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Things I Think I Saw: Auburn vs Alabama....


JMR

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22 hours ago, CleCoTiger said:

I don't spend hardly any time watching bammer during the season. Now having watched them, $aban's NFL style recruiting, as in "go after the model in terms of height and weight", was apparent. There are some big young men on that team all over the place, and very few "tweeners" or "mighty mites" at least so far as I could see.

 

That's part of management style - he has a specific physical makeup that he wants, he recruits to that specific design/plan and then he hires an experienced, high quality staff of former college & NFL coaches some of which have HC in their resume to carry out and implement his wishes .  He then lays out a detailed plan for his staff of what he wants his team to look like on offense and defense.  Then those position coaches/coordinators/GA's go to work building a team that fits his set of plans.  

For a while, folks made fun of his "Process" but it damn sure works for college football at an elite level.

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8 minutes ago, keesler said:

For a while, folks made fun of his "Process" but it damn sure works for college football at an elite level.

I don't think anyone made fun of the "process" as we all knew it would work.  We just bemoan it because it's heartless, sometimes underhanded/potentially cheating, and tends to leave a bunch of 18-22 year olds in it's wake.

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5 hours ago, lionheartkc said:

That's a VERY hard kick to master.  Also, when it's done right, you can do it without blocking before it gets 10 yards.

True.  Cody mastered it pretty well minus a premature touch at 9.5 yards.  Lol. 

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7 hours ago, keesler said:

That's part of management style - he has a specific physical makeup that he wants, he recruits to that specific design/plan and then he hires an experienced, high quality staff of former college & NFL coaches some of which have HC in their resume to carry out and implement his wishes .  He then lays out a detailed plan for his staff of what he wants his team to look like on offense and defense.  Then those position coaches/coordinators/GA's go to work building a team that fits his set of plans.  

For a while, folks made fun of his "Process" but it damn sure works for college football at an elite level.

Oh yeah, I'm aware of $aban's management style and his modeling of position players in terms of height, weight, speed and so on.  I'm not aware of anyone making fun of his process though so much as I am aware of the way he uses his "process" to jettison players not that much differently from the way an NFL team makes cuts.  I hate to see college football go down that road, but that seems to be the road that we're on.

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On ‎11‎/‎27‎/‎2016 at 3:18 PM, JMR said:
Things I Think I Saw: Auburn vs Alabama….

I watched the game once, and took pleasure in deleting the recording immediately after the final play. Unlike a lot of Auburn fans, I was not angry at any point during the game, although I was certainly disappointed a number of times. Here are some of the things I think I saw….
 
  • The rotating quarterback plan to begin the game was a disappointment, bringing back unpleasant memories of this year’s Clemson game, and indicating, at least to me, that we didn’t feel we had a QB available that we could win the game with. I did feel going into the game that we would pretty much have to play both Jeremy Johnson and John Franklin III, but I didn’t envision a change after each play, nor did I anticipate using Chandler Cox in the Wildcat role.
  • I am no expert on secondary play. Never played DB or coached DBs in my life. But for a few games now, beginning (I think) with Vandy, I’ve watched teams manipulate our safeties in the passing game. I’m not knowledgeable enough to know what the problem is, but there appears to be one; hopefully that will be addressed and corrected before our bowl game, and certainly before next season. Alabama seemed to create openings in our coverage early in the game with ease.
  • From an Auburn standpoint, it doesn’t matter now, but I don’t believe Jeremy Johnson’s passing problems are correctable. As a college senior, he is still staring down his intended target, and is almost always late throwing the ball. In the first half, JJ was 3-of-9 for 7 yards.
  • One new (to me) technique I’ve noticed, opponents’ wide receivers using on the wide receiver screens is the grabbing of the front of a defender’s shoulder pads. Georgia did it over and over, and I saw Alabama’s Dietrich do it at least twice in this game. Very effective, and difficult for officials to see.
  • Kamryn Pettway was somewhere south of 100% for the game. I appreciate that he did what he could, but in his physical state, it was not nearly enough.
  • The Auburn offensive line lost both the battle and the war. Alabama has what is arguably the most talented defensive line in the country, and Auburn’s offensive linemen almost never won even an individual battle. This may have been the worst game I’ve seen Braden Smith play. He could not handle Jonathan Allen or Tim Williams, or even Calvin Tomlinson. I believe Smith can be as good as he wants to be, but this was not his day. I singled out Smith because I believe he is the best OL we have; none of the others were effective either, IMO, especially in the run game. Pass protection was hardly “good”, but was not all that bad, given the quality of the opponent.
  • I got the impression from the exchange between Lashlee and Malzahn on the sideline after one JFIII series that JF was truly reading the read option play. If so, I thought he missed a couple of reads where he should have kept the ball. Alabama was running a scrape exchange on the outside, with the DE coming down for the dive back, and the LB scraping outside for the QB. I was hoping JF’s speed would allow him to beat the LB and possibly break a play. Apparently, Malzahn thought the same thing, while Lashlee and Herb Hand (the reason Lashlee pointed up…to the press box) felt the correct read was made. May not matter, as I’m not sure the LB would not have made the play anyway.
  • Jeff Holland is listed at 250 lbs. on the Auburn roster, but he was manhandled like a 190-pounder by Alabama’s Cam Robinson.
  • I’ve marveled all season in this column at the play of Marlon Davidson, but like Braden Smith and the offensive line, this was not his day. Marlon lost the edge multiple times, misjudged pursuit angles, and was just generally ineffective. I even saw him lined up in a 9 technique (outside shoulder of the tight end) and he got hooked by the offensive tackle. Nearly impossible to do. The read of the offensive tackle’s down block (and shuffle down inside) has resulted in Auburn losing the edge all season long, and that continued in this game. I have to assume that the LB on that side is supposed to be scraping outside in that situation, but I have yet to see that happen. Numerous times in this game I saw Davidson and Lawson both shuffle inside and lose the edge without being touched by a blocker. Something’s not right with that scenario, and that goes back all the way to last season.
  • The play of young Daniel Thomas was impressive after he replaced Rudy Ford, who left with an injury. Thomas wasn’t perfect, of course, but he made plays when afforded the opportunity. Had to be gratifying for a youngster with little experience to play so well in such a big game.
  • Once again, Tray Matthews was a huge factor in Auburn’s run defense.
  • Javaris Davis, the redshirt freshman corner, made a half-dozen key tackles in the open field. His one-on-one tackles tackles in the open field were huge in the game, and made me think of Carlos Rodgers in 2004.
  • I felt like Lane Kiffin’s play calling helped Auburn’s defense to a degree in the first half. Running 44 plays in the first half, Alabama threw the ball 26 times. On 20 first down plays, they threw 12 times and ran 8 times. After the first flurry to begin the game, their passing game was a little out of synch, and I felt like that helped the AU defense get settled in.
  • Once again, Auburn was called at least a couple of times for a defensive lineman lining up offsides. Recently, Carl Lawson and Jeff Holland have had a couple of those, and this week it was Holland and Derrick Brown.
  • Another youngster who’s played surprisingly well all season but had a difficult day this week was Darrell Williams. DW ducked his head and whiffed a tackle in the hole on a play that became a 20-yard gain at a key point in the third quarter.
  • DeShaun Davis also missed a couple of tackles that would have been big plays, although he made several outstanding plays through the game. One of those was his recognition of a bama shovel pass to O.J. Howard, after they’d run it successfully earlier in the game.
  • I may be just choosing to believe it, but I think some of the missed tackles, poor pursuit angles, etc. were the result of fatigue on the part of the Auburn defense. When you’re playing all out every play, against an excellent opponent, you expend a lot of energy and fatigue is magnified. I think that happened beginning about midway through the third quarter. I also think it’s important that nobody quit, despite the fatigue. Even when it became obvious the Auburn offense was not going to be able to keep up with Alabama’s scores, everyone continued to give all they had. I think the fatigue factor was summed up in one play, when Alabama’s Bo Scarborough ran over DeShaun Davis on a third and 9 when Alabama was coming off their own goal line. A less-spent Davis makes that tackle, Alabama punts, and Auburn has one more possession to try to put points on the board.
  • A friend called me during the game to rant a little about using Chandler Cox in the Wildcat on a fourth and three. Thinking about it, it was meant to be somewhat of a trick play, with Cox throwing the ball deep on a two-receiver pattern. Unfortunately, Alabama was not fooled, and Cox was under a fair amount of pressure, and the play didn’t work. I think we all need to keep in mind, Auburn was playing basically without a quarterback, and desperate times sometimes bring out desperate behavior.

I think there are things for Auburn fans to be upset/disappointed about relative to their football program, but I honestly think this one game is at most a small piece of that. The recruiting and development of quarterbacks has brought about a difficult situation, and now that Auburn has a quality defense, the offense is a glaring weakness.

I don’t know what happens from here. Rumors are rampant, including Rhett Lashlee going to Georgia State as their head coach, and Kendall Briles replacing him at AU. No idea what’s true, what’s false, and what is just a malicious rumor started by someone seeking attention.

In any case, I do believe our head coach is approaching a critical crossroads next season. Critical for both himself and for the program. Gus Malzahn is such an introverted man, I don’t think any of us truly know what might be in his head. Will he bring in key people to help address the issues that surfaced in 2016 and late 2015? Or will he stick to his guns and continue to do what he’s always done? I don’t think any of us knows, and I’m not sure he knows at this point himself. But over the next couple of months, the answers will begin to materialize for all of us.

In the meantime, Auburn awaits its bowl destination. Most think we are likely headed to the Sugar Bowl to play the winner of the Oklahoma-Oklahoma State game. I hope that’s the case, but we’ll have to wait for everything to play out before knowing for sure. Regardless of the destination, we’ll get an additional 15 practices per NCAA protocol. Maybe between now and a bowl game, some of our wounded will heal, and we’ll be closer to full strength. More importantly, the staff will have a chance to work with some of the younger players who will be starters or at least in the rotation next season. There are several of those who have potentially excellent futures, and it’ll be fun to see those guys develop.

This will be the last of the “Things I Think I Saw” columns for this season, obviously. I sincerely hope reading them has been worth your time.

WAR EAGLE!!

You have been super with breaking down the plays for each game. I hope that you will do an assessment of the upcoming bowl game. A win for the bowl game will be a great way to start off the  next season!

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On 11/30/2016 at 1:57 PM, keesler said:

That's part of management style - he has a specific physical makeup that he wants, he recruits to that specific design/plan and then he hires an experienced, high quality staff of former college & NFL coaches some of which have HC in their resume to carry out and implement his wishes .  He then lays out a detailed plan for his staff of what he wants his team to look like on offense and defense.  Then those position coaches/coordinators/GA's go to work building a team that fits his set of plans.  

For a while, folks made fun of his "Process" but it damn sure works for college football at an elite level.

You are correct, and as long as they are permitted to lie, cheat and steal to get every five-star recruit in the country, his process will continue to work.

There are a lot of other "processes" and football philosophies that would work, with the recruits he continually lands.

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9 hours ago, AU-24 said:

You are correct, and as long as they are permitted to lie, cheat and steal to get every five-star recruit in the country, his process will continue to work.

There are a lot of other "processes" and football philosophies that would work, with the recruits he continually lands.

If you think they're the only school in the SEC or country that cheats you're sadly mistaken. 

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In this day and age of college football, every team that gets a 5* has/had to lie, steal, and cheat to sign 'em. Just the world we live in.

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26 minutes ago, keesler said:

In this day and age of college football, every team that gets a 5* has/had to lie, steal, and cheat to sign 'em. Just the world we live in.

Saban does it, but those boys don't just get there and know how to play for Saban. They earn their way onto the field. 

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