This morning, we discussed the rumors that Ed Orgeron could be joining the staff here at LSU in some capacity or another.  In that spirit, we have a poll.  Granted, there's a lot more to the issue of hiring him than just the question of do you want him.  What would his salary be?  Obviously it would be higher than a typical DL coach.  Is there money in the budget for it?  These and other questions may or may not ever be answered.

The rumor mill is rife with accounts of what will become of the LSU coaching staff.  The most drastic rumor is that five (5!) assistant coaches will be fired, resign, or simply move along in the very near future.  That would be the entire defensive coaching staff:  Mallory, Peveto, Lane, Robinson, and ... ?  

While I will be the first to acknowledge that changes must be made, dropping the entire defensive staff PLUS seems a little harsh to me.  Really, I think what this defense needs is a change to a more aggressive mindset, and Bradley Dale Peveto for one seems like he would fit into that mindset just perfectly.  Do I want him to be the defensive coordinator?  No.  But if he can return to his capacity as a linebackers coach and get the linebacking corps to play like it did previously I don't see a problem with him.  

I have no opinion either way on Earl Lane as the defensive line coach, but it is very strange that we have a defensive line coach and a defensive tackle coach (Robinson, who doubles as the special teams coordinator).  Two coaches essentially with identical responsibilities on the defense.

Personally, I don't see anything as drastic as 5 coaches getting the ax unless one or two of them are moving on of their own accord, which I suppose could happen.

Uhh...  yaw

The other juicy rumor is that Ed Orgeron, currently the defensive line coach for the New Orleans Saints and formerly the head coach at Ole Miss, is going to be hired on at LSU in some capacity.  This would either be as defensive coordinator or as defensive line coach/head recruiter.

I know that a lot of LSU fans mocked Ed Orgeron when he was at Ole Miss, but the man built that team that just beat us.  And while his head coaching performance left a lot to be desired, the man was a great defensive line coach before taking the job at Ole MIss.  He wasn't good for USC and Miami.  He was outstanding, and he would bring a lot of energy and aggressiveness to the LSU coaching staff.  He was promoted beyond his abilities to be head coach at Ole miss, and personally I would be ecstatic if he would leave the Saints (where he seems to have done a nice job of coaching a line that has been devastated by injuries) to come to coach the defensive line at LSU.

If he would come here to be defensive coordinator, I'm not so sure about the move.  He has never been a defensive coordinator anywhere, and while I think his more simian qualities have been greatly exaggerated by his detractors, he simply does not come across as a man who develops the strategy and calls the plays for a defense.  It would be the same kind of situation that Ole Miss found themselves in, in the middle of a tough conference with a man who has never had the responsibility he currently has.  That could end up being a mistake.

If we're going the Orgeron direction on any particular vacancy, we are left with a couple of questions:

1. Would he leave his current job to take the one we're offering? 
2. When would he do it?
3. How would Orgeron mix with the rest of the staff, especially Miles?

The NFL is the dream destination of most football coaches.  It's a great gig, coaching the best talent in the world against the best coaches in the world.  If we're offering Orgeron the chance to coach the defensive line here, when he is already coaching the defensive line at the NFL, it's a fair question to wonder if he'd really take it.  It seems like a demotion.

The key to this question is, I think, to read Meat Market, Bruce Feldman's marvelous book about Coach O's life during the 2006-2007 year.  Coach Orgeron loves recruiting.  Loves it.  Lives for it.  For a man who has struggled with addiction, recruiting is his way to channel the obsessive impulses into something constructive.  Like an alcoholic who stops drinking and then works out maniacally, Ed Orgeron is a recovering alcoholic who has transferred his fixation on alcohol into a fixation on evaluating talent and convincing it to come to his program.  He can't do that for the New Orleans Saints, but he could do it if he comes back to college, and what's more he would be back at a program that is capable of drawing the best, like when he was at Miami, and distinctly different from when he was at Ole Miss.

If LSU has something to sell to Ed Orgeron, it is the possibility of getting back on the recruiting trail with a real shot at signing the best kids in the country.

The second question could be a little trickier.  While LSU's regular season is over, the New Orleans Saints are still playing.  They are at 6-6 after a loss to Tampa Bay, and they're hanging on to the playoff race by a thread.  Presumably, nothing could happen until the Saints are officially out of the playoff race, but that could be a while.

Now there would be no harm in announcing it as an impending move, but allowing him to stay on with New Orleans to the end of the season, but then what of the person he would be replacing?    We have a bowl game coming up in late December and we will need a full coaching staff.  Would we expect Earl Lane to stay on to coach the bowl game when he could be out looking for his next gig?  Could a grad assistant take over?

The third question is really anyone's guess, but rumors abounded after Orgeron was fired by Ole MIss last year that he and Miles had a sit-down meeting and that Miles expressed interest at that time in having Orgeron on the staff, perhaps in the capacity now occupied by Joe Robinson, who was hired later.  If this rumor was true, and if the current rumors are true, clearly Miles has some considerable degree of respect and admiration for Orgeron, and frankly Miles seems like the kind of guy who can and would make every effort to get along with a prickly personality if it was good for the team.

But is Ed Orgeron also of such a personality?  Could he come into a program like LSU, not being the head guy, after being the head coach at Ole Miss, and take direction from not only Les Miles, but from whomever Miles hires as defensive coordinator?  And could the other coaches on the staff get along with him?  Tommy Tuberville famously couldn't.  It's something we will have to see, and honestly I hope we get a chance to see it.

ATVS is looking for a go-to man to follow and write about the LSU basketball team(s).  The applicant must a) watch and/or listen on the radio to most if not all LSU basketball games, b) preferably attend one or two along the way, c) have some writing ability, d) have some intelligent insight into the program, and e) have the time and inclination to write roughly 3 or 4 columns per week on the LSU basketball team, perhaps more when we get into March.

You will be paid nothing, but you'll have complete editorial control of what you write, so long as it's not abusive or idiotic.

Interested responses should be sent to andthevalleyshook@gmail.com  I will personally vet each applicant.  The ability to post pictures of hot coeds is considered a plus.  

Other than us losing to Arkansas, pretty much everything went right for LSU to improve its bowl position.  Kentucky lost to Tennessee, keeping them at 6-6.  Vandy lost to Wake Forest, keeping them at 6-6 as well.  Then South Carolina lost to Clemson, keeping South Carolina at 7 wins, matching us.

The rules are, no bowl can invite a 6-6 team unless there are no 7-win teams with the appropriate tie-in available.  That means we are at worst the 6th SEC team in the bowl race.  We figure right now that Alabama and Florida are locks for the BCS regardless of what happens, unless the BCS for whatever reason cannot take two SEC teams.  I haven't looked at the math for that, but I'm assuming for now that the SEC will get two BCS slots, including a guaranteed slot in the BCSNCG.

After that, Georgia is the #3 team and is likely headed to the Cap One, despite its loss to Georgia Tech yesterday.  Ole Miss is the #4 team in the conference.  Yes, you heard that right.  Ole Miss is the #4 team in the conference.  I would just like to say that I called Ole Miss being pretty solid at the beginning of the year.  Don't read that whole article though, because I said some pretty embarrassingly wrong things.

After Ole Miss, we have LSU and South Carolina sitting at 7-5 each, with each one hoping to get the Outback Bowl slot.  The Outback tends to go with an Eastern Division team, and frankly South Carolina finished the season stronger than we did, so I'm not holding my breath on the Outback picking us ahead of the Gamecocks, even though we beat them head to head.

That leaves the Peach Bowl for the next team, which is us.  No one else can sneak in ahead of us.  The rules forbid it.  I would never have guessed that we would get the Peach Bowl even with a loss to Arkansas, but that appears to be the case.  The only thing that could push us down to the Liberty or the Music City is if the BCS does not choose two SEC teams.  That would push the loser of Alabama/Florida to the Cap One, Georgia to the Outback, and then the Peach would have to choose between us and South Carolina.  

I suppose those rumors about the Cotton Bowl picking Notre Dame over an SEC team can be officially put to bed, now that Notre Dame has lost 4 of its last 5 after getting trounced by USC last night.

Well, this season could not have ended much more discouragingly than it has.  LSU, losers of 3 of its last 4 and 4 of the last 6, needs to regroup for next season.  Changes have to be made on the coaching staff, and not just necessarily on the defensive side of the ball.  The second half was marked by some awful offensive football, as LSU's offense sputtered with 4 consecutive 3-and-outs in the 3rd and 4th quarter and got a total of 2 first downs in the second half.  

People will rightly point to the defense, which definitely struggled at times and did not adjust to what Casey Dick brought to the game at all.  In particular in the first two Arkansas possessions of the game the defense appeared to have no idea what it was doing.  I think everyone acknowledges that the defense has had problems and has been very porous this year as a whole, and for about a quarter it looked like we would get run out of the stadium.

We settled down in the second quarter, dominating both offensively and defensively, and then opened the second half with a quick touchdown strike.  After that, we tried to play to run out the clock, and the result was a whole lot of punting and whole lot of playing with the defense on the field.

I think the defining drive of the game was the last drive of the 3rd quarter, which bled into the 4th quarter.  The drive started with Arkansas at their 5 yard line.  Ten plays later, Arkansas was facing 3rd and 29 at their own 11 yard line, and ran a safe draw looking to punt.  An Arkansas offensive lineman coaxed Tremaine Johnson into an unnecessary roughness penalty, which Johnson claimed after the play was caused by the lineman poking him in the eyes.  That gave Arkansas a first down when they would have had to punt from their end zone.  

Later on the drive, Patrick Peterson was called for holding, then Rahim Alem was called for unsportsmanlike conduct for kicking the ball.  All told, LSU picked up 42 yards of penalties on that drive, and each penalty gave Arkansas a first down.  We held them to a field goal, but the drive took 17 plays and kept our defense on the field forever.  

At that point, I knew we were in trouble.  I knew we were in bigger trouble when we took the kickoff and went 3-and-out.

When we got the ball back with about 5 minutes to play, I thought we would escape.  We picked up a first down, ran a little clock, but then when the drive stalled with over 2 minutes to play, I thought we'd be lucky to get out of it with a win.  Arkansas had been too effective passing the ball, and they would be in a 2-minute drill.  Still, Arkansas had no timeouts, and our pass rush had been doing a good job.  When 4th and 1 came up with under :30 to play, I knew they were not going to run a 1-yard play.  They didn't have time for that.  They were going to the end zone, and they caught Chris Hawkins in 1-on-1 coverage and threw a perfect pass.

Now, we plan for next year and hope that the bad mojo of this year doesn't carry over.

Post your wistful remembrances of Houston Nutt here.  Also, make fun of the fact that they benched Casey Dick to go with... Nathan Dick!

We haven't had enough pictures this week.

OK, let's get some things out of the way.  Arkansas is not a very good team, and unless we have given up on the season we should beat them.  Arkansas ranks below us statistically in scoring offense, scoring defense (where they are last in the conference by a wide margin), total offense, total defense (once again, last in the SEC by a wide margin), rushing offense, rushing defense (last... wide margin), passing efficiency defense, punt return average, punting, kickoff coverage, field goal percentage, sacks, sacks against, first downs per game, opponent first downs (last), opponents' 3rd down conversion percentage, penalty yards per game, turnover margin (and it takes some doing to be worse than us in turnover margin), and red zone offense.

What's more, they've gotten worse as the season progresses, because Michael Smith has been much less effective at running back.  Michael Smith was a monster in mid-season, but an injury and/or overuse have limited his performance of late.  He's a little guy, and may not have been able to take the punishment that 25 or so touches a game was giving him.  His less effective play is a big reason they've lost 4 of their last 5 after starting the season 3-3.

They rank ahead of us in a couple of special teams categories and most significantly in passing offense.  I say most significantly because, of course, that's where we're most vulnerable.

OK, so it's not like we have them in check mate at the start of the game.  They pass well.  We defend the pass pitifully.  But looking at it a little more closely, it's not like they pass well exactly.  They just pass a lot, and the cumulative statistics build up.  They are 5th in the conference in pass efficiency. 

Their woes in pass efficiency come from throwing a lot of interceptions.  Of course, we never intercept the ball.  It will be weakness vs. weakness in that respect.  If we pick off a couple passes, we win that battle.

Of course, the big news for us, if you've been paying attention, is that Jordan Jefferson will be starting the game at quarterback.  He will be the first LSU true freshman to start at quarterback since Herb Tyler in 1995.  He's also the first true freshman to play at quarterback since, I think, Herb Tyler in 1995.  I don't expect fireworks, but if he can just do a handful of things efficiently and take some heat off of Charles Scott and Keiland Williams, the offense should hum against this pitiful Razorback defense.

If we win this one, I think we're in the Peach Bowl, and maybe we could sneak back into the Cotton if MSU beats Ole Miss.  We shall see.

Alright, I have to get this one out of the way.  I don't like it.  You don't like it.  But here it is:

Yeah, it makes me retch too, but he earned it.

We could have gone another way.  Mississippi State running back Anthony Dixon had 179 yards rushing.  But Snead won a bigger game, and carved up LSU's defense doing it.  He was 16 of 25 with 274 yards passing, 2 touchdowns, 0 interceptions, and one long run called back for a penalty that had no impact.

The only time LSU's defense ever stopped Ole Miss was when they did not put the ball in Snead's hands.  The "Wild Rebel" was somewhat effective, but it didn't kill us.  The running backs had mediocre nights at best.  It was Snead's passing which did us in.  Really the defense played well when it was faced with a running back instead of a quarterback.

Snead is almost as physically gifted of a quarterback as Matthew Stafford is.  He maybe doesn't have the super-human arm strength of Stafford, but I think his arm strength is maybe... "extra human".  Just a shade below super-human.   He's also a competent runner.  He's a little behind Stafford in terms of polish and experience, but the skills are there.  He will be tough to handle next year as well, and I think he has an NFL future.

This has been a tough week, both psychologically (football-wise), and work-wise.  Hence, posting has been slow, but especially passionate.  This week around the SEC nothing really earth-shattering happened to be an LSU fan or an Arkansas fan.  Lo and behold, I am one of those.

Let's get to the action:

Tennessee 20
Vandy 10

Tennessee gets to avoid the twin embarrassments of a) losing to Vandy, and b) losing to 8 teams in one season.  The second of those may yet happen this week, but at least they beat their fierce in-state rivals.  Vandy, for their part, lost out in the bowl-position stakes and now finds themselves firmly behind Ole Miss and South Carolina, and they may end up behind Kentucky as well, which would mean probably the I-bowl for Vandy.

As for the game, Tennessee really dominated it.  They played their best football since the first half of the season opener at UCLA.  They did not allow any of Vandy's quarterbacks to do anything, and played just competently enough on offense to put up a few points.  It is telling, however, that in this game the two offenses combined for 16 points and the two defense combined for 14.  The defenses were almost as productive at scoring points as the offenses.

It's too late for Phillip Fulmer and Tennessee of course.  Tennessee will be home in December and January, and Fulmer will be either looking for a new job or planning his retirement.  Bobby Johnson at Tennessee may be looking for a new job, but his would be a happy occasion.

Florida 70
Citadel 19

A lot of people would accuse Florida of running it up, but let's look at a few facts:

• Backup QB John Brantley threw just as many passes as Tim Tebow (11)
• Percy Harvin had exactly five touches
• Nine Gators rushed the ball
• Nine Gators caught the ball
• Two different Gators kicked extra points

Yeah, I don't think there's very much that's heroic about hanging 70 on a hapless opponent, but at the same time I cannot blame a coach if he "runs the basic offense" (including passes) with young backups in the game.  That appears to be what happened here.  Infrequently used transfer Emmanuel Moody had the most carries of any running back, and David Nelson made his 3rd, 4th, and 5th pass receptions on the year.  Urban Meyer, despite being generously loathsome, at least pulled his starters on offense in this one.

Mississippi State 31
Arkansas 28

Mississippi State overcame a 14-0 deficit and officially knocked the Razorbacks out of bowl contention by handing them their 7th loss.  

Since his mid-season injury, Arkansas running back Michael Smith has not been nearly as effective, averaging less than 4.0 yards per carry in his last 3 games, and not getting over 67 yards rushing in any game.  Nor is he excelling in the passing game.  This is a kid who had had 5 games this year with 129 yards rushing or more, including 4 in a row.  He may well have been on his way to 1st team All-SEC honors until he got hurt.

For Arkansas, redshirt freshman QB Nathan Dick, the younger brother of Casey, had a good night, going 25 for 43 with 333 yards.  Under Petrino, Arkansas's passing game has been productive all season, though also very mistake-prone (they have still thrown more interceptions than touchdown passes).

Mississippi State played its best offense of the season, generating 226 yards of rushing offense and competent if unspectacular passing.  It's a little late for them, but nice job. 

That's where we end today.  I won't go over the Ole Miss @ LSU game because I feel we've already discussed that one enough.  Once again, I am deliberately ignoring Alabama, who luckily played into  my hands by having a bye week.

I think the LSU football program has suffered from some bad luck this year.  It is clear that the unfortunate quarterback situation has probably cost us at least one and possibly two games this year.  I think if we had average quarterbacking, we probably would have won the Bama game, and may have won the Georgia game.  If that had happened, where would this team be now?  Would we have played so listlessly against Ole Miss?

Granted, I don't think there was much LSU could have done to beat Florida the way they played that day.  Florida had laid its egg for the season against Ole MIss, and they just didn't do it again.  If Florida had played like they played against Ole Miss, we could well have beaten them, but the Florida team we faced was very different from the one that had lost a couple weeks earlier.

But LSU has not just suffered from bad luck.  We also took a couple of missteps, most notably I believe it is apparent that the defensive coordinator position must be shaken up.  I don't necessarily think either Bradley Dale Peveto or Doug Mallory need to be sacked, but the defensive schemes and plans have failed miserably, particularly in the secondary.  

Sometimes, when a team goes to a multi wide receiver set, it looks like we are playing with 10 men.  The players miss a lot of assignments, and often play so softly in coverage that they just concede first downs or solid gains without a fight.  I don't know if that problem is a) the players, b) the fact that their position coach is responsible for the defense as a whole and does not have enough time to devote to them, c) that the position coach is not a competent coach, or d) some combination, but whatever it is it has to be corrected.  If it can be corrected by moving Mallory back to a full time position coach, that's fine.  If we need a new secondary coach, that's fine too.  

I think Les Miles has been a good coach for us, and he will certainly have an opportunity to right the ship here.  But he MUST right it, or at the very least he must do something that will have a good chance of righting it.  If Les Miles sticks with the status quo, he is betting his job on the gamble that the secondary play will improve dramatically next year.  

Even if Les Miles genuinely believes that Mallory and Peveto are doing a fine job as co-DC's and as position coaches, he would be smart to make a change anyway to avoid the perception that he's blind to the problems and digging his head in the sand.  He must do something to win back the confidence of the fan base, because if he thinks they showed little patience this year, he should see what happens next year if he changes nothing and the problems persist.  If he changes nothing, the fans will be merciless the first time a receiver is left open down the field, even if that's in the 10th game of the season.

Which brings me to the last topic in this discussion of the direction of the program: the fans.  Guys, the leaving early and the booing have to stop.  This is not the New York Knicks or the Philadelphia Flyers.  We are not a fickle, negative group of hard-nosed yankees who revel in our love-hate relationship with the team.  We are a proud football program in the southern tradition of worshiping the ground our team walks on, even when they're not as good as hoped.  Plus, it actually does hurt the program to have the stadium half-empty midway through the fourth quarter, even when the game is pretty much decided.  

I'm not saying everyone should stay to the bitter end, but having so many of us leave so early is getting embarrassing.  And the boos?  There's just no way that's helpful.  The boos do nothing but hurt the team and embarrass the program.  You should never do it.  NEVER.