturday against Florida, continuing to uphold his reputation as a ten-gallon-hat-ten-cent-head quarterback who has all the physical attributes of an NFL signal caller, but none of the finely-honed instincts of a quarterback who has been taught well by his coaches. Russell still locks onto receivers; still telegraphs passes; still lacks the requisite focus of an elite quarterback; still fails to unleash his talent in the devastating ways it can spill forth on a football field. While Steve Spurrier takes the incredibly unpolished Syvelle Newton and molds him into a good-looking quarterback with striking quickness, Les Miles and Jimbo Fisher have done a whole lot of nothing with Russell, who certainly deserves better guidance and instruction at this point. Moreover, the Florida game wasn't the only game this year in which the truth of that statement was reinforced. Les Miles coached against Auburn (and schooled Russell) a month ago the same way he coached against Florida: tentatively, with precious little imagination, and with a decidedly impoverished sense of strategy. Before getting shafted on his team's last (and last-minute) drive into Auburn territory, Miles--one must remember, as we go back three weeks in time--had his LSU offense on the Auburn side of the field on a previous drive, with 2:46 left. Facing a fourth down, Miles--with three timeouts in his pocket--needed to conserve all of them so that, if his offense failed, LSU could still get the ball back with a reasonable amount of time left. Endgame coaching, remember, is all about maximizing one's strategic avenues and options. But before that fourth-down play, Miles--in no danger of having the play clock run out--had a timeout called. When you realize that LSU got a first down on the final play of the game, a pass to the Auburn 5, that used timeout proved to be very critical in the larger scheme of things. However, that's not all. Aside of handling his timeouts poorly, Miles also looked out of his depth on the LSU sideline because of something else he did during his team's final drive in the dying moments of that Auburn game. CBS cameras caught Miles--before his team's final two plays--making a motion like that of the gooseneck a basketball coach would want from his free-throw shooters. This is admittedly speculative, but the sight of Miles making a repetitive arm motion--over and over and over again--suggested that he simply wanted JaMarcus Russell to get the ball into the end zone, which--ironically--Russell didn't do on the final play of the game. Whereas the Spurriers and Mark Richts of the world would be crafting a top-shelf play from the 24-yard line, Miles--it seemed--was just telling his kid to "get the ball down there." Sometimes, a lack of heft--an insufficient amount of football wisdom in the heat of battle--oozes through a TV screen. It happened with Mack Brown before Vince Young blossomed into a full-fledged stud, giving Brown a new level of confidence that carried into this season and Saturday's Oklahoma game in particular. It happened with Les Miles against Auburn weeks ago, and this past Saturday against Florida as well. Moreover, there have been numerous other occasions in the past one and a half seasons when Miles has badly misjudged the calculus of strategic situations in the endgame (and "endhalf") phase of a contest. In many ways, the coach Mack Brown once was is the coach Les Miles currently appears to be. But much as Brown has continually won and re-earned the confidence and trust of his players--an essential and often very underappreciated dimension of the larger coaching craft--Miles kept his team together through Hurricane Katrina last season, an incredible feat that not every coach could pull off. This year, while some programs (cough, cough, Arizona State and Michigan State, cough, cough, cough...) have folded like a cheap tent after demoralizing losses, LSU has responded to the Auburn setback by bringing the hammer to its subsequent opponents. Yes, Tulane and Mississippi State aren't great shakes, but still--the fact that LSU did what it was supposed to do indicates that Miles has his team's attention in ways that Dirk Koetter (cough, cough) and John L. Smith (cough, face-slap, cough) don't. Miles might be weak on the blackboard, but much like Brown, he has mastered the motivational and relational aspects of coaching, which can often--but not always--overcome technical shortcomings. Miles has his deficiencies, but he also has his strengths. With one breakthrough player or, perhaps, one breakthrough moment, Miles could get his program to take that one huge step from being a 10-win Citus Bowl or Peach Bowl team (again, we don't use the corporate names in bowl world around here...) to being a BCS bigshot. For a multiplicity of reasons, both positive and negative, Les Miles has a lot in common with the pre-2005 Mack Brown. LSU's coach can only hope that one day, he'll become what Brown is today: a certified member of the coaching elite, free of the doubts and dark clouds that once hovered over the genial leader of the Longhorns. In 2008, we could see Miles on an LSU sideline with the knowing smile possessed by Texas' coach this past Saturday in the Cotton Bowl... and a national title to boot. And by that time, we might see another coach who, for reasons that defy easy explanation, looks small on TV against more agile minds... but who has the resolve to get better as a coach and lift his team off the big-game canvas. Mack Brown has changed a career identity; in the next few seasons, Les Miles will hope to do the same. Since all the big games from the past weekened were not that competitive, it's hard to dive into a dissection of influential play calls and strategic decisions. So with that in mind, here's a short list of coaching decisions that raised an eyebrow from the past weekend: Guz Malzahn of Arkansas shielding Mitch Mustain from a heavy workload while using a trick play to befuddle an Auburn team that was dragging its head; Rich Rodriguez of Arkansas not having Pat White throw more passes in the lead-up to the Louisville game (don't you want to give the lad some practice in advance of that huge game?); and Jim Grobe of Wake Forest--in the fourth quarter of a 17-17 game where his team had zero momentum--choosing to punt on 4th and 2 around midfield instead of going for it and trying to turn the tide.
Nice article. Seriously, the only thing I don't understand is why not play a back up QB some time when the wheels are falling off the wagon to see what he or she could do! :lol: Look, I am not for benching JR but I think sometimes you have to have a 2 QB system to kick start an offense or team that is stuck in a rut. Kinda like Florida or LSU, Hodson and Guidry.
i agree with that, you have to mix it up. No matter if you can throw it 102, you have to show a curve ball, change up, slider. Just something to make it guess. Jam R. is your starter, 100% in my opinion. Just need to play Flynn some more, its not like our offense is averaging 24 a game against SEC competition.
Great article. Feels like that guy may be a memeber of the Forums. I think alot of people agree with him about Miles and Jamarcus. Even though we all differ in who we blame for these losses, we all agree that this a talented coach and player that may not be living up to their full potential and expectations. I am with you, Sourdoughman, about kick starts. Remember when Jamarcus kicked started the team when he was a freshman? Or Rohan and Mauck? Sometimes a a simple change of a style will confuse that defense enough to be able to put points on the board. I give rep points to the author.
See UF 2004- Randall came in off the bench in Russell's first start and led LSU to a huge win the swamp. Very valid points. Unlike many (but not all) on the boards, I've not given up on Les yet (though my confidence is waning, if existing at all) and in the end I can say that I truly hope to see Miles succeed- for his and our benifit. I am, however, VERY against putting Ryan Perriloux into the lineup into a big game. Flynn, yes, but NOT RP. In talking with fellow students, RP isn't the sharpest tool in the sack, and if you're bashing your man JR, and think Flynn isn't athletic enough, the 4th string QB was in my freshman bio lab class. Hey, biological sciences- he's gotta have a head, right?
"Sharpest tool in the sack?" That's what you're going with to criticize someone's intelligence? Vince Young might be functionally illiterate, and I think he worked out pretty well as a college QB. Since when do we expect football players to be smart? Just because Matt Mauck had already aced his MCATs while quarterbacking us in 2003 does not change the fact that for the most part, football players aren't bright.
It was the DAT and he definetely did not ace it. Would not have gotten in with the score if not for the obvious. Not arguing, just saying. Not as bright as everyone made him out to be. Rohan was DUMB though. Geaux RoDaddy!
