I know I haven't been around much of late, but...

[Rednilla 5,383]

I've got something I feel it necessary to say, if it hasn't been already. Many are getting up in arms about how much everything is going awry, but seriously, come on now.

Gus has been doing this at a high level for a long time. In 10 years of coaching, he has had two offenses ranked #1 overall in the country, led Auburn from a triple digit ranking offensively to 16th in his first season as OC, was (at least IMO) the primary reason we won the national championship in 2010, and has won his conference championship in two of the three full seasons he has been a head coach.

Now, let's look at another coach we're all familiar with: Patrick Fain Dye won a total of one conference championship in six seasons at East Carolina, turned an abysmal program at Wyoming into a winning one in his only season there, and then came to Auburn.

In his first three seasons as Auburn's head coach, he was 25-10. Through two and a half seasons, Malzahn is 24-11. Both won an SEC championship in those time periods (Dye did so in his third year, while Malzahn did in his first...though the comparison isn't perfect considering that virtually all of the players in Gus's first year as HC on the Plains had already been around him as a coach).

What's more is that Dye went 17-8 over the following two seasons before going 39-7-1 with three SEC Championships from 1986-1989.

After winning the conference championship in 2013, Malzahn has been 12-9, which is certainly some cause for alarm...but let's not get crazy and forget everything that happened with Gus's influence before the last season and a half. To wit, if Auburn wins just one of the three remaining conference games, as well as the bowl game, Malzahn will be 27-13 through three seasons as head coach, which is approximately 9-4 per season and just under 4 winning percentage points behind Dye through his own first three seasons (and closer if you don't factor in the games yet to be played). When cosidering that an SEC team has won the national championship during 7 of the 9 full seasons he has been at the college level, it's not too much of a leap to think that perhaps he's dealing with a different animal regarding intra-conference play than Dye did, but either way the records line up pretty danged well.

One more thing on that point: Gus Malzahn is brilliant. Maybe he won't work out at Auburn (I won't be calling for his departure anytime soon, but I don't make those decisions); however, anyone who knows anything about football knows how much he has going right for him. (Just one example, but can anyone think of another coach who has given Nick Saban more fits than Malzahn?) Personally, I'd prefer to give him another season or two after this one, no matter how we finish 2015, to see how well he's able to work out the kinks. Let us not forget that he has his OWN methods of going about things, and that fact is what sets him apart from the garden-variety good football coach.

So what's my point in all of this?

Keep the faith. No matter how this season turns out, Auburn will still be Auburn, and I feel confident that, deep down, most of us will still be proud to be part of the AU Family. That doesn't mean you have to do nothing but pump sunshine (there is a necessity for balance in both directions). It simply means that we ALL (myself especially) need to remember that football is not the end all, be all of life, and that if we ever want to have truly sustained success on the gridiron, then we need to give head coaches just a teensy bit more slack than we have been.

All of that having been said, I've not really perused much through the threads on here to know how much of that kind of talk has been spreading, but I can guarantee that it does nothing to help. If nothing else, with this being the "largest Auburn sports forum on the net" (not sure if we still hold that claim, but there is a high percentage of the fan base that does get information here), the attitudes that dominate these threads cannot help but to perpetuate throughout to some degree, both in the general fans and amongst the students...and even if the players don't get on here to look, you had better believe they pick up on the energy (or lack thereof) surrounding them each week going to classes.

Ergo, being realistic is fine, and even necessary to keep those of us who get carried away with nostalgia grounded to some degree. However, I think we ALL need to be careful exactly what messages we're sending out (and, again, that includes me). We can have the us against the world mentality all we want, and that's generally a good thing for building comaraderie throughout; it's just that if we are going to have such a mentality, we need to maintain it, rather than fracturing from within by bickering about how much the sky is falling.

[Mikey 16,565]

Good points. The best recipe for disaster is to change coaches every few years. Gus is good enough that he should become an Auburn fixture for years to come.

[Weegle777 78]

Coaches go through slumps and bad years as well as players. Gus could just be having a bad run as of late. Who knows. He shouldn't be fired though. That would set us back another three years.

[aujeff11 6,243]

I endorse this message.

[lionheartkc 6,150]

Reality is, a head coach gets 12 games a year, maybe 13, to get a grip on what is and isn't working in their program. It's not like they can micromanage every part of the team, so they need to build a complete staff that gets the job done, and then look at the results to know if it's working. Once they have seen the results, they then need to figure out what changes need to be made, make them, and wait until the next season to truly test whether it worked or not. After several years of this process, they will figure out what works for them and be able to maintain that level, for the most part.

We are in a situation where we rolled the dice on a brilliant offensive mind, and good man, as our head coach, but with only 1 year as a head coach under his belt, he is having to learn his process while he is working for us. That requires a resource that is becoming more and more scarce in our society, patience. To be honest, no one has any idea just how good of a head coach Gus is, because he hasn't had the opportunity to put the right pieces together to make things work the way he sees them working in his head. I believe he feels like the Muschamp hire was the key, but then the unexpected happened. His reliable back-up QB became a gun shy starter and the captain of he defense went out with a long term injury.

Would any other coach have been able to do better in that situation? No one knows. Will we be able to turn it around next year? I hope so. Still, I don't think we will really know what we have in Gus for another 2-3 years. I just hope we are patient enough to wait that long, because if not, we may give up one of the best coaches in the country prematurely. Even if he isn't the right fit, finding someone better is just another crap shoot, and will give us more years of rebuilding.

[Blizz5307 0]

I completely agree with this post. People are up in arms and calling for Malzahn's head. This team isn't that far off from being a good one. With the exception of the LSU game, if a few plays go our way, we beat Mississippi State, Arkansas and Ole Miss, and we're sitting at 7-1. This team is so close it is insane. Yes, Malzahn made some dumb play calls against Ole Miss, but nothing boils down to one simple thing. This just isn't Auburn's year, but I'm not going to give up on them. Some people have compared this team to 2012, but this team is nothing like that team. That team gave up and laid down for teams. This team is fighting.

[GBAU83 212]

lionheartkc hit it on the head.

Para 2 is spot on - Gus has only been a head coach for his 4t year now. Give him time. Despite it being a tougher conference now than Dye's time, I still believe Gus will produce more Conference champions in the same overall time.

[aubaseball 2,588]

Not to be a debbie downer, but i dont like the comparison of records to other coaches. Dye had a losing record his first season, then went 10 seasons without a losing record. Why not compare him to bowden? They have had similar starts to their time at AU. How did that work out? My point is, we as the average fan dont really have any bearing on whether a coach is fired or not. If the people that control the program want him gone, he is gone. I do not believe that anyone wants him gone, and that he will be given next year to improve. I believe he deserves another year to straighten out the problems. I also think next year will be a better season. Not going to predict a record, but AU will have a much better team on the field.

[NoALtiger 3,849]

I think the big thing that has some folks going bonkers is we are 1-7 out of our last 8 SEC games. Not sure that ever happened to Dye or Bowden or whoever you wanna compare Gus to. That's why I never like comparing coaches to each other- rarely is it apples to apples.

[tigerbrotha12 2,362]

I completely agree with this post. People are up in arms and calling for Malzahn's head. This team isn't that far off from being a good one. With the exception of the LSU game, if a few plays go our way, we beat Mississippi State, Arkansas and Ole Miss, and we're sitting at 7-1. This team is so close it is insane. Yes, Malzahn made some dumb play calls against Ole Miss, but nothing boils down to one simple thing. This just isn't Auburn's year, but I'm not going to give up on them. Some people have compared this team to 2012, but this team is nothing like that team. That team gave up and laid down for teams. This team is fighting.

and this team has lost 3 out of their 4 games lost by a total of only 24 points. 8 points lost by per game (excluding LSU game of course) and have been in all games until last minute of play. With a backup QB starting, and our most important player injured. A&M game is going to surprise a lot of folks. I keep on saying this, we will not be blown out again this year. I don't know how many wins we will end up with, but whatever amount of wins we end up with, we'll be the best team in the country with that record.

[triangletiger 1,599]

The one thing that gives me hope is that the players are still putting forth good effort. If the coaches can keep the players motivated while they're figuring things out and things aren't going well, good results are just over the horizon.

[WarEagle231 52]

Look....

Nick Saban is the only coach at a major program that hasn't gone through a slump. I'm not a fan of his style or personality but he does get results on the field. Urban Meyer is a phenomenal coach as well. After winning two championships in 3 years he went 8-5 and left Florida. Maybe he saw that he couldn't win over the next few years with the talent they had, so he moved on.

The truth is we should have been competing to win the NC last year and we didn't. That is what stands out to me. Right now we have more NFL players on active rosters from the 2015 NFL Draft than any other college program. That tells me that we had a lot of talent last year and we lost them to the NFL. So it makes sense that we might have a down year this year. It also means that we should have done more last year with that talent.

[autigeremt 6,589]

Look....

Nick Saban is the only coach at a major program that hasn't gone through a slump. I'm not a fan of his style or personality but he does get results on the field. Urban Meyer is a phenomenal coach as well. After winning two championships in 3 years he went 8-5 and left Florida. Maybe he saw that he couldn't win over the next few years with the talent they had, so he moved on.

The truth is we should have been competing to win the NC last year and we didn't. That is what stands out to me. Right now we have more NFL players on active rosters from the 2015 NFL Draft than any other college program. That tells me that we had a lot of talent last year and we lost them to the NFL. So it makes sense that we might have a down year this year. It also means that we should have done more last year with that talent.

Injuries along the defensive front caused a lot of problems for that side of the ball during and after MSU. Injuries can kill a season (my Steelers know all about that).

[IronMan70 3,277]

Excellent post Red and I agree 100%. Gus has this team fighting, competitive and improving every week. He is building a good foundation for the future with a team that has a lot of heart. That's what I see.

[AUFAN78 3,892]

I've got something I feel it necessary to say, if it hasn't been already. Many are getting up in arms about how much everything is going awry, but seriously, come on now.

Gus has been doing this at a high level for a long time. In 10 years of coaching, he has had two offenses ranked #1 overall in the country, led Auburn from a triple digit ranking offensively to 16th in his first season as OC, was (at least IMO) the primary reason we won the national championship in 2010, and has won his conference championship in two of the three full seasons he has been a head coach.

Now, let's look at another coach we're all familiar with: Patrick Fain Dye won a total of one conference championship in six seasons at East Carolina, turned an abysmal program at Wyoming into a winning one in his only season there, and then came to Auburn.

In his first three seasons as Auburn's head coach, he was 25-10. Through two and a half seasons, Malzahn is 24-11. Both won an SEC championship in those time periods (Dye did so in his third year, while Malzahn did in his first...though the comparison isn't perfect considering that virtually all of the players in Gus's first year as HC on the Plains had already been around him as a coach).

What's more is that Dye went 17-8 over the following two seasons before going 39-7-1 with three SEC Championships from 1986-1989.

After winning the conference championship in 2013, Malzahn has been 12-9, which is certainly some cause for alarm...but let's not get crazy and forget everything that happened with Gus's influence before the last season and a half. To wit, if Auburn wins just one of the three remaining conference games, as well as the bowl game, Malzahn will be 27-13 through three seasons as head coach, which is approximately 9-4 per season and just under 4 winning percentage points behind Dye through his own first three seasons (and closer if you don't factor in the games yet to be played). When cosidering that an SEC team has won the national championship during 7 of the 9 full seasons he has been at the college level, it's not too much of a leap to think that perhaps he's dealing with a different animal regarding intra-conference play than Dye did, but either way the records line up pretty danged well.

One more thing on that point: Gus Malzahn is brilliant. Maybe he won't work out at Auburn (I won't be calling for his departure anytime soon, but I don't make those decisions); however, anyone who knows anything about football knows how much he has going right for him. (Just one example, but can anyone think of another coach who has given Nick Saban more fits than Malzahn?) Personally, I'd prefer to give him another season or two after this one, no matter how we finish 2015, to see how well he's able to work out the kinks. Let us not forget that he has his OWN methods of going about things, and that fact is what sets him apart from the garden-variety good football coach.

So what's my point in all of this?

Keep the faith. No matter how this season turns out, Auburn will still be Auburn, and I feel confident that, deep down, most of us will still be proud to be part of the AU Family. That doesn't mean you have to do nothing but pump sunshine (there is a necessity for balance in both directions). It simply means that we ALL (myself especially) need to remember that football is not the end all, be all of life, and that if we ever want to have truly sustained success on the gridiron, then we need to give head coaches just a teensy bit more slack than we have been.

All of that having been said, I've not really perused much through the threads on here to know how much of that kind of talk has been spreading, but I can guarantee that it does nothing to help. If nothing else, with this being the "largest Auburn sports forum on the net" (not sure if we still hold that claim, but there is a high percentage of the fan base that does get information here), the attitudes that dominate these threads cannot help but to perpetuate throughout to some degree, both in the general fans and amongst the students...and even if the players don't get on here to look, you had better believe they pick up on the energy (or lack thereof) surrounding them each week going to classes.

Ergo, being realistic is fine, and even necessary to keep those of us who get carried away with nostalgia grounded to some degree. However, I think we ALL need to be careful exactly what messages we're sending out (and, again, that includes me). We can have the us against the world mentality all we want, and that's generally a good thing for building comaraderie throughout; it's just that if we are going to have such a mentality, we need to maintain it, rather than fracturing from within by bickering about how much the sky is falling.

[lost 452]

You have to hope for the best.

[3rdgeneration 6,469]

Thank you, Rednilla, for your post. It is so easy to be disappointed and not have patience, but in the long run, the coaches are growing boys into men. I am proud of the character, the work ethic and the heart of most of the guys on our team. A good part of that comes from the coaches. We will get it together. I have faith in Gus and all the other coaches as well. Keep fighting, men! War Eagle!!!

[AUbritt 611]

Thanks, Red -- great post!\

[AUwent 3,747]

Look....

Nick Saban is the only coach at a major program that hasn't gone through a slump. I'm not a fan of his style or personality but he does get results on the field. Urban Meyer is a phenomenal coach as well. After winning two championships in 3 years he went 8-5 and left Florida. Maybe he saw that he couldn't win over the next few years with the talent they had, so he moved on.

The truth is we should have been competing to win the NC last year and we didn't. That is what stands out to me. Right now we have more NFL players on active rosters from the 2015 NFL Draft than any other college program. That tells me that we had a lot of talent last year and we lost them to the NFL. So it makes sense that we might have a down year this year. It also means that we should have done more last year with that talent.

<Clap, clap, clap, clap>

With the rumors from PM about CL and MA, I can definitely feel a bit of hope about next year. I'm still mad at CGM for underachieving last year with all that talent, but he definitely deserves another year.

[Auctoritas 2,828]

I can't believe we're at a point where people are seriously entertaining a coaching change after only 2.5 years. I remember when you had to go 1-35 in that amount of time to be axed and now people are wanting one to be fired while having a 69% winning percentage?

Who do you want to replace him? Who do you think would be 1) better and 2) would come to a place that fires people despite winning twice as much as they've lost?

Skies above, I mean it's absolutely ludicrous. As Mikey noted, the best recipe for disaster is instability at coaching, particularly when that instability is self-inflicted. And we've got people saying they'd "be ok" with "one more year" to see if he worked out. People are starting to talk like Bama fans but seem to be under the misapprehension that we've had the track record of Vanderbilt instead.

Those calling for heads to roll ought to remember what's happened to Tennessee since they fired Fulmer. It's never wise in life to ignore cautionary tales.

Thank you, Red, for injecting some well-stated sense into this.

[keesler 5,924]

Look....

Nick Saban is the only coach at a major program that hasn't gone through a slump. I'm not a fan of his style or personality but he does get results on the field. Urban Meyer is a phenomenal coach as well. After winning two championships in 3 years he went 8-5 and left Florida. Maybe he saw that he couldn't win over the next few years with the talent they had, so he moved on.

The truth is we should have been competing to win the NC last year and we didn't. That is what stands out to me. Right now we have more NFL players on active rosters from the 2015 NFL Draft than any other college program. That tells me that we had a lot of talent last year and we lost them to the NFL. So it makes sense that we might have a down year this year. It also means that we should have done more last year with that talent.

Good post.

Last year was a huge underachievement. But this year is even more disappointing because AU is sitting dead ass last in the cellar of the SEC West with an abysmal 1-8 record vs SEC opponents.

[Eagle Eye 7 2,535]

I know I don't want GM gone but I do want GM to get his head on. In the last 11 games he has not been doing what he should. I think finally today he began to own this problem. You can never continue to be successful if you don't grow each year. As far as coaching change, you look at the best year to year programs and you see some coaching change at the assistant level every year. That's a good thing because it shows you are not satisfied where you are. I read a few years ago Gus even said that he tried to spend time each week looking at film on his offense from the eyes of an opponent so he could see if he was setting any tendencies. Undoubtedly he has not been doing that over the last year or a lot of these problems would not exist. And please don't blame this on players. Overall the talent level coming into this year was probably better than what he inherited in 2013. I think what every true AU fan wants is to see some improvement. Even Gus has said many times that his thoughts of success is to improve each weak. I don't think we have done that this year. We see the defense get better and the offense go bad, then the offense get better and the defense go south. My hope is this week begins the turn-around. WDE

[Auctoritas 2,828]

Look....

Nick Saban is the only coach at a major program that hasn't gone through a slump. I'm not a fan of his style or personality but he does get results on the field. Urban Meyer is a phenomenal coach as well. After winning two championships in 3 years he went 8-5 and left Florida. Maybe he saw that he couldn't win over the next few years with the talent they had, so he moved on.

The truth is we should have been competing to win the NC last year and we didn't. That is what stands out to me. Right now we have more NFL players on active rosters from the 2015 NFL Draft than any other college program. That tells me that we had a lot of talent last year and we lost them to the NFL. So it makes sense that we might have a down year this year. It also means that we should have done more last year with that talent.

Good post.

Last year was a huge underachievement. But this year is even more disappointing because AU is sitting dead ass last in the cellar of the SEC West with an abysmal 1-8 record vs SEC opponents.

I disagree. Last year was a much bigger disappointment because that team imploded in an almost embarrassing fashion after the aTm loss. We got our pants pulled down in front of the nation and we were wearing the proverbial dirty drawers.

This year, this team hasn't quit. The record is worse, to be sure, and some of the coaching decisions have been mind-boggling, but this team is improving every week (albeit in fits and starts).

It seems worse this year because of the expectations at the beginning. The problem now is that half of the fan base is still working off those obviously flawed (in hindsight) expectations and using that as a measuring stick to grade the team. If nothing else, the near-loss vs Jax St should have shattered that.

This is an ironic situation where sunshine pumping and realism get to come together. It's time to recalibrate the expectations for the year - we are not, and were not, NC contenders, so what we get to do now is compare the team against itself each week to watch the progress as the team gets better and the young players grow into their positions. It's not nearly so fun to watch as an undefeated season, but it also doesn't have to be doom and gloom and skies of fire. Sit back and try to enjoy something. Have a beer and cheer on the Orange and Blue.

[cole256 17,042]

Isn't this the same thread as the open letter thing that was locked?

[tiger88 934]

Well put Red! Not combative like some of the other threads of this nature have been. Just heart felt and well stated. War Eagle!