LSU Football: Ed Orgeron gets brutally honest
By Zach Ragan
LSU football head coach Ed Orgeron is known as being one of the most candid coaches in college sports.
Coach speak isn’t a thing for Coach O — you’re always going to get his real thoughts, good or bad.
That was no different on Tuesday when Orgeron spoke about some of the assistant coaching hires he made this offseason.
Orgeron gave his honest thoughts on the hiring process and talked about mistakes he made in the past.
LSU football head coach Ed Orgeron gets brutally honest
When LSU hired Daronte Jones earlier this year to replace Bo Pelini as the Tigers’ defensive coordinator, it wasn’t the first person Orgeron interviewed for the job.
It was the second or third, either.
Orgeron admitted that Jones was the “fourth or fifth” option for the job.
“Daronte was like the fourth or fifth choice, but who cares, so was I,” said Orgeron on Tuesday (via Brooks Kubena).
LSU offered the job to Marcus Freeman and Ryan Nielsen before hiring Jones. Orgeron also showed interest in Barry Odom and Derek Mason.
The comment about Jones wasn’t the only brutally honest moment from Orgeron on Tuesday.
Coach O also revealed that he didn’t even interview some of the coaches he hired last offseason.
“I hired some coaches, I didn’t even interview them from the last staff,” said Orgeron. “I’m never doing that again. I interviewed everybody.”
I’m not sure who Orgeron is referring to, but the biggest hires last offseason were Pelini and passing game coordinator Scot Linehan. Neither hire worked out very well.
(LSU also hired Kevin Faulk as the program’s running backs coach, but he was already on staff as the director of player development.)
Not interviewing some of the guys that were hired last offseason was obviously a mistake by Orgeron. He’s the CEO of the program — the hires are on Coach O and they need to go through him.
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But the good news is that Orgeron clearly learned from his mistakes. And it appears he’s made some terrific hires this offseason to make up for last year’s missteps.