Week 7 Review - Apocalypse Now Redux

Usually here I give a brief review of the rest of the SEC before delving into Auburn. However the only interesting thing in the SEC besides Auburn's meltdown was Florida's near collapse. Unfortunately I did not see the game. I have read about it and can only say from experience that when a good team starts barely avoiding a loss every week it is usually an indicator that something is wrong. Right now, it appears Florida could get knocked off any week and would right now be an underdog to Bama in the SECCG. As I have written here before Percy Harvin is one of the most underrated players in SEC history. The guy may not have been as good as Tebow but he was definitely in the neighborhood and he was almost as big a reason why Florida was so successful. They were able to get by without him in the SECCG last year but now they are missing him badly. Now let us move to reviewing Auburn's Apocalypse Now Redux (2008 was the first Apocalypse and now 2009 is...) that occurred Saturday night against Kentucky.

Well I am certainly not happy about Auburn's predicament as I have lived and died with my Tigers for 30 years. However I do feel vindicated as this blog is one of the only blogs who did not go off the deep end and maintained some level of objectivity during Auburn's fast start (against an easy schedule). Now other than predicting Auburn would lose to UT instead of Kentucky my preseason predictions are right on and I believe they will continue to be as Auburn begins the agonizing drop to 6-6. While many of the other Auburn blogs are much better written and informed they simply lost objectivity. It was obvious that this Auburn team was not going to be one of those underrated teams that has a great season. We simply do not have enough good football players.

I have talked a lot about this game the last couple of days and wondered exactly how to write it out. Will Collier does the best job I have seen so far so I will sort of use his post as a foundation to start mine on so please read his excellent post reviewing the game. It is aptly named "Bad To Worse". Again I feel good because he starts out pointing out the horrible shape talent-wise the program was left in and how we realize it more and more each week. I pointed this same thing out one week ago in my Week 6 Review. He correctly compares it to the end of the Bowden era and all the people who continued to defend him while it was evident to anyone who knew anything about football that recruiting had literally come to standstill. The 1998 recruiting class by Bowden still stands as the worst non-NCAA recruiting class in NCAA history IMO. While Tub did not fall off a cliff like Bowden, he did steadily drop off and now we are left with a program that is going to take years to fix.

In my opinion the cancer of Jetgate never really went away and it slowly ate away at the program even while the team was successful on the field. Auburn did recruit some great kids after Jetgate but they got fewer and fewer each year. The lack of players is right now most evident on defense as Collier states. However once again War Blog Eagle points out the impending disaster on the OL: "I have made this point once before, but just to recap, in 2011 Auburn is going to be looking at an offensive line two-deep chosen entirely from a pool of A.J. Greene, Jared Cooper, Vance Smith, Andre Harris, John Sullen, the 2011 true freshmen, and whichever linemen Auburn signs in this 2010 class." Absolutely outstanding point and one that most people are missing. The post that he links to in that quote was written in August but is still very relevant. So be informed, Tuberville not recruiting one OL his last two years is going to hurt and it could hurt pretty badly. All these great RBs and WRs that everyone is carrying on about are not going to mean near as much if there is no one to block for them.

Back to the defense though where we are experiencing "Apocalypse Now". The DL is thin and while there is some talent it does not appear to be enough as we cannot get a consistent pass rush from our front four. The LBs and safeties are not great to begin with and we literally have nothing behind them. On that subject, WBE also pointed out: "Chizik’s not sure if there’s a connection between playing the same three linebackers and two safeties every snap of the game opposite an offense that ignores time-of-possession and missed tackles in the fourth quarter. It’s quite the mystery, I tell you." Talk about "Apocalypse Now". If you are going to play this kind of an offense you BETTER score some points.

Back on point, the reason the defense is in this position is because of poor recruiting and like Collier says "watching Auburn's defense trying in vain to bottle up Kentucky's running game on Saturday night was probably enough to remove any lingering nostalgia for the Tommy Tuberville era among Auburn fans." Well said Will, well said. It does indeed for me. I thought it was ludicrous at the time when many AU fans wanted to start calling him our greatest coach. Please. I will always remember 2004 as one of the best years in Auburn football history like 1993 with Bowden. However as each day goes by and I see how long it is going to take to dig out of this hole Tub left us in I lose more respect for him.

Of course, we can't blame everything on Tub like missed tackles or our overall soft defensive philosophy. To conclude on this subject, again Collier says it better than me: "While Gene Chizik and Ted Roof will and should share some of the blame for the current mess on the field, neither can do anything about the two or three years of lackadaisical recruiting that brought us to this point. It's hard to locate even half a dozen starters who'd make the two-deep on any SEC defense this side of Nashville, and I'm sorry to say that Tuberville's legendary laziness is largely to blame." Again spot on.

Now he and we will turn to the offense which shoulders the real blame for the loss Saturday night. The defense was bad late but we should still score more than 21 points against a UK defense without their starting CBs. Collier spends his time mostly on the fact that opposing defenses have figured out our offense and are ready for it. See our McCalebb sweeps and swing passes to Fannin for evidence of that. Far be it from me to quibble but I must say that opposing defenses are on to our SHORT game. That is what we have used to make most of our big plays so far (because maybe our QB isn't the best throwing downfield?). However, as my brother pointed out to me as he was at the game, there were WRs running around wide open all over the field all night. So what happened?

The answer is simple. No ones wants to face it or mention it for fear of being like 2008 or whatever reason. We lost Saturday night for one reason, our QB did not make the plays needed to win. The reason was Chris Todd. Sorry folks, when your OL does not allow a sack, your RB piles up 132 yards rushing and there is not an overabundance of drops then your problem is at QB. Of course, as predicted, the excuses start up immediately. Todd is hurt, Todd is hurt, blah blah blah. I have seen a lot Auburn QBs have bad games but never the excuse-making that surrounds Chris Todd. I saw Brandon Cox implode and I think some of his problems WERE physical but there wasn't near the excuse-making Todd gets. I saw Jason Campbell play bad but didn't hear immediately following the game that "oh Campbell must be hurt" and so on. I mean these people act like Chris Todd would be Tom Brady without his chronic shoulder problems. I admitted after UT that this guy was a little better than I thought but come on. A sore shoulder has nothing to do with the critical third down pass he turned and threw out of bounds or missing a wide (and I mean wide) open Tommy Trott or tossing that last gasp fourth down pass into double coverage. While Todd has thrown some bullets this year when he was able to really wind up and step into it, most of our big plays have been shorter plays that went long or underthrown deep passes.

War Blog Eagle is right when he says that the offense WAS good (with Todd). However again it was against a much easier schedule other than maybe UT. Also it was before the SEC and everyone else got a good look at the Malzahn offense. I said after the Arkansas game: "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." I would pretty much say the same thing for Kentucky. The fundamentals of football don't change. No matter how many times a coach tries to "reinvent the game" it never really changes. In this day and age you must have a vertical passing game to keep the safeties and everyone else backed up a little. We are now going on four years of declining Brandon Cox and Chris Todd. For four years we have had a weak-armed #12 at QB that simply could not do that. To me that is the major reason we have not been effective on offense against the better teams.

Malzahn came in and did some good things and confused teams and threw a lot of different stuff at them. We got our playmakers involved and found some new stars as well. However when the smoke and mirrors fade you simply have to be able to throw down field. We won't win another game this season other than Furman with out it. If by some miracle Todd can find those receivers and hit some passes downfield we will do some damage on offense. If he does not the question will only be how bad will it get...