Punting can be better part of valor

Published 6:00 pm Friday, September 15, 2017

BATON ROUGE — As “career-changing” decisions go, this one had to be the most haphazardly, inexplicably lucky one a football coach could ever pull off.

This one belongs to LSU’s Ed Orgeron.

But Les Miles comes to mind. It’s the kind of thing Uncle Les used to get away with at LSU regularly, with a funny clap and an odd-fitting cap.

When he stopped landing on his feet with those antics, ran out of cats’ lives, it opened the door for Orgeron to get his unabashed dream job.

But first, in a roundabout sort of way, Orgeron had to royally screw things up somewhere else.

And Ole Miss was there to oblige him.

“I don’t have any memories of that place I want to remember,” Orgeron said of his Ole Miss days last year before playing the Rebels.

He’ll revisit the scene of his biggest Ole Miss crime — still a sore spot in Hotty Toddy lore — when he and his Tigers visit Davis-Wade Stadium at Mississippi State Saturday.

Without it, Orgeron may or not be at LSU right now.

But he would have been at Ole Miss at least one year longer than the quick firing following the fourth-down gamble from hell in 2007.

“Whatever happened there, happened for a reason,” Orgeron said.

What didn’t happen was Punt, BéBé, Punt. He should have.

But who knows if the dream job he has now would be his today without the gaffe?

To set the stage, Orgeron was already in hot water with the Rebels into his third year on the job, what with a 10-24 overall record and a 3-8 season record heading into the Egg Bowl at Starkville. It’s the biggest game of the year for two bitter archrivals who might hate each more than Auburn and Alabama do.

But, by all accounts, the powers that be at Ole Miss had decided just before the game that maybe they’d give him one more year.

His recruiting classes, after all, had been encouraging — and would prove useful for successor Houston Nutt.

Anyway, the Ole Miss decision to keep Orgeron around was looking quite pragmatic as the game played out.

A touchdown underdog, the Rebels had marched into Stark Vegas and were leading that hated Bulldogs 14-0 heading into the fourth quarter and the same score was taunting the Cowbells when the Rebels faced fourth-and-1 at midfield with 10 minutes remaining.

“I should have punted the ball,” Orgeron said. “It was an emotional decision. That’s why I have mentors nowadays, especially when I get emotional, and I ask them ‘What do you think?’ and I ask (offensive coordinator) Matt (Canada) ‘What do you think?’ I ask (defensive line coach) Pete (Jenkins) ‘What do you think?’ I ask (defensive coordinator) Dave (Aranda) ‘What do you think?’”

He didn’t ask anybody that night.

He went for it.

Mississippi State stuffed the run.

Ball over.

And then it snowballed.

The Bulldogs quickly scored and eventually got 17 points over those final 10 minutes for a 17-14 comeback victory.

Ole Miss had no choice but to fire him then.

Maybe it only accelerated the inevitable. Maybe he’d have been gone the next year anyway.

Or maybe he’d have learned the lessons and made the adjustments he swears those three seasons at Ole Miss eventually taught him while testing the waters again as an interim head coach first at Southern Cal and then last year at LSU when Miles was canned.

He showed enough last year to get the LSU gig full-time, which is the job he wanted all along.

“Yeah, I thank the good Lord every day,” he said about the fourth-down decision, perhaps just half-kidding. “It’s just been a great journey. I live like this: whatever happens, it happens for a reason and I move on to the next day.”

And he couldn’t help but defend himself with evidence of a similar call that went right, while on his eight-game interim stint at Southern Cal.

“I will say this: we beat a team called Stanford who was ranked No. 4 in the country and most people wouldn’t have went for it fourth down. We did.”

Really? It was his biggest win with the Trojans. So what if the same situation, the same decisions, arose Saturday night on the LSU sideline.

Might he go for it?

“No, I’m punting,” he said. “ I want to keep this job.”