How Les Miles Lost the LSU Tigers a Double-Digit Win Season

Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

I am not an LSU Tigers football fan. I am not an Ole Miss Rebels football fan. Therefore, I am not going to write a 10-page feature story on a game between these two schools.

But I am a college football fan, and I watched the game between LSU and Ole Miss last night.

Simply put, it was definitely a crazy finish. But, in the end, it was Les Miles that lost the Tigers a close 25-23 game, and in turn lost them a double-digit win regular season of 10-2.

Now all LSU has to hope for is a respectable 9-3 finish, and would probably have to pull off another win over a tough opponent, something they've been struggling at recently, to get to 10 wins on the year.

But back to yesterday's game. For those of you who didn't watch it, here’s the situation:

Ole Miss has the ball, first and goal, on the LSU four yard line with five minutes to go, leading 22-17. LSU holds them and forces a field goal, extending the lead to eight at 25-17.

LSU then gets the ball and marches down the field for a touchdown, but fails the two-point conversion try, and still trails 25-23. On the onside kick with less than two minutes left, the Ole Miss running back steps out of the way of the ball and lets it go to an LSU player for the recovery.

LSU then gets down to the Ole Miss 40 yard line with 25 seconds left, holding on to one timeout left. They throw a short screen to the left side and the player is tackled at about the line of scrimmage with 20 seconds left.

Somehow, the clock keeps ticking as Les Miles decides whether he'd rather think about the game or what his dinner is going to be when he arrives back in Louisiana. Miles finally decides he might like to try to win the game with about nine seconds to go.

Meanwhile, he's lost 11 seconds and now faces a near impossible situation. The only hope left is the hail mary...which is completed with one second left at the eight yard line! And the clock stops to move the chains!

But, like expected, the field goal teams just continues to sit around on the sidelines while Jordan Jefferson sprints down the field and fails to spike the ball before time runs out. Final score: LSU 23, Ole Miss 25.

So why did they lose? Simple, because Les Miles is just not the field coach that an SEC team needs. Forget about the stupid recruiting, it’s November, not June.

A quicker timeout would have given LSU plenty of time to spike the ball after getting down to the eight, and they would have simply booted a short 25-yard field goal to win 26-25.

To be truthful, Les Miles may have the aura of a good coach, but he's just not alert enough to deal with crunch-time situations. The offensive coordinator should be allowed to make these decisions if Miles continues to show a lack of ability to handle time-management situations.

You're currently logged into Facebook

Do you want to share your Bleacher Report activity on Facebook?