Les Miles
Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 8-6 · won 0 of 1 national title game
Oklahoma State’02W’03L’04LLSU’05W’06W’07W’08W’09L’10W’11L’12L’13W’14L’15W
Show all 14 games
2002Houston BowlW 33-23
2003Cotton Bowl ClassicL 28-31
2004Alamo BowlL 7-33
LSU
2005Peach BowlW 40-3
2006Sugar BowlW 41-14
2007BCS title gameW 38-24
2008Chick-fil-A BowlW 38-3
2009Capital One BowlL 17-19
2010Cotton Bowl ClassicW 41-24
2011BCS title gameL 0-21
2012Chick-fil-A BowlL 24-25
2013Outback BowlW 21-14
2014Music City BowlL 28-31
2015Texas BowlW 56-27Fans
No fan talk about him on our list yet. His record is on Career.
Stats
Big games
Pick a job to see its years on their own.
The big-game ledger
How he does in the games that matter most — rivalry record, performance broken out by real opponent tier, one-score games, and his toughest historical matchup.
3-5 against his rivals at Oklahoma State. Winless in 4 tries against Mack Brown.
Signature games
Tags describe each game; they aren’t scores. The weighting that picks these games is still being tested.
The big-game ledger
How he does in the games that matter most — rivalry record, performance broken out by real opponent tier, one-score games, and his toughest historical matchup.
27-16 against his rivals at LSU. Just 3-7 against Nick Saban.
Signature games
Tags describe each game; they aren’t scores. The weighting that picks these games is still being tested.
The big-game ledger
How he does in the games that matter most — rivalry record, performance broken out by real opponent tier, one-score games, and his toughest historical matchup.
0-2 against his rivals at Kansas.
Signature games
Tags describe each game; they aren’t scores. The weighting that picks these games is still being tested.
The big-game ledger
How he does in the games that matter most — rivalry record, performance broken out by real opponent tier, one-score games, and his toughest historical matchup.
30-23 against his rivals. Winless in 4 tries against Mack Brown.
Signature games
Tags describe each game; they aren’t scores. The weighting that picks these games is still being tested.
ATS is his record against the spread: did his team beat the closing betting line, winning by more than it or losing by less? Lines start in 2013; a dash means fewer than 6 of those games had one. One-score games carry no spread record: a big favorite that wins a close game has almost always failed to cover, so that number would say nothing about the coach.
How he plays
Run/pass mix, by field position
Called about what the situation called for.
1,389 run and pass snaps at Kansas, 2019–2020, his own games, one row per offensive coordinator. Each cell is how much more often he passed than the rest of FBS did in the same situation (field zone, down, distance, score, quarter, same season), in percentage points.
Pass rate, stint by stint
Where each stint’s offense sat between run-first and pass-first, and how far it moved from one season to the next, against the FBS-wide average of 41% pass. The band is that stint’s real season-to-season range, not a fixed-width box.
Season-to-season pass-rate range for all 449 FBS coaching stints with at least three covered seasons, 2004–2025.
Building the roster
Six numbers on how he actually stocks a roster, from signing day to draft day.
His recruiting, really
His 2 ranked Kansas classes of his own have averaged #64 nationally — best #57, worst #70.
His class — he had the full signing cycle
Rank is each signing class’s national recruiting rank (#1 is best). Only a class he had a full signing cycle to build counts as his.
Followed him here
Oklahoma State→
LSU2005Players who transferred from his old program to his new one through the portal in the same year he made the move. Name-matching across data sources misses some, so every count is a floor, not an exact number.
Roster ownership
Roster ownership
of his 2020 roster arrived on his watch — 76 of 122 players. The other 46 are holdovers from before he was hired.
This coach's entire tenure (2019-2020) predates 2021, when transfer-portal tracking begins in this database. Portal usage cannot be measured for this tenure at all -- this is not the same as '0% portal'.
“His own” means the player arrived while he was head coach; “inherited” means a predecessor brought him in.
Size up front
Size up front
Offensive linemen on his LSU rosters have averaged 9 lb heavier than the FBS average (2010–2015 rosters on record) — heavier than 94% of FBS coaching runs since 2010.
Average listed weight of every offensive lineman on each season’s roster, holdovers included, against every FBS roster that season (2010 on; a program needs 3+ seasons under him to appear). Weights are the ones programs publish, and programs list differently. This describes size only — not scheme, and not quality.
Where he recruits
is his biggest recruiting state: 5 of 34 signees (15%) across his 2019–2020 tenure, drawn from 17 states in all. Next: TX (4).
44% of his signees come from OK and its 6 border states (TX 4, KS 3, MO 2, NM 1).
Off this map: 2 signees to the west (CA 2).
- median hometown distance
- 455 mi
- within 100 mi
- 17%
- within 500 mi
- 52%
- beyond 1,000 mi
- 18%
The map counts signed recruits across his tenure; the distance figures cover his current roster, transfers and walk-ons included. Two different groups, kept separate on purpose.
The NFL pipeline
The NFL pipeline
players drafted into the NFL off his teams here. None were his own recruits yet: all 1 roster-verified picks arrived under David Beaty.
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | R6.01 | Hakeem Adeniji | Offensive Tackle |  Cincinnati Bengals | recruited under David Beaty |
A pick counts toward his tenure when the player’s final college season was one he coached, a checkable rule rather than a claim about who developed the player. A blank note means the player is on a verified roster and arrived on his watch. “Estimated” means no roster record, so the final season is assumed to be the year before the draft.
News
No outlet on our list has written about him by name yet. His record is on Career.
Career
Coaching career
The arc of his career is on Now.
Sustainer inherited a power and held it for five-plus elite seasons · Steady no large move in either direction on our stature ladder
Followed David Beaty (2015–2018) · succeeded by Lance Leipold (2021–now).
| Season | 2019 | 2020 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||
| Record | 3-9 | 0-9 | |
| Postseason | — | — | |
| Coordinators | |||
| OC | Brent Dearmon | Brent Dearmon | |
| DC | D. J. Eliot | D. J. Eliot | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||
| Offense | 38 | 0 | |
| Defense | 9 | 24 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||
| 1st-down pass% | 42.0 | 41.2 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 42.3 | 61.1 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 25.0 | 42.9 | |
Underperforms his recruiting talent, on both sides of the ball.
1st-best LSU tenure of 16 by the numbers.
Followed Nick Saban (2000–2004) · succeeded by Ed Orgeron (2016–2021).
| Season | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||||||||||||
| Record | 11-2 | 11-2 | 12-2 | 8-5 | 9-4 | 11-2 | 13-1 | 10-3 | 10-3 | 8-5 | 9-3 | 2-2 | |
| Postseason | W bowl | W bowl | W bowl | W bowl | L bowl | W bowl | Title game L | L bowl | W bowl | L bowl | W bowl | — | |
| Coordinators | |||||||||||||
| OC | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | Cam Cameron | Cam Cameron | Cam Cameron | |
| DC | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | John Chavis | Kevin Steele | Dave Aranda | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||||||||||||
| Offense | 91 | 96 | 83 | 52 | 61 | 56 | 60 | 21 | 89 | 50 | 89 | 80 | |
| Defense | 100 | 91 | 87 | 76 | 90 | 75 | 80 | 72 | 81 | 91 | 71 | 93 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||||||||||||
| 1st-down pass% | 41.1 | 46.0 | 39.2 | 38.1 | 44.8 | 35.1 | 24.5 | 33.5 | 36.8 | 25.2 | 29.9 | 36.0 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 31.9 | 40.0 | 35.8 | 29.8 | 34.1 | 27.1 | 21.8 | 29.0 | 27.1 | 31.4 | 30.5 | 26.9 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 11.8 | 37.5 | 20.4 | 25.0 | 17.1 | 15.8 | 4.0 | 12.5 | 17.9 | 26.5 | 6.7 | 15.4 | |
Performs about as expected for his recruiting talent, on both sides of the ball.
77 NFL Draft picks: Joseph Addai (2006), Andrew Whitworth (2006), Claude Wroten (2006), Skyler Green (2006), Kyle Williams (2006), Melvin Oliver (2006), Bennie Brazell (2006), JaMarcus Russell (2007) + 69 more
9th-best Oklahoma State tenure of 15 by the numbers.
Followed Bob Simmons (1995–2000) · succeeded by Mike Gundy (2005–2025).
| Season | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||||
| Record | 4-7 | 8-5 | 9-4 | 7-5 | |
| Postseason | — | W bowl | L bowl | L bowl | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||||
| Offense | — | — | — | 86 | |
| Defense | — | — | — | 18 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||||
| 1st-down pass% | — | — | — | 22.7 | |
| Red-zone pass% | — | — | — | 14.1 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | — | — | — | 35.7 | |
7 NFL Draft picks: Kevin Williams (2003), Rashaun Woods (2004), Tatum Bell (2004), Antonio Smith (2004), Darrent Williams (2005), Vernand Morency (2005), Billy Bajema (2005)
All-time wins
Wins at programs this site tracks, 1936–present — one consistent count for every coach, not each program’s own historically reported total.
2nd all-time at LSU
Was he good?
The data leans positive, where the data can separate from zero: every conclusive reading points the same way.
+10.3 pts at LSU · #209 of 1290 · top quarterModel fit as of 2026-09-04.