Cook: Miles, Tuberville make questionable calls
It’s time for a weekend that doesn’t feature games that impact the national championship run or frantic, breath-taking finishes, shocking upsets and coaches making decisions that go against “the book.” It’s really necessary for Southeastern Conference football fans to have one weekend where they can exhale, relax and grab their wits.
It has hardly happened since the opening week when Cal shocked Tennessee and it has continued right on through late last Saturday when Les Miles probably made a stupid decision but came out smelling like a rose when it worked and his LSU Tigers beat Auburn on a last-second-literally-22-yard touchdown pass.
More on that later.
This weekend looks like a team weekend compared to what we have seen the past few weeks. Georgia and Florida will meet for their annual battle in Jacksonville, and that promises to be the key game of the weekend since both teams are ranked, but don’t overlook the return of Steve Spurrier to Knoxville as the Gamecocks take on the Vols, or to be more precise, Spurrier takes on Phil Fulmer.
That’s the storyline in that game. In the past just mention the name Spurrier and Fulmer started to tense up. The Big Orange man often coached against Spurrier as if he was waiting for something to go wrong, while Spurrier always let it all hang out against Tennessee as if his attitude was all it took for his team to win the game.
Things haven’t been too happy in Knoxville this week anyway after Nick Saban and Alabama crushed the Vols last week. All it will take to crank up more of the Fire Phil chorus would be for another Spurrier team to put a spanking on the Big Orange. It could happen, but I suspect the Gamecocks have enough worries after getting hammered by Vanderbilt in Columbia last weekend.
In the meantime, the Florida Gators have shook off the back-to-back losses to Auburn and LSU and have put themselves right back in position to run the table and find themselves in Atlanta for the SEC Championship Game, most likely against LSU. Florida took some of the air out of the Kentucky mania by handling the Wildcats and I have a feeling Urban Meyer’s team would like nothing better than another shot at LSU away from Baton Rouge.
You can’t blame them. Les Miles has had the Midas touch this season when his team was playing at home. First the brilliant come-from-behind win over Florida when Miles kept rolling the dice on fourth down plays and came up a winner every time. Then there was the Auburn game last Saturday night when Miles made either a stupid decision that worked out right or he made a brilliant coaching decision. I tend to lean to the former.
With the clock running down and the ball at the Auburn 22 and trailing 24-23, Miles called a pass into the end zone by Matt Flynn instead of settling for the relatively easy field goal attempt for the win. It worked when Flynn hit Demetrius Byrd in the end zone for the game-winner with one second left. Imagine how the media and fans would have crucified Miles if Flynn had been sacked or Byrd missed the ball and time had run out. It would have been brutal. But everything Miles has touched this season at home has turned to gold.
But here’s the point. It should have never come down to that. Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville, who has been known as a gambler himself in his career, made what qualified as one of the worst coaching decisions of the season and it very well may have cost his team the game. Leading 24-23 with just over three minutes left, Tuberville decided to squib the kickoff instead of taking a chance on a long return. But the kick gave LSU the ball at its own 42-yard line with plenty of time to move into position for a game-winning field goal.
They didn’t get the field goal; instead they got a touchdown and the win.
You have no idea what would have happened had Tuberville elected to kick deep. LSU could have returned it for a touchdown, because they do have the dangerous Trindon Holliday, or they could have started throwing deep early and scored anyway, but the only thing we do know is that Auburn squibbed it and the LSU Tigers won the game and are ranked No. 3 this week with a good shot at getting back in the national championship game.
Coaches have been outthinking themselves all season because of the additional five yards they lost on opening kickoffs. It hasn’t made that big of a difference but coaches still act like a regular kickoff is to be avoided like the Black Plague.
In this case, I think Tommy outthought himself and the Tigers paid dearly for it.
The Crystal Ball took a beating last week going just 3-3 and is now 48-15 on the season, a .762 winning percentage. For this week, the Crystal Ball is hoping to get back on track by picking Vanderbilt to beat Miami of Ohio, Arkansas to knock off Florida International, Kentucky to beat Mississippi State, Auburn to beat Ole Miss, Tennessee to beat South Carolina and Florida to win the battle against Georgia.
