Impactful Coaching Moves: The best and worst decisions of Week 7

It wasn’t the sexiest matchup in the SEC last weekend, but Saturday’s game between Florida and LSU had one of the most exciting endings of any game in the country in a 30-27 final in the Swamp.

Both head coaches — LSU’s Les Miles and Florida’s Will Muschamp — made some gutsy decisions late in the game, impacting the final result in a big way. For Miles, his decision-making was justified with a critical road win. Muschamp (and offensive coordinator Kurt Roper), however, will take some heat for their questionable calls late in the loss to the Tigers.

Here are the best and worst coaching decisions from around the SEC in Week 7:

GOOD MOVE

Miles is a known risk-taker, but he actually made a smart, safe decision with less than a minute remaining in a tie game in the Swamp. LSU had just gotten the ball back following a Jeff Driskel interception, and it took over possession at the Gators’ 36 yard line with 24 seconds on the clock. Rather than aggressively throwing the ball to move further into kicker Colby Delahoussaye’s range, Miles elected to run the ball with Terrence Magee to set up a longer field goal as time expired. Considering quarterback Anthony Jennings’ inconsistencies this season, Miles elected to play it safe by giving the ball to Magee, and with 24 seconds left, the Tigers had plenty of time to line back up and spike the ball before the field goal. Calling a pass play could have left the Tigers vulnerable to a number of disastrous occurrences, but by calling a run Miles was essentially hoping to avoid a costly fumble before kicking what would be the game-winning field goal. Delahoussaye drilled his kick from 50 yards out and LSU won the game, thanks in large part to Miles’ play-calling and clock management in the final moments.

BAD MOVE

Prior to LSU’s game-winning field goal, Florida maintained possession and was driving down the field in hopes of setting up a game-winning kick of its own. Instead, Driskel threw the interception to set up LSU’s final drive, costing Florida once again in a crucial SEC showdown. Driskel deserves plenty of blame for his decision-making on the play, but so do Muschamp and Roper. Driskel is a known liability in the Florida offense, yet his coaches did not set him up with safe, easy throws on the final drive, leaving open the possibility of a back-breaking interception. In a tie game, Florida should have been content with heading to overtime on its home field. That doesn’t mean Florida should have sat on the ball, but it does mean the Gators should have set Driskel up with easy throws, warning him to throw the ball away in the event of danger. The worst-case scenario should have been overtime. Instead, Florida chose to be aggressive in its playcalling, and Driskel forced a throw into double coverage to cost his team another win.

GOOD MOVE

Georgia head coach Mark Richt had less than 48 hours to prepare for a road game against Missouri without star tailback Todd Gurley. Richt could have overhauled his entire gameplan in one night, hoping to compensate for a game without his best player. Instead, he trusted in backup Nick Chubb to carry the load, and that’s exactly what Chubb did. Richt fed his star freshman the ball early and often, and 42 touches later Chubb was among the players of the game in a 34-0 Georgia win. The ‘Dawgs head coach showed great savvy by sticking with his gut and electing to run past the Mizzou defense in Georgia’s best SEC win of the season. Those are the kinds of coaching moves that win division titles in the SEC, which is something Richt knows all about.

BAD MOVE

It’s no secret Auburn operates a run-oriented offense, but for some reason head coach Gus Malzahn elected to throw the ball on the Tigers’ first two snaps of the game, costing his team dearly in a showdown of top 3 powers. Both plays resulted in Auburn turnovers, allowing Mississippi State to build a 21-point lead nine minutes into the action. Auburn out-scored MSU 23-17 from that point on, but it dug itself too deep of a hole early in the game to ever recover. Tigers’ quarterback Nick Marshall was intercepted on Auburn’s first offensive play of the game, and after MSU turned the interception into seven points at the other end, Malzahn and Marshall went back to the air on their next snap, resulting in a fumble by D’haquille Williams. Mississippi State turned that turnover into seven points as well, but had Malzahn stuck with his bread and butter and simply run the ball early in the game, it might have been a completely different story. We’ll never know, but the Tigers will be kicking themselves for weeks after missing a huge opportunity to take down the Bulldogs in Starkville.

Ethan Levine

A former newspaper reporter who has roamed the southeastern United States for years covering football and eating way too many barbecue ribs, if there is such a thing.