Should LSU Pull the Plug on the Les Miles Era?

LSU’s less than stellar opening weekend performance up at Lambeau Field against Wisconsin was probably the worst thing that could’ve happened to their embattled and eccentric head coach, Les Miles. Miles, who is famous for such strange acts like eating grass, or clapping his hands like this, came into the 2016 campaign on a seat so hot it would make Satan sweat, despite the fact that he has averaged 10 victories a year at LSU and won a national title.

Despite all the success, the fans in the Bayou have always wanted more from him and the program. It doesn’t help that he’s spent the last decade in the same division with arguably the greatest coach in college football history, Nick Saban, and that the fans see the Crimson Tide’s wild success and expect the same at their school. The Tigers have been the second best program in the SEC West during that span, but that hasn’t been enough for the LSU diehards.

Firing a coach is difficult, especially when you’re considering pulling the plug on someone as successful as Miles. In general, it takes a lot of screw ups for me to become a, “This guy should be fired” person, because it’s oftentimes a lazy, not thoroughly thought out point of view perpetuated by “RUN THIS JAMOAK OUT OF TOWN!!!!” guy, who is also the same person that calls Paul Finebaum’s radio show like three times a week and incoherently babbles about nonsense before angrily hanging up the phone.

About two years ago, I created four rules to help everyone determine when it was appropriate to fire your head coach. They are, as follows:

1.      They suffer from a severe case of Wade Phillips Syndrome (meaning they look lost and completely out of control of everything that’s happening involving the football team. Basically, to quote Colin Cowherd, if your coach looks like a marshmallow in a headset, it’s probably time to make a change).

2.      The players are starting to tune out both the coach and his message.

3.      The program/organization needs a culture change.

4.      The teams’ record  was significantly worse than the level of talent of the field.

I suppose I could’ve included things like “Coach is a drunk” (The Steve Sarkisian Corollary); “Coach freebases cocaine” (The Ron Washington Rule); “Coach loves strippers and prostitutes” (The Mike Price Amendment); “Coach lies to NCAA about hosting a barbecue for recruits at his house” (The Bruce Pearl Anomaly) or “Coach wrecks motorcycle, revealing he had his mistress on the payroll” (The Bobby Petrino Exception) and about a zillion other personal issues that have afflicted coaches, but those aren’t really relevant to Miles, unless he’s doing something like drinking blood in his basement while sacrificing goats to the gods of Germanic Paganism.

So let’s run through the checklist and see where Les comes up short:

1.      Wade Phillips Syndrome- Miles has plenty of personality quirks, none of which manifest themselves in any way  similar to the way Wade Phillips looked when he was “coaching” Dallas during the late ‘00s. Phillips looked completely clueless and over his skis as the head man for the Cowboys, and he’s much better suited at being an assistant, like a defensive coordinator, something he’s actually quite good at. In the coaching profession, some guys are 1’s, meaning head coaching material (think Belichick, Saban, Popovich, etc.), some guys are 2’s, meaning capable upper level assistants (think Phillips), and some guys are 3’s, meaning they should be coaching wide receivers somewhere and staying completely out of sight, for fear that their presence could negatively affect everything going on and absolutely torpedo a season (I’m looking at you Derek Dooley).

2.      The players have tuned him out- This one is hard to say. It’s much harder for a coach to wear down and cause negative reactions within a college team  with his  personality/message than it is for him to do it with a pro team, because his players are only with him for three or four years before they graduate/get drafted. So if they do get tired of him, it won't matter, because they're gone, and there's a whole new team to take their place. I haven’t read any stories or heard any reports about the players disliking Miles, probably because he’s one of the most lovable guys to ever coach in the SEC. He’s a great soundbite, he does ridiculous of-the-wall things, he’s got a great sense of humor, and from what I can tell, is a good, decent human being who cares about the well-being of his players. I pretty much hate everyone and everything in the SEC that doesn’t involve Tennessee, but even I have a hard time working up any resentment towards him. He’s just a likable guy, a good ole boy, along the same lines as someone like a Charles Barkley, where the only thing you can do is roll your eyes, shrug your shoulders, and say, “That’s just Les being Les”.

3.      The program/organization needs a culture change- In order to say that the culture needs to be changed, we first need to define what the culture in Baton Rouge under Miles has been. The Tigers, since he took over, have been heavily layered with super physical athletes who play great defense and incorporate a smash-mouth, aggressive style of football. Tiger Stadium, particularly at night, has been a nightmarish location for many a challenger, and Les’s propensity to shoot from the hip has made the Tigers one of the most difficult programs to play year after year in the sport.

However, just because the players like Miles, it doesn’t mean the boosters, higher ups in the athletic department, the media, and the fans haven’t grown tired of his antics. Miles’s unpredictability is charming when LSU was winning, but when your coach is freaking nuts and the losses start to pile up, those who have been around him for years start to get tired of it. I think the Les hot seat talk has a ton to do with the Tigers’ on-field slippage, but I think it would be naïve to dismiss the “We need a more stoic, steady figure in charge of things” segment that has bubbled up as a result of the decreased level of excellence on the field. 

When Rex Ryan first arrived in New York, he became one of the most braggadocios set of swinging balls to ever pass through the NFL. People loved him because he took shots at the Patriots, talked trash to them, and acted like he was a heavyweight boxer at a pre-fight press conference who was ready to absolutely pummel his opponent. And for a while, it worked. The Jets made back-to-back AFC Championship Games (eliminating New England in 2010) on the strength of a great defense and an undeniable swagger that they drew from their head coach. But eventually, as the team started to take a turn for the worse in the following seasons, Ryan’s routine became tiresome. He began to be negatively compared to Belichick, a guy who is more mysterious with the media than an episode of Stranger Things. Belichick was seen as a smooth sailor, someone who never rocked the boat and did everything to keep the press from creating controversy on his football team. Ryan did the opposite; he embraced the madness, and turned the Jets into a reality TV show. Eventually, it just became too much to handle, and a change had to be made. Les isn’t Rex, but he certainly isn’t Belichick either. 

4.      The teams’ record was significantly worse than the level of talent on the field- This is the potential nail in the coffin for Miles, depending on how you look at it. On the one hand, they’ve spent the last decade competing in what might be the toughest conference in the history of college football. Two conference championships, a national title, a bowl game every year, and 10 wins a season is pretty impressive, and would make him the second best coach in the conference over the last decade. I know as a Tennessee fan I’d kill to have that level of success over the last ten years, but some LSU fans act like Les’s tenure has been about as painful as forced fingernail removal.

So what’s not to like? Ask any Tiger fan what their biggest gripe during the Miles era has been, and I’d be shocked if they said anything besides the offense. That side of the ball has vacillated from “average” to “what the hell are we doing?” to “do we have a four year old calling plays for us?” during the entire time Les has manned the sidelines, oftentimes changing  wildly from game to game or possession to possession. Part of the problem has been Miles’s inability to either recruit a blue-chip, capable SEC level quarterback, or his ineptness at “coaching them up” once they arrive in Baton Rouge. You may have forgotten the names, but that doesn’t mean jokers like Jarrett Lee, Jordan Jefferson, Anthony Jennings, and Brandon Harris haven’t stood under center and taken important snaps in many SEC games over the years.

In case you were curious, here’s the Tigers conference rankings in total passing yards, along with their completion percentage, since 2005, Miles’s first season:

2015: 12^th, 2,165 yards on 53.6% completions

2014: 14^th, 2,118 yards on 50% completions

2013: 6^th, 3,263 yards on 62.9% completions (this was Zach Mettenberger’s second season, but even with his NFL talent,  LSU was an average passing team)

2012: 11^th, 2,607 yards on 58.4% completions

2011: 9^th, 2,135 yards on 62% completions

2010: 11^th, 2,023 yards on 57.5% completions

2009: 9^th, 2,363 yards on 58.9% completions

2008: 6^th, 2,617 yards on 54.7% completions

2007: 4^th, 3,154 yards on 57.9% completions

2006: 4^th, 3,272 yards on 66.6% completions (this was Jamarcus Russell’s last season, and he ended up being the number one overall pick in the 2007 NFL Draft. Whoops!)

2005: 3^rd, 2,192 yards on 60% completions

Sheesh. Talk about abysmal. Some of those numbers, particularly the last two seasons, are an absolutely brutal snapshot of the Tiger offense under Miles. Yes, I realize Les has never been a guy that likes to drop back and throw 40 times a game, but even when they had a talent like Mettenberger under center, the offense wasn’t anywhere close to being elite. Things aren’t likely to get better this season either, as LSU is still short on quarterback options and will inevitably being trotting out Brandon Harris (or worse) for the rest of this season. Harris’s interception at the end of the Wisconsin game was one of the worst passes I’ve ever seen in my life. It literally looked like he was aiming for the defensive back. If I was a team, I’d put 9 guys in the box every single time to stop Leonard Fournette, and beg Harris to beat me through the air, knowing he’s completely incapable of doing so. I don’t see the Tigers being able to score enough points all season to do better than 8-4.

Then again, despite all the inefficiencies on the offensive side of the ball, it’s hard to say Les’s teams have underperformed. 7 of his 11 seasons ended with at least 10 wins, they’ve made a bowl game every year, finished in the Top 25 nine times, and the top 10 five times.

Then again, they’ve lost to Alabama four straight times, and came apart at the end of the season two straight years as the offense began to betray them. Of course, the easy counter is, “Yeah, but everybody struggles with Alabama”, and in regards to the collapses, I think you have to weigh those against the nine previous seasons, when, again, LSU won more than 10 games seven times.

There aren’t many coaches who can step to what Les has done at LSU. The talent has always been off the charts. If the critique is, “Yeah, but look at Alabama!” then Miles is shot. I don’t blame fans for having high expectations (frankly I wish Tennessee fans had higher expectations for the program. It’s a joke that so many of them would make excuses for the team after they barely squeaked by and should’ve lost to Appalachian State in Knoxville. Come on guys), I just wonder if those expectations are realistic.

If you want to fire Les because you’re tired of his personality and quirkiness, and frustrated by the lack of offensive explosion and fire power, I understand it. It’s been 11 years, and in his twelfth, it again looks like the offense is going to be backed up worse than a toilet after an “All You Can Eat” hot wing night. Just don’t expect that you’ll be able to hire someone that steps in and wins at the same level he did.

Think about this; this century, how many times has a college football coach been hired, and everyone instantly thought, “Oh my gosh, that guys is going to be a roaring success. Like, there’s no way his program doesn’t take off”? I’d say three times: Nick Saban at Alabama, Urban Meyer at Ohio State, and Jim Harbaugh at Michigan. Every other coach hiring at every other school has involved an varying degrees of mystery. Jim McElwain may end up being excellent at Florida, but we don’t know. Mark Richt had a lot of success at Georgia, but hiring him was still a toss up when it happened. The same with Bob Stoops at Oklahoma and, frankly, Les at LSU. Those guys ended up being really good to great coaches, but for every Stoops or Miles, there’s a trillion guys like Derek Dooley, Brady Hoke, Ron Zook, Charlie Weis, Mike Shula, Rich Rodriguez, and Steve Sarkisian.

Fans have the illusion that just because they have a job opening, it somehow means that the coach they hire will be a wild upgrade over the guy they had before. Sometimes? For example, I understand you can’t have Sarkisian, a guy with alcohol problems, being in charge of more than a hundred 18-22 year olds, but is Clay Helton, (a guy with a bit of Wade Phillips Syndrome potential)  really that much of improvement at USC? And was Sarkisian really an enormous upgrade over Lane Kiffin when he was hired to replace him? I know Kiffin wore out his welcome quicker than your racist uncle at Thanksgiving, but Sarkisian did go a paltry 5-7, 7-6, 7-6, 7-6, and 8-4 in his five years at Washington, winning one bowl game while never finishing inside the Top 25. Compare that to Kiffin, who went 8-5, 10-2, 7-6, and 3-2 in three and a half seasons as the head man of the Trojans. Lane was 28-15 (65%) at USC, and Sark was 34-29 (54%) at Washington. Great. Then again, I guess when you have the opportunity to hire someone with a worse winning percentage at their school than the guy you just fired, you have to do it.

If I were the Tigers, I’d be mindful of this: Going from Saban to Miles or Bobby Bowden to Jimbo Fisher is rare. Oftentimes, you might hire several Ron Zook or Brady Hoke types before you end up landing the right guy again. It could be 3 years, 7 years, or even a decade before you end up with the coach you want. Heck, look at Tennessee. I was in favor of firing Fulmer in 2008 when it happened, but we’re now 8 years and three coaches later and we’re still not sure if we’ve found the right coach or not. If you keep Miles, you know what you’re getting: a great defensive team that can compete for an SEC title every season despite middling quarterback play. If you deviate from that, who knows? Where’s the Saban/Meyer/Harbaugh home run this off-season? I don’t think there is one. It’s a gamble, and one I’d think about for a long time before I made it.