Les Miles: "we would have called the exact same plays" in BCS do-over
Despite the criticism of his former players, Les Miles said Tuesday his offense's problem in the BCS national championship defeat was execution--and not his staff's play-calls.
By
Jerry Hinnen
•
3 min read
It's safe to say that the offensive coaching in LSU's BCS national championship didn't sit very well with the seniors for whom the 21-0 humiliation doubled as the final game of their Tiger careers. Jordan Jefferson said he would have changed some of the play-calls if he'd had the authority. Deangelo Peterson said the play-calling "bothered the whole offense." Jarrett Lee said there were "players and plays that could have helped us win" that were never used.
But Les Miles took the opportunity of Tuesday's SEC spring meetings to offer his own version of what went wrong in New Orleans. It wasn't the play-calls, he said; it was the players.
“We would have called the exact same plays,” Miles said, according to the Baton Rouge Advocate. “We would have just executed them better.
“The plays would have been really good plays. We didn’t execute well.”
“The plays would have been really good plays. We didn’t execute well.”
It's awfully hard to argue with the second part, given that whenever a team with the kind of talent LSU brought to New Orleans finishes with a grand total of 92 offensive yards -- even against a juggernaut like the 2011 Alabama defense -- it's hardly a stretch to say there have been some execution problems.
But Miles's comments will still very likely rub the LSU faithful -- and his former players -- entirely the wrong way. First: you really would have called the exact same plays, Les? After not crossing the 50 until the game had been decided? After scoring zero points? After averaging barely more than 2 yards per-play?
We don't blame Miles for his admirable faith in his offensive staff, or for his willingness to defend them in the face of of criticism that started before the team had even left the locker room and hasn't died down yet. But if he truly believes he and his staff's coaching job that night didn't need any adjusting, that's blind stubbornness--and given that it's fair to wonder if it's the same strain of blind stubbornness that led him to stick with Jefferson long past the point when a change under center was required.
Secondly, simply from a leadership standpoint, why isn't Miles taking responsibility for his team's defeat over shifting the blame onto his players? Miles said the result was "my fault" in the game's immediate wake, but there's no way to spin blaming "execution" over play-calls as something other than calling the players' performance a larger problem than the coaching they were receiving.
No doubt Miles felt -- and clearly still feels -- stung by having his former players so openly question he and his staff's tactics, but most of the players who didn't execute are still on his roster. How are they going to feel about their head coach pointing the BCS finger at them instead of himself, however subtly?
In the end, the questions about Miles' willingness to adapt offensively loom larger than the ones about his relationship to his players; despite the comments from his former seniors, he's never seemed to lose a locker room before, and he likely won't over this either.
But however you slice his remarks Tuesday, it's impossible to think Miles himself has yet been able to address that loss as honestly as he'll need to for the Tigers to move forward, no matter how much motivation the loss might provide.
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