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Saturday, November 21, 2009

Firing the crappy coach is what gets results

Don't take my word for it. Check out the Hornets.

Of course dumping Miles won't turn things around quite as fast for LSU. They've waited too long to do it. But for God's sake, it's time to do something.

The Tigers were divided over what plays to call, lost 17 seconds when the team tried for a timeout and didn't get it, and there was admittedly no backup plan when LSU went for the end zone on the last play of the game and came up short at the Ole Miss 6 with 1 second left.

"I can only tell you that the management at the back end of the game was the issue," LSU coach Les Miles said, later adding: "It's my fault that we didn't finish first in that game."

When reporters asked Miles which coach decided to try to spike the ball before the clock restarted rather than going for a field goal, he said he wasn't yet sure and would have to find out. Jordan Jefferson and the Tigers never got lined up anyway and Ole Miss earned its second straight win over the Tigers and the first at home since 1998.


Miles doesn't even know which coach on his staff was responsible for managing the crucial last seconds of the game.

But wait. Here's more.

Miles said he suggested to assistant coaches that they call a run play at that point, but allowed a pass play to be signaled in. Jefferson completed a 7-yard pass to Stevan Ridley with 26 seconds left and Miles said he thought he heard timeout being called.

But the referees never got the message and 17 seconds ticked off the clock before coaches realized what was happening, leaving LSU with fourth and 26 at the Ole Miss 48 with 9 seconds left.

"The clock ran down, timeouts were being called verbally and I didn't relate that to the official apparently and that was the mistake," Miles said.

The team was going for the end zone on the last pass play, he said, and when Jefferson found Toliver in traffic at the 6 with a second left, the team was unprepared. Rather than run the field goal unit on field while there appeared to be confusion with the chain gang, Jordan tried to get the team lined up to spike the ball but never got the play off.

"I know there was a lot of confusion on the sideline," said Jefferson, who rallied the Tigers with 120 yards passing and a touchdown in the fourth quarter. "Nobody knew what to do."


The thing is, this sort of thing happens in nearly every game Les Miles "manages". People line up in the wrong place or substitutions get flubbed or timeouts get wasted or are not used soon enough. Miles, apparently, doesn't even know whose job on his staff it is to get this shit straight. In short, Jefferson sums up the Miles zeitgeist quite well. Nobody knows what to do. And it happens every week. Les Miles gets paid a lot of money specifically to see to it that people know what to do. He has been nothing short of a total failure at this essential function of his job from the very first day. It's time to do something about this.

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