Signing Day Review - State of the Program

It has been nearly a month since Signing Day 2010. It has been over a month since I have posted. The good bloggers post regularly through thick and thin. I know my favorites do. I was telling a friend last week that I need time management lessons for people that have three children. Wow, having one kid is a huge difference from being single, having two kids is nearly as big a jump as that and having three kids… Let me tell you it is about as big a jump as well. During the past month we as a family have all had the stomach bug and the good old fashioned cold. I do not know how people farther north deal with long hard cold winters. I live in Alabama and I am dying for some warm weather. Well I do not want to turn this into Facebook so unto my post…

As usual here at STR I like to stick with big picture common sense takes on Auburn and whatever else. You can look elsewhere for detailed breakdowns on each player in this recruiting class. WarBlogEagle’s Google surveys are one good example. So where are we at Auburn football-wise? I hope I offer a bit of a different take as I do not think Gene Chizik is now our greatest coach as seemingly every other Auburn blog does. I believe my previous posts during the season confirm this. He did a decent job this season and has seemingly done an outstanding job recruiting and keeping the current staff together this year. However you have to remember that Terry Bowden went 20-0, beat the #1 team in the nation on the road and had several great recruiting classes but as with everything and everybody TIME REVEALED THE TRUTH. Terry Bowden ended spectacularly bad just as he started spectacularly good. Everyone thought he was the greatest thing since sliced bread after the Florida game in 1994. He then left Auburn in disgrace just four years later and his last recruiting class in 1998 was the worst single recruiting class in modern Auburn football history.

So you can tell me that it is absolutely positively concrete that Gene Chizik was the right choice and is a great coach but TIME WILL TELL. The jury is still out. Am I saying this will happen to Chizik? No. I write this to just establish where I am coming from before I review signing day. I am not another homer sycophant here to write how this is the greatest class ever and this is the greatest staff ever and so on. I also want to reiterate that there is one goal every regular season. That goal is to win the SEC West and go to Atlanta. The goal then changes to winning that game but during the season it always remains the same. It is an objective goal that we cannot be cheated out of. Polls do not matter, high-ranking offenses do not matter, meaningless bowl exhibitions do not matter, etc… Gene Chizik and Co. (CAC) must reach that goal to be considered a good SEC coach in my opinion. Otherwise he is just another coach.

Since the SEC went to divisions only nine coaches have separated themselves from the pack. They are: Steve Spurrier, Gene Stallings, Phillip Fulmer, uh Mike Dubose (every rule or list has their exceptions), Nick Saban, Mark Richt, Tommy Tuberville, Urban Meyer, and er Les Miles (however his success can at least be contributed to another coach on this list). These coaches outside the two buffoons on the list showed their mettle over the long haul. Now obviously most of their careers include a rise and decline but just about all of them other than the two exceptions have put up at least a decade of good coaching and recruiting. Will Gene Chizik join this exclusive fraternity? Yep you guessed it… time will tell.

Now with that being said, I have to give major kudos to Chizik for keeping the staff together. In today’s big-time college football (and after watching the Tommy Tuberville staff merry-go-round for a decade) it is pretty amazing to see any staff stay completely intact for consecutive seasons. Even if you throw out the performance factor, you have to be amazed the personality factor did not rear its ugly head especially for a first year staff. A football staff is a pretty large group and many times some of the coaches just do not mesh. Auburn has seemingly hired a good football staff and kept them together going into a second season. Considering our AD, that is almost a miracle.

Finally to the recruiting class… First and it always has to be said, this is NOT the recruiting class. Auburn’s official recruiting class will be the players enrolled in school and practicing with the team in the fall. That is an absolute FACT. That official class will be made up of the players on this list but it will be a subset. The first question is always “who are we going to lose?”

I have heard a few rumblings here and there but nothing concrete. I will start off looking at the class as a whole but I know we will lose several people on this list. With that said, this has to be one of the most complete recruiting classes I have ever seen. CAC appears to have gotten at least one quality player for every position on the field. They did that while targeting desperate needs on the offensive line and at linebacker. Let’s start with the player that is hardest to find at the college and pro levels and that is defensive tackle. Auburn only got two maybe three here. I certainly hope Carter and Whitaker are not part of the initial casualty list. As stated above, no position is harder to fill. It looks like these are two good ones and they will be desperately needed soon.

Defensive ends are easier to find but good pass rushers are not. It looks like Auburn grabbed one in Corey Lemonier at the last minute. Beyond Antoine Carter there is not an established pass rusher. The defensive end spot has also become much more specialized. One does not have to look much further than the 2004 Auburn team to see that. Auburn would bring Doug Langenfield and Bret Eddins in as first down run stoppers and then bring in Stanley McClover and Quentin Groves in as third down pass rushers. That appears to be the mark of any great 4-3 defense so our new defensive ends will need to excel in one of those roles.

I always want one more defensive tackle but overall it appears the coaches did a great job bringing in a talented group to put in the pipeline on the defensive line. Next up is maybe our position of greatest need and that is linebacker. It is still simply unbelievable to me how bad our depth problems were at linebacker at the end of last season. Maybe even more amazing is that Josh Bynes and Craig Stevens did not get hurt after playing just about every meaningful snap the ENTIRE season and then playing a mind boggling 115 snaps in the bowl game. It is simply unbelievable. I certainly hope several of these guys we are bringing in are ready to contribute right away because they are sorely needed. Most of them are rated high but they will be put to the test early. I hope they are up to it. With that being said, the need was addressed well by the staff.

The secondary was not quite as bad off as linebacker but Auburn was extremely thin there as well especially after injuries took their toll. CAC grabbed almost half a dozen guys to put in the pipeline and it looks like a talented group that could go either corner back or safety if needed. If Aaron Savage or Zac Etheridge can return to contribute at all, Auburn should have plenty of bodies to work with to try and get the job done.

CAC also added a couple of kickers this class. Past experience says you could get a solid starter, i.e. John Vaughn, or a complete bust, i.e. Phillip Yost. The same goes with punters. It is a crap shoot. It is a box of chocolates. You just have to hope for the best. The greatest recruit can stink and a no-name walk on can become a starter.

To the offense… Gus Malzahn certainly got some new toys to play with. However the boring old offensive line is the place to start. After Tommy Tuberville’s last two classes did not net an offensive lineman and Chizik’s first class only netted two marginal prospects (neither a tackle) it was apparent that CAC were in big big trouble. Who the heck is going to replace the FOUR starters that are gone after this next season??? There are finally some candidates and some immediate JUCO help in for the spring. I still think Tuberville’s disastrous recruiting efforts in this area are still going to hurt Auburn. I do not think this group will save the day entirely but hopefully they will stop the bleeding.

I am pretty much an “in the trenches” guy all the way around. I grade every recruiting class by the big boys we bring in. I always want more especially after a decade of Tommy Tuberville. This year was no different and with the offensive line being in the shape it is in I kept a constant eye on our work there. I complained and ranted and was just ill for most of the process because it did not appear that we were going to get enough guys. Finally late in the process I started to feel better. Then Nick $aban decided he was going to go on his annual poaching trip into our recruiting class. It started with Josh Chapman and just about every year it seems $aban comes along late and tries to poach one of our recruits. This year that guy was Shon Coleman, our most talented offensive line prospect. It is much harder to find good offensive tackles than it is to find guards or a center. Coleman is our best tackle prospect in awhile. He had been committed to us the whole process even though he took a few visits. But then here comes big bad $aban with all his new trophies to try and con another kid into standing in line at the Capstone.

I was furious. I was going to be “physically sick” if we lost our best offensive line prospect to $aban. I basically stopped caring about anything else regarding this recruiting class other than winning this battle. It appeared to me that it would be a defining moment for CAC. I was right it was. We sent $aban and his trophies packing and Coleman signed on the dotted line. After that happened, this recruiting class was a success no matter what to me regardless of what else happened.

Well in addition to that victory we added another six offensive linemen to help the cause. You never know how it will turn out but hopefully we have some talent in the pipeline that as I said before can stop the bleeding at this position.

Elsewhere, out of nowhere, we landed Cam Newton, the best JUCO quarterback prospect in the country. I was kind of on the fence when I first heard about it but now am very happy we signed him. I do not think Rollison was going to work out with or without Newton and I am not as high on our other choices as some people are. So with that said, I sure hope Newton is as good or somewhere as close to good as advertised. Of course as I posted in December when Newton’s name just came up, “as long as the guy does not have a weak arm and does not pick #12” I am happy. Well Newton sure does not appear to have a weak arm now hopefully he (and everyone else) will stay away from the #12.

I love how the coaches and Auburn bloggers are talking about a “quarterback race”. Please! You do not sign the best JUCO quarterback in the country to sit the bench. Unless Newton just totally implodes the job is his already. End of story.

Auburn lost its best running back and went out and signed one of the best running backs in the country. That is a good job any way you slice it. It has been awhile, well pretty much since we signed Ben Tate, that we signed an elite running back. You just hope again that Dyer is as good as advertised but recruiting-wise mission accomplished. All you can do is try to get the best to your school and then you just have to hope they pan out. Auburn did that. I look forward to seeing him action this fall. One constant at Auburn has been the running backs. It does not seem we ever stay down for too long in that category. I sure hope Dyer is the next one.

At just about every position, in every recruiting class I always want just a little more. I always want one more at just about every position. Just one more and I will feel better. I can safely say that there is one position I do not feel that way about. That position is wide receiver. The transition to the spread offense, whatever its form, has left us completely bloated at this position. We have way too many scholarships tied up at wide receiver and quarterback but wide receiver is just ridiculous. Even after losing a few guys from last year’s roster including Tim Hawthorne we still have about a dozen wide receivers on scholarship with maybe four more guys joining them in the fall.

I am excited about bringing in some possible big-time playmakers like Trovon Reed and I like that we brought in some size as well but I sure hope several guys from this class or last year’s class step up so we can build up other positions.

All-in-all, if we can get most of these guys in school, this looks like a foundation class. While I stand by my previous comments on Chizik, I will say that pulling in a class like this considering the competition he was up against is a major victory. Now I have to agree with the WBE, it is now time to build on it.