Doing Les with more

By Nick Leach | 5.4.10 | Email

Nearly half a century ago Bill Shankly uttered words that could sum up the LSU nation's attachment towards their Bayou Bengals; "Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it's much more serious than that."

This wasn't how the last two years were supposed to go after capturing the national championship in 2007, which makes it all the more painful. Decked out with first round NFL talent, a head coach that could seemingly do no wrong that had fans thinking "Nick who?", and recruiting classes that were so consistent Ben Stein's vocal chords were jealous. The path the future held seemed blazingly bright with more SEC titles and BCS games imminent but somehow and someway the course diverged in a way few imagined possible. A mere two years later has Les Miles pondering how he landed on the hot seat.

A quick glance at Miles' overall record shows a 51-15 record, 3 seasons with 11 wins or more, and a national title to his acclaim. Hot seat? Shouldn't we be discussing his freshly minted lifetime contract from LSU and what shade of bronze he's going to get his statue in?! You have to take a closer look to see how deceiving and concerning that record actually is. On the job in his first 3 years Les built up a mind boggling 34-6 record, but how much credit does he really deserve for that? This record was achieved with Nick Saban's recruits, as Les was hired in January of 2005 so a great majority of the '05 class belongs to Saban and his staff's credit. Part of that record was built during the championship year and it deserves fair mention though that Les' recruiting had an impact in attaining that title with Chad Jones and Terrance Toliver earning starting positions as well as Freshmen All-American honors so it's not as if he did not have a hand in the players who earned it. He also had to coach the team to victory although Ohio State attempted to do everything in their powers to make sure he didn't have to do much to get that done. The point being that Les' benchmark of success was earned with someone else's players, someone who understood how to build a team with players that fit his scheme and then coached up that talent.

Now why are we being so hard on Les you may ask yourself? Because the last two years have made it far too easy not to. With his personally recruited players he has amassed a 17-9 record and the year after they won it all they finished the year unranked! Some would quickly bring up the point that they lost 4 first round talents that year in the draft, certainly that had to leave a mark! And certainly it did, but they also reloaded with talent. In the 2008 draft they had 5 players selected in the first 4 rounds of the draft, one more than they did the year before. That is on top of the two returning Freshmen All-Americans in Jones and Toliver, so the talent level and results do not match up anyway you look at it. With Saban's recruits he built a winning mark of .850%, while with his recruits it was .654%. Quite a concerning difference when the talent was just as good, if not better, and we will look more closely at that statement very soon.

After mentioning the NFL draft history with his players we would be remised not to mention the claims by scouts recently that Miles' players demonstrate "poor work habits and technique". Ouch! Talk about taking a shot at the big man in charge, essentially accusing him of breeding lazy and poorly coached recruits to the big time. To be fair, part of those claims should fall directly back on that scout who should be worried about himself if all his research didn't show those two traits that are generally hard to miss and might have been noticed if he, oh say, talked to that recruits position coach and watched the game films (crazy talk, I know! Or would they say hogwash in Louisiana?). Looking furthermore on the allegations made towards Les it's hard to deny the facts. Under his watch 6 players have been drafted in the first round (Jackson, Dorsey, Russell, Landry, Bowe, Davis). Out of that group only Bowe can have some hope of not being called a disappointment yet, and even that is dangerous after his 2009 campaign that was by far his career worse and which ended in a 4 game drug suspension that further dampened his reputation. Tyson Jackson's rookie campaign was frustrating to say the least but as a rookie 3-4 DE we can give him some breathing room. Dorsey has struggled to fit in and have an impact on the run, Landry has been moved around at safety all the while not hiding his inability to cover, Davis was horribly over drafted and as far as Russell, I think we know enough about him then to divulge into that situation. Now here we sit with his inability to achieve the same success with his players as he did with Nick Saban's and ill-preparing his players for success in the NFL..so far, not good.

Earlier we made a statement that Miles' recruits were just as talented, if not more talented than the earlier regimes. We'd be ill-advised to make such grandiose statements without facts to support such. From 2002-04 Saban averaged recruiting ranks of 15/2/2, respectively. In the 2005 class in which the regime switch was performed LSU struggled to a 21st ranked class. From 2006 on Les had class ranks of 7/5/9/3/7. That's five straight years with top ten classes. With those classes strung together and reaching upperclassmen status together in the last two years, how do you struggle to a 17-9 two year mark?

Now of course recruiting rankings are not the end all-be all, but they are typically a strong indicator of talent. Specifically speaking about talent and strong indicators is the 5-star status given to the cream of the crop. Those given that vaulted praise find themselves statistically immensely more likely to succeed than their counterparts. Numbers wise they are 360% more likely to become a college All-American over their 4-star competitors and 980% over the 3-stars! And as far as that increased success goes as it pertains to the NFL, 5-star talents have a 44% likelihood that they are drafted in the first 3 rounds of the draft while 4-star and 3-star players come in at 10% and 5% respectively. To most closely show further ineptitude by Miles we take a look at the 2005-07 5-star talents that he brought in since they can have gone thru both the college and NFL draft stages. In that 3 year period he brought in 8 5* talents; Ryan Perrilloux, Keiland Williams, Al Woods, Jai Eugene, Chad Jones, Terrance Toliver, Joseph Barksdale, Demetrius Byrd. Out of those 8, 5 have moved on from LSU with only one being part of the top 3 rounds, that being Chad Jones who just made it into third round. That's a 24% decrease in what is achieved on average with such talent. Will Toliver and Barksdale go to help balance those numbers out? Possibly as both surely have the talent but with the combustible nature of the NFL draft and the current disparaging remarks scouts have for LSU players you have to wonder how they will be affected following next season. On top of that, there are plenty of 5* talents that appear to be approaching bust status (Shepard and his position search is one that comes to mind) so to expect that 20% first 3 round success status to greatly adjust towards the average appears a bit far-fetched.

In the last 5 years the LSU recruiting classes have averaged a 5.9 finish. As that talent has been given time to emerge into upper-classmen leaders we've seen them accrued an 8-8 SEC record over the last two years. This was done in an SEC in which outside of Alabama and Florida the SEC has been average at best and likely sub-par, relatively speaking. Taking that much talent and producing that poor of a result is so appalling it reminds you of the cinematic bust Wild Wild West (seriously, how do you make a bad Will Smith movie?).

A large part of this recent debacle has been the handling of the quarterback situation. As Ryan Perrilloux backed up Matt Flynn during the golden run of 2007 it seemed all too easy for him to slide in as starter the following year. After one too many positive drug tests Ryan found himself on the way out and the ensuing domino effect of rushing QB's on the field whom weren't quite ready ensued. From the young Jarrett Lee to the wunderkind Andrew Hatch to the "I see enough flashes to give me hope" Jordan Jefferson, the baton has been passed, err, dropped from one QB to the next. Les' poor QB recruiting is sticking out like a sore thumb right now as he's focused far too much on athleticism and looking for that next home run talent over the fundamentally well-developed and huddle leader type. The hope is that Jefferson can develop into the type of QB and leader that he's shown flashes of.and we are speaking of the good flashes, not the "My coach has no idea how to prepare me or himself and now it's being shown on national TV" type of flash.

Coach Miles isn't without his strong points though. Clearly he has built a staff that has gone thru many losses and still maintains itself as a huge force in the recruiting game. You don't achieve the success they have in recruiting if you are not truly one of the best out there. Now see, for 3 sentences there I went without mentioning a negative, whew, that was tough!

The overall decline in on-field results and lack of NFL draftee success has been shown as extremely concerning when realizing the talent is just as good as it was under Saban's leadership. Is the difference that Saban knew how to build a team better than Miles? His seat is starting to heat up because he is bringing in drastically reduced production with at-worst equal talent. If he does that for a third straight year that seat maybe cooled because he will have been ejected off of it. And that is where things could get even more interesting..

LSU may be heating that seat up even more on Coach Miles if Bo Pelini continues the resurgence party at Nebraska. Bo has shown he can create an extremely well-coached team that is mentally tough and gets the most out of his talent; sounds a little bit different than the guy they got now, eh? Les is not without his options either though. It's very possible and maybe even likely that the Michigan job will open up barring a strong turnaround by Rich Rodriguez. Could Les decide to leave himself for a new position in order to gain greater job security? Seems crazy to leave LSU for Michigan but a similar move was just done in basketball. Former Iowa State coach Greg McDermott left ISU for Creighton; yes, you heard that right, he left Iowa State for Creighton! Why? He was on the hot seat and feared he'd be fired with another bad year so instead he cashed in on an opportunity to move to a cooler seat that offered a long term contract. Will the same type of deal be too much for Les to turn down? Maybe, maybe not but certainly it is something that if offered would give him great reason to ponder. Such a move would almost guarantee a two to three year job cushion which in coaching terms is a lifetime and a half.

In the end, Miles has made himself known for making a gourmet meal with someone else's ingredients and recipe. He still did the cooking but now that it was his turn to do the shopping and cooking he ended up burning the turkey and having to call for pizza. Can he afford to do that again and still find himself with a job? He has a former staff member achieving great success elsewhere that is now staring over his shoulder waiting for a slip up. The fans are beyond starving for the success they saw in the past and are letting him hear about it. The NFL scouts are giving it to him for sending fool's gold to them. All the outside situations are starting to stack up and peer over Miles and it's casting quite the shadow for him and now we will have to see if the 2010 season allows him to escape the darkness or if it will swallow him up and spit him out. The world awaits his next move to see if Les Miles can finally make a mark that is truly his own and allow him to stand on his own merits because if not there will be a new Bo ready and waiting to shake up the SEC yet again.