Time to grade the Mile's Exam (Long. sorry)

Well, we all got our hearts broken yesterday. Atlanta was looking nice and playing for the BCS Title looked even nicer. However, that is not going to happen unfortunately. I've been saying for three years now I would save my judgement of Miles until after this year. I said this season was his exam. Well, it is time to grade the exam.

First the positives on Miles. I think he is a good man. He has good character. Family man type of guy and everyone who has met him likes him. The players like him. These are not bad things in a coach.

If he stays at LSU, he will win 75% of his games. He is a good recruiter, knows how to recognize talent. He hires good staff (although I am now questioning Pelini as a good SEC DC), which says he is not afraid to hire true experts for his team, something coaches like Dinardo were averse to doing. Just hiring good coaches and having strong recruiting classes will ensure a winning record at LSU, a string of bowl games, publicity, and a decent ranking every year.

Now for the negatives. I think although he has a good character, I think it is weak to some degree and lacks strong decision-making skills. I remember last year when asked about recruiting players who had problems with academics, he replied "If you have a world class cello player, do you keep him out of college because he has problems with math? Of course not" and made it clear he had NO problem recruiting such players. I will never forget his 5-10 minute discussion defending such a policy as it was an aggressive defense. The alarm bells went off in my head as I thought "uh-oh, this means trouble."

I don't think its any coincidence that he had to kick 5 players off the team this year for violent crimes. He had similar problems at OSU. Now it is true Miles did the right thing in kicking off these players. However, if you are recruiting players who are not that smart and think they still deserve a chance at college, it means you are recruiting guys who are also going to do, well, dumb things such as attacking other players, committing burglary, putting guys in the hospital, and other things that go past teen age stupidity.

None of these pricks cared enough about the team or themselves to think about how their actions would have on their lives or LSU. One of these thugs attacked Barksdale in a bar before the season and got in more trouble. Barksdale had the sense not to make it worse. Think we needed him this year on the offensive line? Of course we did. Look at Perriloux. Nothing but a head case and has not shown anything special. The odds are he will get in trouble again and soon. When Miles came here he aggressively recruited him. I remember Saban telling us he did not like his attitude.

Forget Saban's ethics and focus on this: if the player is one Saban does not want or can't work out for Saban, history shows he is not worth having: Barrington Edwards, Robert Lane, Parquet..the list goes on. However, Miles has shown he will take a chance on such players and look what we get: reporters checking the police blotter on a daily basis with a stack of ten dollar bills ready to pay for police reports. Nice legacy. So by repeatedly recruiting players who get in trouble so much, does Miles make good decisions in choosing who to recruit? Does he focus just on talent? What is his philosophy when it comes to recruiting? It is talent alone or does it include character and intelligence?

There is no question Miles knows football but there has been another disturbing trend among his football team that can not be ignored. Under Miles, LSU tends to play to the level of the competition if its an SEC team, unless that team is really bad. His best SEC win was this year against South Carolina: 11 points.

Every mediocre or better SEC team has presented us with the same scenario: we come out flat or have to win in the last minutes of the game. We DON'T come out and control from start to finish. Yes, Saban had 3 loss seasons but he also had games where we dominated (when is the last time you heard Miles talk about domination? You know why you don't know? Because he never has.) The record does not lie:

Florida: Every game but '06 was down to the wire
Tennesse: last minute win, OT loss
Arkansas: all three close games
Auburn: everyone knows that history
SC: won by 11
UGA: Blowout loss
Alabama: OT win, last minute win, came out flat in '06
Ole Miss: against bad Ole Miss teams: OT win, back and forth game last week.
Kentucky: average SEC team this year. we lose.

MSU: we've always owned them. same with Vandy

In 03, we blew out Auburn, Georgia, S. Carolina, Bama, and Arkansas. We blew out FLorida in 02. We beat Arkansas handily in 04. Every good SEC coach will have wins against decent SEC teams where they have controlled the game from start to finish. We have had good teams blown out by Auburn, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and so on. Good SEC teams DON'T have Miles track record of playing exactly to the other team's level every game. From time to time, they dominate.

Unde Miles, LSU has not done so. The result is we live by the edge and every game is a nail-biter. That is fine for winning record. However, it shows something is not right. I don't think he focuses as other coaches do on dominating the other players. I think his nice guy personnae plays into that and he does NOT have a killer instinct. One time I heard him defend the team having a tough game in saying hey, the other team was good. You can interpret that any way you choose. That lack of a killer instinct means we will usually lose that one game that keeps us from true success in college football. In '05 before the Georgia loss, he flew to Dallas to discuss the Cotton Bowl with its represnetatives on Thursday night BEFORE the SEC Championship game. He defended it saying that was his normal family night so it did not interfere with his game preperations for Georgia. Oh really? I remember in 01 making fun of Fulmer because on that same night, he and one of his players flew to Florida and back to accept an award on that Thursday night when he should have been back in Knoxville getting his team ready for LSU. Can you imagine Saban or Meyer going out of town for a whole night 48 hours before the SEC Championship game? Can you imagine them doing family night before a big game. Make no mistake, I want coaches to spend time with their families. However, 48 hours before such a game, shouldn't they be working on the game, not worrying about bowl games or awards? However, I digress.

The lack of discipline shows up on the field during games. Leading the SEC in penalties. Repeatedly committing personal fouls on the field. Punches to the heads during games. Late hits. Repeatedly lining up wrong by experienced players, costing us touchdowns. The constant inability of our offense to use the clock wisely. The refusal to adjust during games as needed. The numerous times where the team has lacked a killer instinct when the opponent could be put away for the rest of the game (see Arkansas and Alabama this year). As for the defense, even if the soft defense is due to Pelini, Miles still can overrule him, which apparently has not happened. After three years with veteran, highly recruited players, this should not happen and the blame should be placed squarely at the feet of Miles.

One must also wonder once again about his ability to make decisions when he allows coaches like Pelini to run schemes that obviously do not work and have not worked for some time? Is it weakness? Is it a stubborness to admit when wrong or getting so focused on getting the player to execute properly that he stops seeing the bigger picture? These are questions that must be asked.

I'm sorry for writing this as I like Miles as a person. However, we have to decide what are our expectations. If it is to be a winning program with bowl games every year, then Miles is your coach. However, there is a huge difference between a championship coach and a winning coach. Saban was a championship coach. Stallings was a championship coach. Meyer is one as well. We won't even mention Tuberville. Put those guys into big games that mean something, they knew what to do. Miles has shown that in games that truly count, he does not know how to coach the team before or during the game.

I am not one of these idiot fans who think we should go undefeated every year and think ten wins a year is not good enough. I'm happy with ten wins a year. However, I want a championship coach. My expectation is a top ten or so ranking every year and every 5 years or so, a shot at the national title. A shot, not a win. Its very rare you get to the level of Miami in the 80's or Florida State in the 80's or 90's where you are playing for one every year and I don't have those expectations.

However, I don't think Miles is a championship coach. He will win, he will have success and if that is your expectation, then is the coach for you. If you want a championship coach, then he is not your coach and we should let him go to Michigan. Unlike Skip, I don't want a "best fit". I want a championship coach who has his team disciplined on AND off the field.

 

YES YES YES YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! thank you for saying that cuz if all our fans want is a sec west crown from time to time and maybe an sec crown we got our man...we will get the talent we need to win the sec west from time to time but i dont think i know miles want get us to the promised land.

 

of course, I could be wrong.

Richt made bone headed decisions early on at Georgia and learned from them.

 

i didn't see you post on this forum before the other one. let's keep the conversation here, it's much better without someone like sfp chiming in. ok here's my points you've seen so far: 1. miles is not a championship coach - he's won two western division titles in three years, has a week and a damn good chance to win the sec next saturday. 2. has never dominated - he dominated two good teams this year in msu and va tech. 3. miles doesn't have his teams up for games - i agree that since florida we haven't been up for a game this year but miles has NEVER lost to teams that he was supposed to beat. by this i mean he's never lost to teams like UAB or ULM of which saban has a loss he shouldn't have had in every year he coached but one. you, and most tiger fans this year, have ridiculous unrealistic expectations for this team. there have been people on this forum saying we're a "team of destiny" etc. by acting like this you've set up yourself to be as disappointed as you are. to go without one loss or two losses in a year is incredible. to do it in the sec is absurd. it's not impossible but it is not something you should put money on because it's not a safe bet. also you seem to be judging miles on this game and this year only. if you want to bring up other points besides these, go for it.

 

I don't consider the SEC West to be a legimate title. Like I consider ULL to be USL. That is just how I think about that so-called title. Its not a title and should not even be mentioned when we win it. Its a lowering of expectations.

We tend to dominate OOC teams. This is probably due to the talent and the speed. SEC much faster conference and our OOC record shows it. MSU? We always own them. Explain how a sorry Ole Miss team damn near gets us two years in a row? Or an average Kentucky team beat us? Or against an average Tenn. team we come out flat and need last minute heroics to win? Or against weaker Alabama teams we go to OT or need to win in the fourth quarter? Start looking at each SEC game game by game and you will see the trend.

 

another thing. I'm tired of seeing Saban blamed for UAB.

He didn't lose the game. Booty did.

BOOTY IGNORED the call at the end and threw it for a pic.

and he was promptly benched the next day. That one was Booty.

 

Good post--I agree with pretty much everything you've said about Miles. I'm not so sure, though, that there is anyone else out there THAT LSU IS LIKELY TO HIRE that would be better right now. I still think that Miles goes to Michigan, because Miles is the best choice for them right now, so that will mean we'll be shopping. It's hard to know in advance what a coach will do, and I don't even trust a Spurrier at this stage in his career.

One of the problems here, not to give Miles a pass, but it's true, is that the SEC is the toughest conference around. There are a bunch of great coaches in the conference, and even though we have stellar talent they're going to game plan for us if we're seen as #1 because they'll be on national TV and it is a showcase game. So Georgia, for instance, has had an easier time this year than LSU has. We won the 2003 championship in a year in which we got no respect until the end. And this year the NC team is likely to be a dark horse. I think being ranked #1 is a very mixed blessing especially in the SEC.

I still like where we are better than where Alabama is, and I think we're solidly in the hunt under Miles. He hires well. He is a good man. (I hate it that he gives scholarships to thugs--but maybe that will change after this year because so many people will want to play here that he won't have to.)

I'm still proud to be LSU and I am not a Miles detractor. I am just not a Miles lover. I am sort of neutral about him, but he is better than I thought he'd be.

 

well you can spin it whichever way you want, but it shouldn't have even been a game against uab. just like it shouldn't have been a game between ulm and bama.

nobody here is saying what we should shoot for is only an sec west title. what i'm saying is we still have a shot at the sec title overall and an outside shot at a national title yet you're coming in here and saying miles is not a championship coach. perfect example of cart before the horse.

hell auburn went undefeated in the sec and still didn't even get invited to the bcs game. having expectations of national titles every year is RIDICULOUS because it's not in our hands. it's in the hands of voters and computers.

 

That is my only ding against him. He is a great man, but I don't think he is the motivator you need to be NC. I always told my dad that Les could not pull the trigger in big games. I think he got lucky a few times this year. Still, he is a very good coach.

 

well this is something that's unprovable and i have to agree that some games this year we have obviously not been up for it. is that all on miles though? well if one would rather blame booty for us losing to UAB than saban, then no. it's on the players too.

when you have the whole world telling you that you're the best ever and anything less than perfect is a failure it might be hard to be motivated. when you've already been invited to the sec championship it might be hard to be motivated.

on the flip, it's pretty damn easy for a team like arkansas to be up for the game because their coach is likely on the way out and they get to ruin our season. our only motivation we've been playing for is to not have our season ruined.

but, don't take this as me defending the game yesterday because i won't. we deserved to lose that game from the first fricking minute by not capitalizing on that fumble recovery.