What are we rated as far as DE goes? I didn’t know you were cool with 17th, but you are cool with a passing game rated 70th or so, so shame on me for being surprised.
This is precisely why you are the king of misleading stats. You use 17th in the country at one position and equate that with the overall success of the entire team. The overall class was top-5, and top-5 doesn’t get you fired. Apples to apples is what reasonable people believe.
Unless we can put skill guys on the line and make that work, that’s a big miss. When I was criticizing Miles’ offense, you must have been in the, “who cares, he’s winning” camp. I’m not calling for O to be fired (Meatball on the other hand...). I’m just calling for the sunshine pumpers to take a deeper look. If you can’t admit line recruiting was a bummer this cycle, just dang.
His classes were NOT top 5 after receivers transferred like crazy. Les recruited skill position players that inflated the class rankings and underperformed on his linemen recruiting. Let's not forget the more scholarship kickers on campus than linebackers when Aranda got here. Les' recruiting really faltered toward the end. O, to his credit, has had to fight against and then through that.. He's done a good job of it, but with having said that the DL finish to this class was unacceptable at best and embarrassing at worst. We are going to have to sign at least 6 DL next class. We rebounded with a stellar DB class this year after missing on corners last year, and here we find ourselves having to do the same now with the DL.
Take a look at Clemson under Debo during the early years. What builds a strong program is a good coach and staff that is stable. Kids and especially parents want their kids someplace with stability where the coach is not in a constant state of possible being fired every season. Every year O has been at LSU we have improved. The media in particular are keenly aware of grumbling fan bases and are happy to report the bad news. They did so early last year reporting O on the hotseat till O shut them up. Clemson stuck with Dabo even after his third year going 6-7. Look where they are now. Compare O's first years as interim coach then 2 years as HC to the same for Dabo and you will see O has an all around better record than Dabo. Dabo's first 4 years 2008 (interim coach) 4-3 lost bowl game 2009 HC 9-5 won bowl game 2010 HC 6-7 lost bowl game 2011 HC 10-4 lost bowl game The numbers above do not lie. We better leave coach O alone and let him do his job if we want to attract and sign great players and build a program like Clemsons.
We all have opinions right. Mine is ‘Are we better than a year ago?’ I say Yes. 2018 ended up better at 10-3 (or even 9-3) if you don’t count the bowl. That is a lot better than most folks were saying last August and better than the year before. Let’s not beat down the coaches or pump them up. Let’s just support them for the next year & see how we do in 2019.
Clemson wasn’t shit pre-Dabo. It is true that coaching your players up is very important. So far Eaux has proven to be competent; I want him to be a game changer. I want an offense that is near the top of the nation to go with our badass defense. It’s all possible, it just remains to be seen if O is the coach to do it. Kids like a stable environment, but they also want to win and be developed. O needs to take another step forward next year. Running through the recruits we got, I’m pretty happy overall. We got some good/great players. I’m also hoping that Brady helps E put together a much improved offense. This thing is nuanced, I don’t understand people who recoil from that.
This thread is about recruiting even though its in wrong forum. We got some of what we wanted on skill positions but missed on what we needed on line. The only thing you can argue is whether that will have an impact. If we have a run of early injuries like this year (2018) or a run of early departures like last (2017), we wont have a buffer.
I am not saying your analysis is wrong, but Miles did in-fact average top 5. Miles last 4 years: 2013:6 2014:2 2015:5 2016:2
