I wondered about this yesterday, after I saw Bill Connelly’s SP+ preseason rankings. The unadulterated good news for LSU is that Bo Pelini is gone. The defense will be better by default. What about the offense, though? Yes, it underperformed last season. Orgeron’s fix is to do the time warp again.
Ed Orgeron picked up the phone, called Joe Brady and asked for help.
The LSU coach wants to turn back time and replicate the 15-0 season that was powered by a record-breaking offense led by a Heisman Trophy quarterback and wunderkind coach who revamped the passing offense in 2019. That coach was Brady, 30, who worked alongside veteran coordinator Steve Ensminger to rethink the way LSU plays on offense, particularly with elite receivers such as Ja’Marr Chase on the roster.
Brady, now the offensive coordinator with the Carolina Panthers, made a quick recommendation: hire the men who coached under me for one season in the NFL.
Panthers quarterbacks coach Jake Peetz was hired Wednesday as LSU’s offensive coordinator and former LSU analyst DJ Mangas will be the passing game coordinator.
The hires send a clear message: Orgeron wants to party like it’s 2019, and he wants that offense to rumble through the SEC for the foreseeable future.
Just like Brady, neither of these two has much of a track record to rest on.
Peetz, 37, has been a journeyman mostly as an analyst and position coach since starting his career in 2006 at Santa Barbara City College. He has held nine different titles for four different programs, mostly in the NFL, in nine seasons. He served two stints as an analyst at Alabama before serving as the running backs coach and quarterbacks coach in the last two seasons with the Carolina Panthers, respectively. He has never called plays.
Mangas, 30, played alongside Brady at William & Mary and later sat beside him as an analyst in the LSU press box during the 2019 season. He joined Brady at Carolina, where he was Peetz’s assistant.
Mangas has play-calling experience, but his offenses were among the worst on the FCS level in 2017 and 2018, when he was the second-youngest offensive coordinator in college football. The Tribe averaged 15 and 13.6 points per game, ranking 112th and 121st out of 124 teams on the FCS level.
That’s a lot of trust. And it’s not like Orgeron’s going at half measures, either, as LSU plans to go “all spread” this season, whatever that winds up meaning.
The good thing is that there’s plenty of talent to work with. Will Coach O’s gamble pay off — again?
Get The Picture 
It can’t be worse than the Linehan hire. I mean, I guess it can be worse, but at least this hire makes sense as it comes off the “Joe Brady Tree,” and no one would ever confuse a Scott Linehan offense as anything close to what Joe Brady did in 2019.
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I’m so undecided on Stupid Ed….this wreaks of Chizik 2.0. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck…..you know the rest! Coaching carousel, investigative inquiry, divorce, and no “ELITE” Qb. My 2021 prediction cometh later in Summer.
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Coach has the same problem Vince Dooley had. Joe Brady like Herschel is not playing anymore. Vince Dooley unlike coach O had been a proven winner.
LSU is extremely fertile recruiting ground. Looking at the recent recruiting ranking then compare schedules. Coach O has to beat Bama who recruits even better with the G.O.A.T. coach. Glad luck with that annually coach O.
Yeah I left out FU on the LSU annual schedule because it’s Kirby’s job to kick that ass.
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Smoke and mirrors my friends…lsu still got a lotta’ sniffin’ around going on in baton rouge…
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Sounds like the actions of a desperate or mad man. I guess it could work out but, just doesn’t seem like any logic was used there.
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“We don’t care if it’s the first act of Henry the Fifth!”
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I wouldn’t read too much into Mangas’ tenure at William & Mary. 2017 and 2018 were the last two seasons for head coach Jimmye Laycock, who had been there since 1980 and had lost his coaching fastball many years earlier. One W&M alum bragged to me that Laycock had won 240 games in his coaching career which sounded impressive until I realized he averaged 6 wins a year over 40 years.
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Speaking of catching lighting twice it reminds me of watching VD’s second MNC with Herschel slip away to Dan Marino. It’ was a bitch then too not having a passing game when the other team did. I’ll admit I got over it easier than 2017. I was jumping around celebrating with old and game day friends in the seats around me when 2-26 happened. I had my back to the field I just knew we were going to finally win another NC.
My point is catching lighting in a bottle is dam hard doing it twice good luck.
Success favors the prepared.
My money is still on Kirby he feels our pain. I’ll believe until proven wrong he delivers that NC to momma and cements his place in history. Kirby is a driven man I really like that in our coach. It was my biggest complaint against CMR. He loved everyone and just wanted to win. Kirby deep inside needs to win. He’ll win NC’s the old fashion way earn them like St. Nick by kicking everyone’s ass in his way.
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Yeah, well, Clemson beat Nebraska so it didn’t matter did it?
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We lost the Sugar Bowl while being ranked No. 1 to Todd Blackledge and Penn State after the 1982 season.
We lost the Sugar Bowl after the 1981 season to Pitt and Marino while being ranked No. 2, after having already lost to No. 1 Clemson during the season. They won the national title that year, and winning the Sugar Bowl wouldn’t have changed that for us.
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The lack of a passing game 80-82 was fuckn stupid. I hate to rehash what could have been. But there’s no telling how many more yards and TDs Herschel would’ve got had he not faced a loaded box every time he got the ball. VD left a couple or three NCs on the field with his stubborn version of Manball.
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Who needs more national titles? Georgia has been replete with coaches who have a vision and a way of doing things and that’s just the way it is.
Who needed Steve Spurrier and his ridiculous pass-happy offense in 1988? Doesn’t he know that will never work in the SEC???
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Spurrier in ’88 was coming off one losing season at Duke after a year off from leading a USFL team to a 10-8 record.
If you’re honestly claiming that’s a good enough record for Georgia to have made an offer on had you been the AD at the time, congratulations. That ranks as the most hindsight-y comment in the history of the blog.
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Not sure lightning will get caught in the same bottle twice, but it’s hard to count out LSU, especially relative to the rest of the non-Bama SECw. I’m not seeing any other programs that will be a serious threat.
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Is Ensminger still on staff and if so, what is his role now?
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Not OC anymore, but still an analyst.
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Do they have a Joe Burrow on the team? Not likely.
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We’re gonna have to change their moniker to the wacky west with all the high octane passing attacks at LSU, bama, Ole Miss & MSU. And aTm and Arky look to be tougher than ‘19 too. I pity poor auburn with a new HC and Bo Nix at the helm.
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I don’t.
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BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Fuck their misery.
Auburn sucks.
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I know he sounds like the assistant coach from The Waterboy, but I’m not about to underestimate DACOACHO until they fire him. They were only OK in 2018, and didn’t come close to beating Bama, but they whupped our ass.
And last year, even with a washed up NFL OC and Bo Pelini as DC, they went into the swamp and beat Florida.
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Agree..however you should have placed an asterisk by your last sentence to indicate that the win in the swamp was (I don’t want to be sacrilegious but it was otherworldly with the fog, the shoe toss, the long FG by LSU, the missed Florida FG, CMR’s freshman nephew leading the LSU offense) a Divine gift to gator-haters. What a game, What a GAME!
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I was never impressed with Coach O. then 2019 happpened. He somehow got the best coordinators for a minute, and a transfer QB that was “meh” that became a superstar. They used VR and other very modern tools with Burrow.
Then 2020 happened, and now it looks like regression to the mean. Coach O still aint that bright, but he was bright enough for a moment to get out of the way.
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So one great hire, a few good hires and a few horrible hires. So what are the odds he made a good hire versus a horrible hire. He ain’t going to the tree and bringing in another great hire because blind squirrels don’t find that many nuts.
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WYLD BOYZ!
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Soooo…. Coach O got the Brady coaching tree from the Carolina Panthers, who went 5-11 last year and one of those wins was against the Falcons. Maybe Brady just wanted to clean house in a gentle way? “Coach O, if I were you I would hire these guys that worked with me (so I could gracefully hire someone better)”.
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Coach Oeaux has beaten us twice. I think he’s a great fit the way Kirby is for us and will not underestimate him, but the scandals may burn that flame out first.
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As things slowly leak out of Baton Rouge, it sounds like LSU has the potential to be Baylor v2.0
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The most successful holding pattern for elite recruiting programs waiting out Saban:
Offense: Go all-in on athletes in space. Hope you cash a lottery ticket at QB.
Defense: Break serve and get your offense at least +1 in possession count. Win the red zone more than you lose.
That’s how Clemson did it twice. That’s how LSU did it.
Note to Derek: does not preclude the running game. “Athletes in space”: Etienne, Josh Jacobs, CEH, Najee. Two first rounders and 2 more guys who will go top 40. RB just needs to be an integral (reliable) part of the passing game as a constraint.
LSU’s edge here is the pool of talent they can draw to the perimeter game, WRs and DBs. Neither assistant really played to those strengths last season.
Ed has a Dabo path, if he can properly evaluate assistants.
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