Week 6 Review

Once again I am apologizing for a late post. A busy weekend and sick kids (and Batman Arkham Asylum) have gotten me all messed up time managment-wise. However I am back and have a few comments on this past weekend. Before we get to the Auburn game (of which I am the only Auburn blogger I know to have actually picked it correctly) let me comment on the other games. First, Florida vs. LSU. Well I called it wrong on Tebow. I guess the lesson there is never doubt if Superman will come back. Tebow played a good game and Urban Meyer called a better one. He actually showed his flexibility in trying to shorten the game instead of get more plays in. Very smart. And then you have LSU... they have two of the best I-formation type tailbacks in the conference in Charles Scott and Keiland Williams and they continue to completely waste them. Les Miles and OC Gary Crowton are outsmarting themselves. You adapt your offense to your players and they are not doing that so they have a bad offense. They are running a "hybrid" type offense anyway. I don't understand why they don't tailor this year's addition more toward the pro-style side and take advantage of these 2 great RBs. As always, running everything out of the shotgun puts everything on your QB and QB Jordan Jefferson is just not that good yet. So LSU will be good but did not come close to beating Florida and won't come close to beating Bama.

Elsewhere... UT and QB Jonathan Crompton rise from the grave to stun Georgia! I mean wow. I thought UT and Crompton would do that to Auburn but they waited a week. You have to give the team and coaches a lot of credit to get back up after a depressing game against Auburn and give that kind of effort. Kudos to the Vols. On the other side I think you can close the book on Georgia DC Willie Martinez at the end of this season. He will officially be made the fall guy and he could have company depending on how the Auburn and Tech games go.

As for comments on the Bama vs. Ole Miss game, see my previous post. Uh yeah that was an easy one to call. However rest assured Auburn fans that Ole Miss will be a different team on Halloween in Auburn. Houston Nutt has perfected laying down for Bama and getting his team up for Auburn. South Carolina nipped Kentucky to stir up mild interest in their game against Bama this weekend. Miss St's hard luck continued and Vandy got beat by Army. I think we can safely say that Vandy is back in it's familar spot of being the worst team in the SEC.

Now to Auburn vs. Arkansas and this weeks edition of "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly"...

THE GOOD
There is not much good you can say about Auburn's performance. They were pretty bad in all aspects of the game. I think I will have to go with the Arkansas defense here. Everyone knew their offense would do good but it sure looked like their defense got tired of everyone telling them how bad they were (including one former Auburn coach). I think they also were the first to use and execute the right strategy against Auburn. It appeared to me Arkansas played the running game and all the little short stuff Auburn throws really tight. They dared Chris Todd to go over top and he could not do it. He, of course, missed a wide open Terrell Zachary early for a sure TD but other than that he did not have a whole lot more chances as Arkansas stuffed Auburn's short game and pressured Todd. Auburn finally got loose in the third quarter and came within a decent kickoff coverage play of making it real interesting. However they continued the theme of the game and shot themselves in the foot.

Bobby Petrino and the Arkansas offense led by Ryan Mallett took complete advantage of the thin, soft, non-attacking Auburn defense. I was actually a little less impressed with Mallett as he missed a lot of easy throws. He should have done even better. However I will also say that Arkansas was helped immensely by two of the worst pass interference calls I have ever seen. I rarely say anything about the refs but those two calls definitely deserve to be in the ugly section. However Arkansas overall was very good on Saturday.

THE BAD
Let's see... The Auburn offense, The Auburn defense, The Auburn special teams and all the coaches in between. As Will Collier chronicled we have seen this before. The Arkansas game plus an early start equals disaster for Auburn. I mean I guess I agree with the rest of the Auburn blog nation that a game like this was inevitable but that doesn't make it any easier to watch or take. I expected us to probably lose this game but I didn't think we would do a Tubervillian tank job.

THE UGLY
This award once again goes to the job recruiting Tuberville did his last four years. It is HIM that is to blame for this woefully thin football team. It is really not even about $aban anymore, he just accelerated the process. This started with Jetgate. Each year our recruiting got worse from 2004 through 2008. Yes we got some good highly rated football players but not near enough of them. Tuberville misfired on so many players that I have simply lost count. We are now barely able to field a legitimate defensive team. We have TWO SEC-CALIBER LBS!!! TWO!!!!!! We don't even have many bodies behind them! What in the heck happenend here? Recruiting LBs is not near as hard as finding DTs and LTs and used to be Tub's specialty???

I mean for 4 or 5 years now Auburn has not been able to field a legitimate basketball team. We have played 3 guards and 2 small forwards for what seems like forever. Now our football team is starting to resemble our basketball team. I think that insult speaks for itself. I have never said it before now. Other than the disaster at LB, we are thin all over the field except for QB and RB. Our DL is not very good and there is certainly no help beyond what you see on the field. It is going to take years for Chizik and Co to dig us out of this hole and get our talent level up (if they can even do it).

THE FINAL WORD
The Auburn blog nation has pretty much said this is just a bump in the road and this will still be a good season. We will see in two weeks, we will see in two weeks. I do agree with War Blog Eagle that "it seems less likely than ever that an eighth win isn’t out there somewhere." However I do think that eighth win if it is out there will most likely be the Halloween game vs. Ole Miss at Jordan Hare. Other than that I think it would be the Georgia game although Mark Richt like Houston Nutt has made a career out of getting his teams back up for Auburn.

One more thing, I am really sick of the Auburn blog nation telling me how I have to be happy with this season because it is better than last year and we have exceeded many people's expectations (although currently we have only exceeded mine by one game, UT). In 1996, we went 8-4 and Terry Bowden was put on the hot seat. There was a lot of venom back then against those of us who would dare be unappreciative of an 8-4 season. However there are different kinds of 8-4 seasons. In 1996 we lost to every decent SEC team on our schedule in LSU, Florida, Georgia and Bama. I will simply NEVER be happy with that kind of season. Do you hear me out there? If we go 8-4 this year and lose to Arkansas, LSU, Georgia (or Ole Miss) and Bama I will not be happy with that!!! And I am pretty sick of hearing I need to be.