Week 4 Review

It was not a super exciting weekend but we did have a few surprises. Here are the three that jumped out to me:

1. SUPERMAN HURT. Tim Tebow finally found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. That sound you heard was a hundred thousand Florida fans inhaling at once. It sounds like he will be OK and it is just a concussion and Florida is REALLY lucky that they have an open week before going to LSU.

2. Bama disposes of Arkansas easily. Bama completely shutdown Ryan Mallett and the Razorback offense which is a good offense. As much as it pains me to say, Bama is hitting on all cylinders and I would probably pick them over Florida if they played right now. However there is alot of football to be played though between now and December.

3. Miss St should have beaten LSU. Thanks to some horrible playcalling Coach Dan Mullen managed to grab defeat out of the jaws of victory but State should have won. Two things here, you have to say State is better than people thought after winning against Vandy and nearly beating LSU. On the flip side, LSU is not looking good. The real mystery is where their running game including monster Charles Scott went.

What does all that mean? Pretty much that the waters parting for Bama again... So what did we see from Auburn last night? The Good, The Bad and The Ugly perfectly describes Auburn last night.

THE GOOD

The Auburn offense continued to shine as it ran up another 500 yards of offense and QB Chris Todd had 5 TDs. It was his best game to date and he did really throw some nice passes. However most of the time he had all day to throw against a young and not very good Ball St team. WR Terrell Zachary had an awesome game and WR Darvin Adams was money again as well. RBs Ben Tate and Ontario McCalebb had good nights (till they got McCalebb hurt on a stupid fake punt). The OL was OK. True frosh Josh Sullen kind of brought the whole line down but like everyone said, we just have nobody behind our starters. I sure hope Byron Isom's suspension is over next week. All-in-all a good night for the offense. They better get ready and quit patting themselves on the back though because the preseason is over and we will now see how good this Auburn team and this offense is starting next week in Knoxville.

THE BAD

The starting defense did pretty well but when we started subbing it got ugly. Ball St moved the ball pretty well and scored 30 points. I am sorry there are decent cream puffs, i.e. La Tech, and there are COMPLETE cream puffs and that would be Ball St. There is no way that team should have scored 30 points regardless of subbing, turnovers or whatever. It is very frustrating to watch our soft coverage and talent dropoff on defense. It is again obvious that Tuberville left the cupboard extremely bare and it now appears the problem could be worse on defense. Looking at the totals this defense has already given up it is hard to fathom what could happen this next month.

THE UGLY

I have really not said much about the special team so far. One or two games does not tell the story about a team's special teams. However when your special teams are THIS bad against Ball St you have big problems. Another dropped punt, playing musical chairs with the punt returners, bad kickoffs, bad coverage, etc... Our special teams are AWFUL or staying on theme UGLY. At this point I am not sure it is going to get a lot better. If we have not been good against the easy part of our schedule I have a hard time believing we are going to improve against better teams.

I am not a special teams coach and I am not sure how to fix most of these problems but I can offer some common sense advice on one of them. First of all, you NEVER start a true freshman as your punt returner. It is too crucial a position to trust it to a true freshman. Sooner or later you have to pick a guy and stick with him. I still think Mario Fannin can be that guy. He did not do great but again he is a proven playmaker. I think you keep coaching him and I believe he will turn it around.

Finally, thank goodness this ugly game is done and we can now find out how good we really are...