3. Ground-and-pound will work in Big Ten
For all the flak that Miles took for his remedial offense in the SEC, the ground-and-pound offensive style will work in West Lafayette for the Boilermakers. It also helps that David Blough has the makings of the best Boilermaker signal caller since Kyle Orton.
At LSU, Miles leaned on his defense and elite play from his running backs to have one of the best programs in the Power 5. He won the 2007 National Championship, the SEC twice (2007, 2011), and the SEC West three times (2005, 2007, 2011). His coaching philosophy would transition seamlessly to a Big Ten bottom-feeder like Purdue.
It actually works better in the Big Ten because it gets colder in the Midwest more than it does in the Southeast. SEC opponents can still move the chains aerially in late November, whereas that gets harder to execute in the Big Ten after mid-October.
The Big Ten has elite running backs all over the conference. Miles just needs to get his hands on one or two and he could have the Boilermakers as an eight-win team by 2018. Though he has coached in the Big 12 and the SEC, the style of play in the Big Ten best suits Miles’ coaching tactics.