I'm starting this thread for those of you who aren't sold but are looking for a reason to believe in O as our coach. This is why I think he was our best option available. 1. He might be the best recruiter in the country. They wrote a book about O's recruiting. He has always been able to do this, even before he became a good coach. He will appeal especially in our state. 2. He is a great motivator I haven't seen our team play with this much motivation since 2011. You could see the difference from the very first game. In nearly every game he coached this season, our guys were humming. This is one of the main reasons Les fell off of his success. Our players are young men who are susceptible to losing focus. Giving motivation and focus to the players is probably the most important thing a coach can do. This is why rivalry games are usually close games regardless of the talent; because both teams want it. Coach O brings the motivation. 3. He's already gone toe-to-toe with Saban We haven't seen any of the other candidates square off with Saban. I don't think that O will struggle with Saban even though he's not an X's and O's coach because we've already seen them battle once. His team played 'Bama closer than any other team in the country. He did get shut out, but that's after taking the reigns mid-season and trying to open up a playbook that was previously strangled for years. I don't know what Herman would do against Saban, but I know what O has done. 4. I'm not really worried about his loss to Florida This loss was mostly due to a lack of execution. Florida has a great D, and we still put up over 400 yards on them. We outplayed them in every aspect of the game except for turnovers and miscues. He can only be blamed for a very little bit of this, and even with all of the miscues, he still had us in position to win at the end of the game. 5. If O had been coaching since the start of the season (and there was no hurricane), we'd likely be 10-2 There's no doubt in my mind that we would have beaten Wisconsin and Auburn if O had been coaching those games. We were in those games until the end despite flat play. If we came out with energy, we'd have easily won those games. I think a lot are bogged down by O's 5-2 record, but they forget that he was handed a 2-2 team and was faced with the hardest November schedule in the country, and nearly came out 6-1. 6. He knows his limits Coach O knows he's not an offensive mind, and he made it his first objective to go out and get the best OC he can find. He knows he needs an excellent staff, and he's not to afraid to remove his ego and go get that staff. This will allow him to compensate for the supposed lack of X's and O's. So this is it. If you want to get behind him but have had a hard time, this is what I offer.
He deserves a chance. Rather than folks booday, or have a meltdown on assumptions, let's give Coach Oeaux our support and hope he succeeds. He sees what needs to be fixed.
To me, it's more than just that he deserves it. His body of work makes it more reasonable than not to believe he will succeed. I can't remember the last coach I've had this much confidence in, although obviously we've had few coaches in a long time.
people forget interim coach usually means a coach taking over a team mid-year from a "shit show"... he took our un-watchable offense and made it something we could watch on a weekly basis with the TE coach... It's taken USC what, 3 coaches to get back to winning after coach O...
The other thing I forgot to add is that we all know Miles was not an X's and O's guy, and he beat Saban a handful of times. No reason to believe O can't do it at this point.
Look at the B1G, if tOSU wins today, there will be two multi million dollar legends watch the ex Vandy coach play in the championship. If Penn State takes care of MSU, they win their side of the conference with a coach that is thought to be inferior to the legends. The big name is not always better they fail as well. * Just trying to make my self feel better!
7. He comes at a very acceptable price, allowing LSU to employ some of the best assistants in the country.
