Speaking for myself personally? Tonight's performance and his years of poor handling of the LSU QB situation has caused me to lose confidence in CLM.
First off, I don't think Les Miles should be fired, as I'm sure a lot of us are thinking. We went undefeated until the NC game, and that is a feat in and of itself. With that being said, Les Miles blew this game for us. The gameplan was one of the worst I've seen in any form of football in a long, long time. Options have never been good for LSU or Jefferson, but what do they do? Run them against a fast and disciplined Alabama team and never benefit. They obviously abandoned the run early on and put the entire game on Jefferson's arm/feet/brain, and we all know how that has always panned out. Where was Ware, Ford, or Blue? We seemed to run more early in the 4th quarter as time was running out than the entire first half. And as others have said, why not even try Lee? Sure, he has sucked against Bama before, but the team needed some kind of spark, and leaving that chance, albeit a small one, on the bench revealed, yet again, Les Miles' often stubborn was of coaching. Pathetic. I grew up during the Hallman and DiNardo eras and witnessed a lot of bad football. Those years/games were painful, but it was almost expected because LSU couldn't keep in-state talent at the time and never had a team or coaching staff or recruiters good enough to compete for a national championship. Now, we are in a era of consistent Tiger greatness, and I think it was more gut-wrenching to sit through a pathetic game like this one than those of the previous eras because of the talent level and coaching staff present. The gameplan was total crap and there was no adaptation or anything in the second half. Heinous coaching, poor play, no discipline, nothing good except for a defense that was too worn down in the second half to do much of anything. I haven't even seen the time of possession, but I am willing to bet it is one of the most lopsided you'll ever see. This was one of the worst games I have ever witnessed, given the horrendous years I grew up in, in my lifetime as an LSU fan. After this season, I'm glad there will be no more Jefferson, and I'm glad there will be no more Lee for Les Miles to take a dump on.
Seriously? Part of coaching is getting that great talent. CLM had as bad of a game as we've seen him have in a long time, and you know what he's still one of the best coaches in college football. Whatever his obsession with loyalty to JJ is, it's over so it's fine. He went 13-1 with one hell of a season of distractions. Arguably coached the hardest schedule in college football history and went 13-1. Even the greatest coaches of all time have bad games (ask Phil Jackson about last years playoff series against Dallas).
I think that the way Bama played we would have needed to play 110% to win tonight. Instead we chose the easy way and we paid for it. Only half a time came in to play, the others did not. Of course Les Miles is responsible. We have talent in every role but at QB. We usually game planned around that and we won. This time our game plan sucked and showed all of JJ problems. Would Lee have been better? Maybe or maybe he would have been sacked and intercepted all game. We will never know. I hope this is a lesson for everyone, we will have another shot sometime in the future, next time we need to be lean mean and better prepared.
"I thought they played very well. And I really felt like it was as much as I would have liked to have put Jarrett Lee in because the program owes him a lot, he really did a great job for us in the beginning of the year and really throughout his career, I felt like it would be unfair to him with the pass rush that he would sustain to put him in late in that game and considering that Jefferson, in my opinion, threw in a could throw in a like fashion but could avoid the pass rush. "So that was my call." To bad the call was the wrong fing number.
Here is another quote on the JJ/Lee deal and I have to say I don't agree with the first part of this statement at all. "We felt like with Jefferson's feet and the ability to get out of the rush, that it was fair that he finished," Miles said. "He certainly had a tremendously strong year in any regard. Boy, we wanted to finish this one. It's hard to finish a season that was so successful this way."
In this case, clearly loyal to a fault. Les Miles looked like an ass out there tonight on the field and in the presser, even if that seems a bit harsh, that will be the perception.
