It is very likely Auburn just sailed through the eye... a game-winning field goal in overtime to beat Louisiana Monroe 31-28... and the worst of the storm is yet to come and it will most certainly culiminate in a losing season. The storm will hit with full force immediately next week with LSU coming to town. After that enormous wave, the Auburn Tigers have one last chance to weather this storm. They will face Arkansas and Texas A&M at home and Ole Miss and Vandy on the road. Gene Chizik can steady his sinking ship if he can go 3-1 or 4-0 in that stretch. However that looks like a tall order right now especially after Hurricance Les blows through town but that stretch of games will decide this season.
Here are some good posts on the Louisiana Monroe game once again from Acid Reign plus Jay Coulter at Track'em Tigers and of course "A Lifetime of Defeats"...
Tigers Get Their First Win
A Stay Of Execution?
A win is a win but this sure felt like another loss (Disclaimer for profanity)
I think each post shows a unique perspective. As for my perspective here it is...
THE GOOD
Auburn's special teams. At least one Auburn unit is top notch this year. They accounted for our only touchdown against Mississippi State and put up the game-winning field goal in overtime against Louisiana Monroe. So far they have not made any of the horrible gaffes or consistent mistakes the offense and defense have been doing. Auburn will desperately need them in this stretch of four games after LSU. If in the unlikely case Auburn is able to pull it together at all on offense and defense they will probably be called upon to win another game.
What else went good on Saturday? There were a few glimmers of light from the offense. Loeffler called a pretty good first half before tailing off in the second half. Quarterback Kiehl Frazier played pretty good till that horrible interception. Running back Ontario McCalebb ran wild and Tre Mason did pretty good as well. Frazier even threw to a few people not named Blake or Lutzenkirchen including a huge "Hail Mary" play to wide receiver Sammie Coates. Auburn was close to blowing this game open before committing some agregious mistakes and calling some bad plays.
THE BAD
First on the bad list is driving down to take a 35-14 lead and put the game out of reach, Mike Blakely fumbles. In and of itself that is a young guy making a mistake and could be understandable if... Kiehl Frazier does not turn around and throw as ugly an interception as you will see on the next drive. We actually could have made it through that if... Corey Lemonier does not commit a bone-headed offside penalty on fourth down giving them a first down. All of these mistakes together in or near the fourth quarter are completely unacceptable.
The bad was also Auburn and Loeffler continuing to try and run from the three wide receiver "Ace" set. It was the worst thing about the offense Saturday. This is a passing set and while we may have had a few good runs early on we did not have any late and certainly will not have any against a decent team. I was talking about this before seeing Acid Reign say the same thing in his post. The worst part as he points out was when late in the game hanging on to a touchdown lead Auburn tries two runs out of this formation and ends up punting back to Louisiana Monroe who then takes it in for the tying touchdown.
While Auburn may have spread the ball around a little bit, the more wide receivers we have in the game the less chance of success we have. Auburn has a lot to make up for before anybody starts paying much attention to our second and third wide receivers. Auburn, in my opinion would be much better off running and passing from running formations than passing formations. Nobody respects our passing game and it is one of the worst in college football statistically. Three wide receiver sets just mean we have less blocking to pass protect or pave the way for runners. Auburn's best chance of success, in my opinion, is to have Lutzenkirchen and Prosch in the game together as much as possible.
Again, I will keep saying it, Auburn has to decide what the personality of this offense is! What are we hanging out hat on when it gets tough? I think it is obvious that we must run the ball more. We just do not have the experience and especially the commitment to be a passing team. Chizik has made it clear he is not going to have a team that airs it out. Since that is the case stop trying to trick people (because you are not) by continuing to run from pass formations!
THE UGLY
I have consistently had the opinion that Auburn's offensive problems were worse than its defensive problems. That is definitely true after we hired Coach Van Gorder. Consider this an official policy change here at STR. The biggest problem at Auburn is defense. We are a soft non-agressive defense. There is no other way to say it. When is the last time you saw a big hit from a linebacker or safety at Auburn? How many interceptions do you see from an Auburn defense the last few years? We are soft, soft, soft.
I do not know the all the mechanics of defensive football but this problem is obvious. We let receivers just run their routes and we play soft coverage. It is a staple of Gene Chizik since he became head coach. I guess Tommy Tuberville had something to do with that 2004 defense. Tuberville employed many of the same schemes but his defenses were more aggressive. We are just not aggressive or physical on defense in coverage and it makes me "physically sick".
Things are just not going to change till Auburn, as I said in my season preview "gets mean". I doubt it will happen while Chizik is coach but Auburn will not play "Auburn football" till we get back to being tough and physical on defense. I am sick to death of watching us lay back and let people ding us to death. I thought Van Gorder would change that but so far nothing has changed. It has been four seasons of this crap including 2010.
Again facts are facts and while stats do not tell the whole story they tell a lot of it. Here are the stats. Auburn is one of the worst in the NCAA in total offense and in total defense. Those are the facts. Good coaches and good coordinators consistently have high ranked units. I thought Chizik was changing our offense to help our defense but what he should have been doing is changing our defense to help out defense.
THE LAST WORD
Auburn is going to get beat down by LSU. Hopefully we will not roll over for them like Arkansas did for Bama. At the very least lets play a smart football game with good special teams. I think some valuable experience can be gained but it starts with the coaching staff putting these young guys in situations where they have a better chance to succeed.
No comments:
Post a Comment