What in the world has Scott Loeffler been doing the last nine months??? You could take a number of this state's best high school football coaching staffs and do a much better job than these overpayed clowns. What has this whole offensive staff being doing the last nine months? What did they do over this bye week? Where is the head coach? Does anyone know anything about offense down there? It is completely embarrassing. It is even more so when you see how much we are paying these guys. I gave this coaching staff one last chance. I was fairly upbeat (as much as you can when you are 1-3) in my last post and kept a fairly positive attitude this last week. Gene Chizik and this staff had a great chance to turn this season around. They had this chance with a bye week in the perfect spot and they produce this slop??? It is the worst coaching job for one game ever.
In the process, the coaches have thrown away this season as well. Auburn could afford losing one game in this stretch but not this one. They had to get this one. The Auburn Tigers now could be underdogs against Ole Miss and Vanderbilt, the two historically worst programs in the SEC. Less than two years ago Auburn won the SEC and BCS national championship. You have to do a colossally bad coaching job to turn Auburn into the worst team in the SEC and a national laughingstock in that short amount of time. I have never seen anything like it. The buck stops with head coach and almost four million dollar man Gene Chizik. He did a good job in 2010, maybe, more and more it looks like it was Gus Malzahn's "One Moment In Time". However Terry Bowden did a good job his first year as well. Some coaches only have one good year.
It looks like 2010 was it for Chizik. There has been precious little good coaching the last two seasons. Is it just going to miraculously show up? I do not think so. I think this game marks the beginning of the end for Gene Chizik at Auburn. It is just how long it is going to take. He will probably not get the axe this season but it is just prolonging the inevitable. Auburn has to go on the road to Arkansas, LSU, Texas A&M and Georgia next year. There will be no miraculous turnaround. Auburn's odd year schedule was bad enough (notice every good Auburn season since 1993 is an even numbered year?) but it got even worse when the SEC made a road game at Texas A&M a permanent part of it (while Bama who has almost the same schedule as Auburn got Texas A&M on the road added to their easy even year schedule helping them).
There will be the inevitable blowback against Auburn whenever they do send mean Gene packing but we heard the same thing after Bowden. Time told the story on that. These coaches have had more than enough chances and continue to put poorly prepared and poorly coached teams on the field. Over the last two seasons it has resulted in near upsets by Utah State and Louisiana Monroe at home and blowout losses to Clemson, LSU, Mississippi State, Arkansas (twice), Georgia (will be twice) and Bama (it will be twice). Yesterday simply put an exclamation point on this coaching staff's horrible job over these last two seasons (and this one is not even half over!). The other losses including getting blown out by your biggest rivals for the second year in a row will probably be more painful but I am not sure theses coaches or anyone can top the slop we saw yesterday.
Eight sacks. Five turnovers. Dumb ill-timed penalties. A seemingly complete lack of understanding of basic offensive football. All this after an extra week to get the team prepared. I will say it again in vain because these stupid coaches will continue to do the same stupid things. The first thing you do is put some of the staple plays from the last few seasons in that these players know how to run and they were recruited to run. Kiehl Frazier has played his whole career in the Malzahn offense. You need to keep a few of things he is familar with and good at running like the read option play. They run it in the NFL now!
You have freshman tackles, no matter what you are running you need two out of the three of Lutzenkirchen, Prosch or Fulse on the field. Do not run many three wide sets and certainly not any four or five wide sets. I watched Arkansas completely ignore wide receivers as many teams have done the last two season. Quit trying to see how many different formations you can line up in. Run the ball. Run the ball. Run the ball and I mean run it between the tackles with Mason and Blakeley (even with his fumbles) and only use McCalebb on third downs. Throw in the occasional play action pass. Minimize the mistakes. Run the clock. Keep it simple. Good grief, it is not rocket science. You cannot play exciting offensive football with young or limited quarterbacks and freshman tackles! You have to play smart. You have to play "boring" football. Your personnel dictates this. It is simple. It is as old as football itself.
How come people that are paid millions of dollars to do this for a living cannot figure this out? It is hard to fathom. Of course glimpsing the demise of the Gene Chizik era only shines the light on the bigger problem at Auburn and that is the athletic director. We will get something even worse than Chizik if Jay Jacobs is running another coaching search (by the way it looks like everyone should not have been so hard on the guy at the airport). Jacobs has killed just about every other meaningful sport at Auburn and it looks like he will be able to put the football program down for quite awhile before he is through. How in the world did we ever end up with this guy in power?
I was reminded this week that you cannot say Gene Chizik was a mistake. Without Chizik, we do not get Malzahn, without Malzahn we do not get Cam or we don't maximize Cam and we do not get a SEC and national championship. It was worth it for that but Chizik is not getting the job done now. He is not even close. Gene Chizik is a good man and he presided over a national championship team but that does not mean he gets a pass for doing a horrible job. You have to get your job done or you will lose it. That goes for everyone. I will lose my job even if I did a great job two years ago but stink it up after that. The only difference is Gene Chizik is getting millions of dollars plus the huge buyout he will receive. I do not feel sorry for him in the least.
What would I do if I was athletic director? I would end this fiasco at the end of year if the coaching continues to be this bad and then I would go do what I wanted to do four years ago and that is to go to Texas Christian University and bring back Gary Patterson and his staff. Auburn is one of the few schools that has the prestige and resources to get a coach of that caliber. Ah I need to stop, I actually just felt some hope after writing those last two sentences. That is not going to happen and there is not much hope for Auburn at the moment or anytime soon. Auburn will not be be down forever, it will just feel like it...
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