I used to dread the spring sunshine pumping of the Tuberville era. The open practices drew a lot of the hard core fans in the area and they usually posted their take in one of the various Auburn forums. Plenty of them would make it around to me. After you read one it seemed like Auburn would be better than the Dallas Cowboys. Those posts used to drive me crazy. Now I actually miss those posts. Why? Because at least it was an opinion based on someone actually SEEING the practice.
We now have the rigid draconian no-access rules (copied from the dictator across the state) that prevents anyone from seeing our top secret practices. It is pathetic, it is ludicrous, it is sad. It was never more so than last week for the last big scrimmage. Auburn had the poor beat writers locked out and was then twittering lame comments to the fan base. To top it off, the dictator across the state who sets the standard for lack of access allows stats to be compiled and provided to the fan base for most scrimmages but NOT at Auburn. That is my lowest expectation and Auburn is not even providing that. Obviously if the $abatron allows it, it cannot hurt. Come on Auburn, at least give us some stats.
With that said it has been really sad reading all of the spring practice "reports" and especially the "analysis" based on those reports. It is all hearsay and supposition. It has been full of "well Coach Chizik is not talking about this guy so he must be doing bad" kind of stuff. I have quickly lost interest in it.
That brings us to A-Day 2010. Usually A-Day is not too exciting but again since it is now the only time anyone gets to see the team play it is a little more noteworthy. It also gets more interesting when the team is replacing their quarterback. That is definitely the place to start with A-Day 2010. Here are the stats:
•Barrett Trotter completed 7-of-9 passes for 154 yards, including touchdown passes of 50 and 44 yards.
•Neil Caudle was 17-of-21 for 199 yards and had a 70-yard touchdown pass to receiver Quindarius Carr.
•Cameron Newton was 3-of-8 for 80 yards.
•Clint Moseley was 10-of-12 for 55 yards.
I watched the entire game and from my perspective Barrett Trotter looked the best. Neil Caudle was right there with him. However after watching how they handled the playing time it appears that Cam Newton has already won the job. I had assumed that was already the case but was impressed with Trotter's command and Caudle's release. Clint Moseley only came in for mop-up duty in the second half so I do not think he is at the level of the others.
Physically Newton displayed some of his raw ability. You could see how big he was just standing there. You could also see his arm strength when he threw a deep pass. Unfortunately you also saw it on a few short passes when he threw two balls way too high. What we did not see was his running ability and that is a big part of his game. Basically you do not bring in a kid of Newton's caliber to sit the bench. I fully expect him to be the starter next season barring injury. However A-Day 2010 definitely showed that he still has some things to work on.
You have to feel bad for Neil Caudle and I do. The guy sure looks like he has some big-time ability but has just never been able to put it together good enough to get the job. I think he will back up Newton although Barrett Trotter has to be uncomfortably close in his rearview mirror. Trotter looked poised and aggressive from the start. He came out firing and delivered. I think he will back up next year if nothing happens to Newton and start in 2012.
I also have to tip my hat to Gus Malzahn as each quarterback including Clint Moseley looked well-coached. They all seemed to understand the offense and got the ball off quickly. I was also very happy to see that all of them had fairly strong arms. There were no Brandon Cox or Chris Todd weak arms in the bunch. Thank goodness...
The running back discussion pretty much starts and ends with Mario Fannin. He far and away looked like the best running back out there. The offenses did not run that much anyway. None of the other running backs did anything impressive that I saw. The best running play outside of Fannin was Terrell Zachary on a reverse.
The wide receivers looked good as a whole and actually had the best running plays of the day on runs after they caught the ball. Terrell Zachary took a short pass and took it to the house and Quindarious Carr from my hometown and current residence of Huntsville, Alabama made the play of the day. Carr took a mid-range pass and put on a Bo Jackson-esque display of speed for a 70-yard touchdown. Several defenders had great angles on Carr and he outran them. It was a WOW play and gave Carr a well deserved game MVP award.
The offensive line appeared to be a wall around the quarterbacks for most of the game so you have to give them a thumbs-up it appeared. The defense was hard to comment on. To me, they looked like a sparring partner for the offense. They were as vanilla as it gets most of the day. They got a few sacks but only a couple looked like real ones. They played hard and made a lot of tackles but they also missed quite a few as well. It was pretty hard for me to get a feel for the defense.
About the only thing that jumped out to me is that I hope Antoine Carter stays healthy. He could have a big year. He has had the raw ability his entire career but I sure hope he can put it all together this coming season. Well that is about it. As I said earlier, this or any other opinion may be way off but at least we finally got to SEE some of the 2010 Auburn Tigers.
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