Ranking the top 20 college football coaches for 2021

12. Ed Orgeron, LSU

On the heels of a perfect 15-0 season and winning a National Championship, you wouldn’t have needed to look far to find fans ready and willing to put Ed Orgeron in the same breath as the very best coaches in college football. But now that he has a 5-5 season and litany of scandals at LSU hanging over his head that have come about in the past year, Coach O is now outside of the top 10.

He undoubtedly still deserves plenty of credit for the job he’s done with the Tigers. The .500 campaign last year came after going 25-3 combined over the previous two seasons and, as mentioned, winning the natty.

But let’s also not discount the reason why things went wrong a year ago. Orgeron was tasked with leading a team that was replacing almost every starter on both sides of the ball. And while it’s not great that it definitely looked that way more often than not on the field, that’s a tall mountain for any head coach to climb.

Orgeron has continued to deepen the talent pool at LSU through his strong recruiting efforts and, looking at the 2021 roster for the Tigers, there’s good reason to think that a big return to form is coming. In the head coach’s case, he better hope that’s how things transpire because affection can quickly turn to disdain if there are multiple lackluster seasons at a place like LSU.