The main problem with the passing offense in 2014 was the WR, more so than the QB.
I can't believe you said this. Wow.
This post was edited on 4/16 2:44 PM by kitavis
This post was edited on 4/16 6:11 PM by kitavis
It was really easy to say because it was true. What should be said by you, "I can't believe I post so many definite general opinions without a little research. Wow!"
As I said the WR were the biggest problem. But there was a QB problem also because of the youth and inexperience.
Maybe you don't have the time to really review things. I don't know, but I am retired and football is one of my favorite pastimes. I record every game LSU plays and keep them for several months are more after the season. I don't do it for all the games, but for OOC games like Wisconsin and for all SEC games on TV and the Bowl games I probably look at them 3 or more times.
The last couple of times I rerun botched plays and I also pay a lot of attention to the sidelines. You of course don't see a lot of things that happen on the sidelines, but there is a lot you do see. For one thing, after a sack or interception, or a failed 3rd down pass, etc or any other unusual negative occurrence, if the cameras go to the sidelines you can occasionally see an OL, WR, RB, etc being targeted by the coaches for discussion. In 2014, it was far more times about the WR than the OL and QB.
When I was able to attend LSU games in person I did this a lot. There is a general area for each position and I would determine it before the game started. Lot of fun to watch after the teams comes off the field after a bad series.
Those who say Miles don't want to throw the are full of crap. In the 10 years Miles has been HC LSU has had good passing offenses at least 5 years. Miles recruits top WR because he knows that passing is a necessary part of the game. Look at the LSU rosters he has recruited. When he was HC at OK State all 4 years OK State threw the ball.
The entire passing offense was a major problem last year. But while the QB was part of it, the WR were the major problem. They were very inexperienced. Even Dural, a 3rd year player, had very little experience as he rehabbed an ACL Diarse, who was a RSF in 2014, had little or no experience. The remaining WR who player were new freshmen. The WR could be classified as mostly inexperienced, immature and not physically ready to play a lot of snaps in the SEC, no matter how talented. This caused a number of different problems.
It caused LSU to have to spend way more of the available precious offensive practice time on developing the WR passing offense. This resulted in less time being available to work the TE and RB into the passing offense. Part of the time for the WR was also spent working on blocking. It is like any other business. You have to develop your allotted assets, but unlike a business the time in practice with the players is heavily restricted. So not having physically well conditioned, experienced, mature players is time costly. The inexperience of the QB and the RB contributed to the problem.
The coaches were conflicted by the inexperience and immaturity in another thing because of the available time factor.. It was and still is their plan to remodel the offense to a read option to better fit the skills of the personnel, principally the QB. This is involves changing blocking schemes, pass patterns etc. This made the inexperience and immaturity even bigger problem and significantly slowed this process. You can see what they were doing by the change in the offense from the start of the season to the TX A&M and Bowl game.
If you observed the spring game a few days ago the offense looked quite different from last spring. The plays were nearly all from the read option, 4 different TE caught passes, there were passes to the RB and the QB had much better success in completing passes for percentage and scores. The WR made some great plays.
This progress will continue through the summer and fall practices and the offense should be considerably better in 2015, though it will continue to develop and get better thru the season. There may be one fly in the ointment. That is how fast the OL develops execution and chemistry. While we have 3 good OL and TE starters returning all the OL will essentially be playing a new position. These are good players and the backups are good players. So hopefully, this should only be a minor glitch,but it could be a problem.
