Game 5 Review: ALERT

Auburn 24  Southern Mississippi 13.  There were a lot of alerts going off yesterday in Jordan Hare Stadium.  First there was a weather alert right before halftime that delayed the game almost three hours.  I have been watching Auburn football for a long time.  I think that is the longest weather delay in Auburn history.  I think there was one in 2009 before the West Virginia game and the monsoon that fell on Jordan Hare but I know it was not that long.  The were also a lot of alerts going off around Auburn's offense and they are not good.  The offense or more specifically the offensive line did not play well again and in fact seems to be getting worse.

I am sure those guys are sick and tired of hearing about it.  I know they are trying hard.  I know they have busted their butts all year long and sacrificed so much of their time to be an Auburn football player and a starting offensive lineman on this team.  Unfortunately at this level, sports are harsh and unforgiving.  It is many times or most of the time not fair but it is just part of it.  I want to be clear here at STR that while I may be critiquing a players performance I am never blaming the player.  The players are not paid millions of dollars to run these programs, the coaches are.  Yes it is hard and even harder to do it right but that is why they are paid the big bucks.

Sometimes the coaches and players can do everything they can and they are just not good enough to compete in their conference (take almost the entire modern history of Vanderbilt University).  However even in that case leadership has to look at the future and figure out where the program is going and if there is a legitimate hope of things getting better.  The leadership at Auburn University did that research and made those decisions last season and decided to go all in on Gus Malzahn.  I disagreed at the time and I think the early results are showing it might be an all-time bad decision.  It looks to me like former offensive line coach Herb Hand was smarter than we all thought he was as he got out with all those seniors last season. 

I have broken down the Auburn passing game MANY times in this blog and summarized it again last season after the LSU game.  I will not do that again but will just do another high level look at Malzahn.  The sunshine pumpers will talk about two SEC West titles and two wins over Bama.  The rest of us will talk about every other game he has coached at Auburn.  Gus Malzahn was undoubtedly the right hire in 2013.  He and his coaching staff were the right people at the right time with a team that had talent and was a perfect fit for this offense.  It is obviously one of the greatest seasons in Auburn history and I will never forget it but even in that season, his greatest, Gus Malzahn's offensive tendencies lost him the national championship.

All of Malzahn's offensive predictability and stubbornness were on full display the next three seasons and this from a coach who's specialty is supposed to be offense.  Malzahn tanked with a very talented team in 2014 going 8-5.  Auburn then sunk lower to 7-6 in 2015.  Here I will allow for a drop in recruiting after the bad 2011 and horrid 2012 seasons but even with that said Malzahn still showed no attempt at innovation on offense.  Auburn then went 8-5 again in 2016 and everyone blamed it on injuries but it was just plain bad coaching against Georgia.  Auburn then rebounded last season to finally beat its biggest two rivals who were ranked #1 at home and go 10-3.

However the main reason for Auburn's resurgence last season was the Auburn defense.  The best decision made in football after 2014 was the decision to hire Will Muschamp for one season.  The dividends on that investment were the big wins last season.  The best players on defense were direct Muschamp recruits (Jeff Holland and Carlton Davis) who were only coming to Auburn because of him and I believe his influence was a big part of Auburn getting several more of those defensive guys who are doing so well this season and last.  I will also give Malzahn credit for recruiting Braden Smith, Austin Golson and Darius James plus Kerryon and Stidham.  He also let offensive coordinator Chip Lindsey go against his predictable tendencies in those games which resulted in some big plays.

As I said though at the time, these were big wins but just going against tendencies was not a recipe for long term success.  You also have to keep recruiting great offensive linemen (and as we will see next season defensive linemen) to run the Malzahn system and the coaching staff has failed there.  Also they are failing on the field as well this season, as a friend just wrote me: "what kind of modern day college offense has ZERO ANSWERS FOR A STANDARD BLITZ???!!!???  These opposing defenses are not splitting the atom, they are just blitzing the hell out of us and we have no answers, none, zero, zip.  No hot routes, no dump offs, etc... This isn't rocket science people."

It is not rocket science but if history is any indicator Gus will not change and we will plod through the rest of this season like we did in 2015 and 2016.  We do have a much better defense but this offense is really struggling.  The different stats from last night are pretty eye-opening.  Here are the greatest hits I read from Auburn Undercover and al.com...

• "Auburn finished with only 96 rushing yards, providing the Tigers with their first back-to-back games under 100 yards for the first time since 2012. For Malzahn, it was worse: this was the worst back-to-back performances by a rushing offense in 14 years as a college coach."
• The game included eight punts, a fumble and a missed field goal for the Tigers.
• Auburn’s offense has failed to score 30 points against an FBS opponent heading into the sixth game of the season (and the EASY part of the schedule!).
• Stidham was sacked three times, including a strip fumble.
• Auburn has averaged less than 3 yards per carry against FBS teams this season (Washington, LSU, Arkansas and Southern Miss).
• Last night the offensive line was charged with four false-start penalties in three quarters and was flagged for two holding penalties totaling 38 yards.
• More on whole team penalties, in the first quarter against Southern Miss, Auburn had about as many yards of offense (63) as penalty yards (58). 
• Auburn's offense had more penalty yards (63) than rushing yards (43) at halftime.
• The offense went three-and-out five times in the first half and five minutes into the third quarter, Auburn had more yards punting (263) than total offense (231).

I think that about covers it.  The point is Malzahn and his staff have not gotten the offensive linemen in to run his system and then on top of that he will not really make any changes to his offensive system to help.  Auburn just runs out there almost every down with three wide receivers, a running back and a fullback and tries to be a power running team.   It just makes no sense.  Auburn had the same problem in 2015 and instead of using the non-running accurate quarterback to throw a lot of short passes and get the stable of decent wide receivers involved, Malzahn chooses to run up the middle the majority of the time.

I will not even bother in delving into the fact that every quarterback that has stayed in his system for multiple seasons has gotten worse.  I will just say that since Jarrett Stidham played his finest game against Bama last November he has not been a very good quarterback and that is coaching.  You add it all up and things just continue to look worse for this Auburn team and this season as a whole.  Last week I thought this offense with all it's problems would be better this week and could get through October unscathed.  After watching last night I am less sure but again both Mississippi schools have plenty of problems as well.  I guess my final word this is I hope we do not have to sit through another 3-2 game against State like 2008 next Saturday.