Quoted:

Last play of the game, what were they thinking?

Quoted:
At first I was all


Then I

Quoted:


Worst call I have ever seen.

Quoted:


That's what Les Miles gets for shaking Tressel's hand in the SEC title game....bad big-game calling rubbed off on him.
 

Quoted:
Worst call I have ever seen.

Quoted:
At first I was all


Then I

Quoted:
The game was lost before the pass play.  They let 15 seconds wind down before calling their last time out.  Total brain cramp on the part of the head coach.  How mush money do they pay him?

Quoted:







That's what Les Miles gets for shaking Tressel's hand in the SEC BCS title game....bad big-game calling rubbed off on him.

 

Quoted:
Worst coaching and time management I have ever seen. Les stated after the game in an interview that they had to spike it because they could not get the kicking team on in time. They should have seen that coming and at least had them ready or just run another play to try to connect with a pass.

Quoted:


Yep, first off, they burn 15 seconds after the 3rd down play.  Then after the long pass, they had 27 (real time) seconds to get the FG team on.  Les Miles and the rest of the coaching staff fell asleep apparently.

Unforgivable.  I have seen better clock management in Flea Fly games.

LC

On Saturday, LSU's Jordan Jefferson made the inexplicable decision to spike the football with only one second remaining in the game. Spiking the football ended the game and negated two miraculous Milacles: first, Les Miles' Tigers recovered an onside kick and then they completed a 46-yard Hail Mary. In his postgame news conference Miles claimed that he didn't know who had instructed Jefferson to spike the football. "I do not know who told him to clock [spike] it," Miles said.

Except, you guessed it, Miles himself was displaying his uncanny acumen by calling for the ball to be spiked with one second remaining on the clock. That's something that you can clearly see on this video after the jump. And yet another reason why LSU fans are still staring morosely at the waters on the bayou, shaking their heads, drinking Jax beers, and cursing the day that Les Miles didn't leave for Michigan.

Earlier this season we put together a list of Les Miles' ten most improbable success stories. We branded these Milacles. In his first three years at LSU, Miles went 34-6, won a national championship, racked up an impressive 19-5 regular season record in the SEC, and won games in such an improbable fashion that you came to believe that the laws of football physics didn't apply to him. After he won a national championship despite two losses to inferior teams, I wrote a column calling him the biggest idiot to ever win a national title in college football.

Some LSU fans took offense to the characterization. I stood by my opinion. I love Les Miles, I hope he coaches at LSU for two more decades. If only so I can get texts like this soon after I sit down at the Tennessee-Vandy game. "Les Miles, you won't believe it!"

Believe what?

There is almost nothing Miles could do on a football field that would surprise me. From coaching without pants –– Miles: "I believed that my knees needed a brisk air to further legitimize our offensive prowess" –– to Miles going for two when an extra point would win the game. The totality of the football universe is truly at play when the Mad Hatter hits the sideline.

Slowly, though, word spread around Neyland Stadium from one fan to another about the end of the Ole Miss-LSU game. Everyone began shaking their head in tandem. "LSU spiked the football with one second left," a portly man behind me told his seatmate.

"That's Les Miles," the other man retorted.

Indeed, Miles has been a wild card on the sideline since he famously attempted to call timeout after LSU intercepted Tennessee in the fourth quarter of his first game as Tiger coach. Sadly, for Miles, the clock stops on the change of possession. Fortunately for him, no one saw him in that game attempting to call a timeout. Unfortunately for him, no one on the LSU sideline saw fit to call timeout with the clock running and fourth down looming against Ole Miss.

Last season the bloom appeared to be off Miles' fleur-de-lis. He and the Tigers lost as many SEC games in 2008 as they'd lost in his first three seasons combined. Cajun hearts collectively skipped a beat. But Miles, with typical self-confidence, brushed off doubters and asserted that 2009 would bring a return to championship-level football.

He was wrong.

What's worse, the harebrained schemes that served Miles so well early in his tenure, such as passing into the end zone with one second left on the clock against Auburn, are beginning to backfire. Cue the Ole Miss game, a new chapter in idiocy.

Last weekend, New England's Bill Belichick came in for an awful lot of criticism for his fourth-down call against the Indianapolis Colts. But at least Belichick realized the significance of his gamble. Miles has never been that self-aware about the perils he's narrowly avoided in his years at LSU. Some coaches steadfastly analyze risk and reward before making a steely-eyed gamble. Miles doesn't even realize the stakes when he takes his risks.

Amazingly, that's worked for him. Primarily, one supposes, because his talent level has been vastly superior to his opponents. No longer. Now LSU fans, staring down the barrel of an 8-4 season that would follow an 8-5 season, are beginning to fear the worst.

As well they should.

Let's break down Miles' errors at the end of the game in numerical format:

1. First, Miles allows seventeen seconds to run off the clock after a loss of yardage on a third down completion.

This has to go down in the annals of coaching as one of the dumbest mistakes any of us have ever witnessed. Can you imagine what being an LSU fan was like as those precious seconds ticked away? How about an Ole Miss fan, suddenly daring to dream that your most hated out-of-state rival might allow the clock to die before he even attempted another play?

Whatever you do, don't buy the fact that someone for LSU called the timeout and the officials didn't notice it.

In these situations the officials are always watching the sideline for the barest signal of a timeout to be made. They're expecting it.

All of us were.

If you're the head coach you have to run halfway to midfield frantically making the T signal at the very moment your player goes down in a heap on the field.

Anything less is pure idiocy.

That's for a coach on any level. But especially for a man making almost $4 million a year.

2. After the 17 seconds tick off, there are only nine seconds remaining and you're facing a fourth-and-26.

You've already made one error but now coaching, more than anything else, becomes an exercise in decision-making. You have to answer the following question first:

How many plays can you possibly run in nine seconds if you have to gain at least 26 yards on the play to convert the first down?

Two, at best, right?

And that's potentially pushing it. Because you know that the play is going to take a while to develop if your receivers have to run that far down the field to gain the first down.

But you need to be prepared for that opportunity.

So if you convert that play you have to get your field goal team ready, right?

3. And if you don't want to run your field goal team on, you absolutely, positively, have to call two plays during that timeout, right?

Because maybe you decide that running the field goal team isn't your call.

You know that, at minimum, you have to move the ball to the Ole Miss 22 to convert the first down. So why not go ahead and call a second play that sends every receiver into the end zone assuming that you're going to be in the neighborhood of 20 yards from the goal line?

Sure, it's not ideal to make that play call in advance given that you don't know exactly what yard line you'll be on. But shouldn't you go ahead and set that up?

Again, that's if you've rejected the field goal ploy.

During that timeout you could gather the entire team around and make a play call for fourth down and the ensuing play call. Maybe even pull Jefferson aside and instruct him that he can only ground the ball if there are at least two seconds left on the clock.

Even though that's something that should have been drilled into his head already.

4. Also, at this point, keep in mind that the clock stops on a first down to move the chains.

This is one of the most glaring aspects of this situation. It's not like the clock was ticking down. It was completely stopped!

So, unlike the NFL, where running a team on the field with this amount of time remaining isn't an option, you actually have plenty of time to run a field goal unit onto the field if they're properly lined up should the pass be completed.

Which is what should have happened, ultimately, after the completion. The field goal team running onto the field is the correct decision.

But I would still have given Miles a passing grade if LSU had been prepared to do anything at all after the completion.

5. What I'm getting at is this: you don't even have a lot of decisions to be made here; if you're fortunate enough to complete the pass, then that success can't disorganize you.

The situation that would ensue after the completion is completely predictable.

You, me, anyone with a moderately intelligent sense of football can completely forecast all of the possibilities that could ensue in the final nine seconds of the game.

6. The pass is complete and gains 46! Les Miles, evidently unable to convey the situation to his quarterback, calls for the spike play with one second left.

7. Only, unlike college basketball, there is no tenths of a second on the college football clock. It's impossible to snap the ball with one second left and spike it without the game ending.

Now, as you saw from the above linked video, Les Miles is arguing he has no idea how Jordan Jefferson, his sophomore quarterback, chose to spike the football.

Except we all know the answer: Les Miles instructed him to spike the football.

Why?

Because while the rest of the SEC coaches are playing chess, Miles is playing tic-tac-toe.

And he'd lose in that to many fifth-grade LSU fans.

Ultimately this game against Ole Miss is the perfect flip-side to the Auburn game in 2007. As the clock ticked away in that contest, Miles had no clue how to formulate a strategy and luck was on his side.

Against Ole Miss, Miles had no idea how to formulate a strategy and fortune didn't favor him.

Maybe the Milacles are finally dead.

C'est la vie in Baton Rouge.

Quoted:


It had rubbed off on him way earlier than that.  He inherited a team with so much talent that even he could back into a National Championship.  Now that talent isn't so good, the bad coaching is becoming more and more apparent.  It's no sin for a coach to not be good at time awareness, but it is if they don't have an assistant close by to watch for them.  He'd better hope that Meatchicken fires Rodrigues and that their AD wasn't watching this game.  LSU fans are already calling for his head, and the AD should serve it up for them.