Coach Ryan Russell

[Tiger 8,818]

1 hour ago, aubaseball said:

I just don’t get all the love for CKS.    If everyone would apply the same logic that they apply to Gus and apply it to Steele,  then the answer is he has coached just as bad as Gus.   If you take talent at each level of the team and compare(example dline vs oline) the defense wins out on who has the most talent on the team.    So why are we giving the pass to Steele???   I will go out on the limb and say that the defense has been the reason for the 3 losses and the play of the quarterback.     Auburn’s defense took two of the worst quarterbacks in the conference and turned them into players of the week.   They even made Burrow look decent plus the officials.    

 

I'd say that if your defense gives up 16, 9, 22, 3, 13, 23, 30, 16 points in each game I'd say with an average offense you should be sitting at 7-1 worst case. The O has never been asked to even hit 30 points (which isn't anything special in the modern era of college football) other than the UT debacle.

The defense is putting us in a position to win the games. I could not disagree more that they are the reason we have lost any game. I don't care if we give up 700 yards to each team if we are holding teams into the low 20s or less we should win the game every single time with our offensive genius head coach.

The defense is far from perfect but unfortunately for us the offense is worse than the defense is good.

 

[oracle79 3,569]

21 hours ago, theallseeingfan said:

on field results has way more to do with bad schemes & talent/recruiting deficiencies at certain positions

Zero argument with that.

[Texan4Auburn 1,626]

20 hours ago, PoetTiger said:

Exactly..blaming S&C now? I mean Auburn’s best running back was a 2 star throw in on signing day. Malik bless is heart does not have the speed to be effective outside of two yards. 2 Freshman and a undefined scat back. Auburn has missed big in the RB recruiting dept, less Kerryon. Maybe Horton needs to grind a little harder on the recruiting trail. The line IMO is just soft, they don’t have that mean streak like Braden and Austin had last year. They just gotta grow up as a functional unit. But in the mean time it’s the coaching staffs responsibility to find out what they can do well consistently and build on it each game. 

My comments about S&C had to due with Hand and Texas. Hand isn't the single reason that line has improved like it has. The S&C program at Texas is being given alot of credit for it also.

[jAUSon 2,836]

3 hours ago, aubaseball said:

I just don’t get all the love for CKS.    If everyone would apply the same logic that they apply to Gus and apply it to Steele,  then the answer is he has coached just as bad as Gus.   If you take talent at each level of the team and compare(example dline vs oline) the defense wins out on who has the most talent on the team.    So why are we giving the pass to Steele???   I will go out on the limb and say that the defense has been the reason for the 3 losses and the play of the quarterback.     Auburn’s defense took two of the worst quarterbacks in the conference and turned them into players of the week.   They even made Burrow look decent plus the officials.    

Nope.

[aubaseball 2,590]

4 hours ago, Tiger said:

 

I'd say that if your defense gives up 16, 9, 22, 3, 13, 23, 30, 16 points in each game I'd say with an average offense you should be sitting at 7-1 worst case. The O has never been asked to even hit 30 points (which isn't anything special in the modern era of college football) other than the UT debacle.

The defense is putting us in a position to win the games. I could not disagree more that they are the reason we have lost any game. I don't care if we give up 700 yards to each team if we are holding teams into the low 20s or less we should win the game every single time with our offensive genius head coach.

The defense is far from perfect but unfortunately for us the offense is worse than the defense is good.

 

The problem with this thinking is that auburn has not played anyone except Washington that has a decent offense.    Everyone knows that the offense is terrible this year, yet in all the games   (Not sure of score in MSU game) auburn has been leading at halftime.   Why hasn’t the defense held on to the lead?  Don’t say it’s because they are on the field all the time, because they can stop the other team and get off the field.    With as bad as the offense has played (and I’m saying it’s bad) I’m just not willing to say that CKS is the free from blame with how the season has gone.    This is a season of unfortunate bounces, bad oline play, bad qb play, poor evaluation of talent and no adjustments to scheme.    The fault lays at the feet of the head coach, but I’m not going to give any coach a pass.   

[Tiger 8,818]

5 hours ago, aubaseball said:

The problem with this thinking is that auburn has not played anyone except Washington that has a decent offense.    Everyone knows that the offense is terrible this year, yet in all the games   (Not sure of score in MSU game) auburn has been leading at halftime.   Why hasn’t the defense held on to the lead?  Don’t say it’s because they are on the field all the time, because they can stop the other team and get off the field.    With as bad as the offense has played (and I’m saying it’s bad) I’m just not willing to say that CKS is the free from blame with how the season has gone.    This is a season of unfortunate bounces, bad oline play, bad qb play, poor evaluation of talent and no adjustments to scheme.    The fault lays at the feet of the head coach, but I’m not going to give any coach a pass.   

Regardless of the competition, our defense has put us in a position to win every single game save for the UT game -- and we shouldn't be a team struggling to ever put up 30 points but that's a different discussion.

We are 12th in the country in points allowed per game. I don't know what else you would want out of our defense. You seem to be looking for perfection which is unattainable, my friend. In fact, we are giving up ~2 points less this season than we did last season when we won the SEC West. Our offensive struggles are magnifying things when the defense makes a mistake because we have such thin margin for error. It just seems like the D let us down because our O is so bad. 

Fact of the matter is our D is in the upper echelon of defenses in the country as it stands right now when it comes to giving up points which is the main objective. Now that would of course change if we give up tons of scores to our remaining opponents but I can't say our D is a weak spot when we are giving up only 2 TDs and a FG on average to our opponents. That should give us way more breathing room for our O to operate than it is due to the offensive struggles.

 

[aubaseball 2,590]

28 minutes ago, Tiger said:

Regardless of the competition, our defense has put us in a position to win every single game save for the UT game -- and we shouldn't be a team struggling to ever put up 30 points but that's a different discussion.

We are 12th in the country in points allowed per game. I don't know what else you would want out of our defense. You seem to be looking for perfection which is unattainable, my friend. In fact, we are giving up ~2 points less this season than we did last season when we won the SEC West. Our offensive struggles are magnifying things when the defense makes a mistake because we have such thin margin for error. It just seems like the D let us down because our O is so bad. 

Fact of the matter is our offense is in the upper echelon of defenses in the country as it stands right now when it comes to giving up points which is the main objective. Now that would of course change if we give up tons of scores to our remaining opponents but I can't say our D is a weak spot when we are giving up only 2 TDs and a FG on average to our opponents. That should give us way more breathing room for our O to operate than it is due to the offensive struggles.

 

Let’s just look at some facts:

current offensive rankings has auburn at 79

washington 44

lsu 84

ark 94

southern miss 46

miss st 69

tenn 109

ole Mississippi 5

so I see a very poor to very average offensive teams so far.   Except ole siss, which was my point.   A great defense could have stopped all these other games, even with a pisspoor offense that AU has this year.  

[Tiger 8,818]

14 minutes ago, aubaseball said:

Let’s just look at some facts:

current offensive rankings has auburn at 79

washington 44

lsu 84

ark 94

southern miss 46

miss st 69

tenn 109

ole Mississippi 5

so I see a very poor to very average offensive teams so far.   Except ole siss, which was my point.   A great defense could have stopped all these other games, even with a pisspoor offense that AU has this year.  

I am not saying we have faced a ton of explosive offenses but we are just going to have to agree to disagree. Holding each team to the low 20s or less (minus UT) is good enough to win the game every single time IMO. I am not saying we are an elite unit (we obviously have holes in the secondary and don't have a bonafide pass rusher to put it all together) but we are playing well enough on that side of the ball to be 7-1. 8-0 if we somehow had the Gus Malzahn that we thought we were hiring.

[AUTigerTime 186]

He's been a part of an AU program that has seen a ton of success over the years. Especially in the trenches. This is one year. A year in which the only glaring hole (strength wise) just so happens to coincide with a new set of players on the OL. And the only players on this team that really don't look/play the part of big beefy guys is....the OL.

You can only put on so much muscle each year. It's not as if you can take a freshman, and put on 50lbs of muscle in 2 years. Our OL are pretty weak. And they're taking poor angles. And they're missing assignments. So on and so on. We only had one returning starter from last year in Harrell, and he was probably the worst of the 5. We're starting over from scratch up front. 3 (redshirt) freshmen have played on the OL this year as well. It's just a worst case scenario that can't be put on Ryan Russell's back right now.

Our recruiting is to blame for much of this (thanks Grimes). And it's finally come to bite us in the butt. We've missed on players we wanted, and the players we've got haven't lived up to expectations. This is mostly due to poor OL recruiting in 2014 and 2016. 2016 was a virtually a complete whiff, where we only signed one guy (Hamm who wound up with cancer). In 2014, we signed Braden Smith and a Juco. That's about it. You can't sign 1-2 OL some years and expect to have the depth to compete in the SEC if some players don't come through.

FYI, in 2018...we once again only signed 1 eff-ing OL, and he was only a 3-star...so it's not as if we're being really selective here!! In 3 of the last 5 years, we signed a TOTAL of 4 OL.

It's unfortunate, but i haven't seen an AU OL this bad in YEARS, and it's a train wreck that's been years in the making. It's not a Ryan Russell issue.

[steeleagle 2,945]

2 hours ago, Tiger said:

I am not saying we have faced a ton of explosive offenses but we are just going to have to agree to disagree. Holding each team to the low 20s or less (minus UT) is good enough to win the game every single time IMO. I am not saying we are an elite unit (we obviously have holes in the secondary and don't have a bonafide pass rusher to put it all together) but we are playing well enough on that side of the ball to be 7-1. 8-0 if we somehow had the Gus Malzahn that we thought we were hiring.

Agree. And remember, in the Tenn game the D would have given up 23, until JS fumbled and Tenn scored giving the 30.

The problem with the D, only at times, was frustrating in 2 games we wanted really bad:

1. LSU held the ball for over 5 mins to win the game on a FG. They converted 2 3rd downs and 1 4th down. The D could not find a way to hold them, in OUR house? that was disappointing.

2. MSU with Fitzgerald running all over us. LSU stuffed the line and dared Fitzgerald to pass. Did we use the same scheme to stop Fitzerald gain almost 200 yds on us. Without his runs, we win.

But other than that, this D has kept the score down enough for a good offense to score enough to win. Add the fact that the D has had to back in after so many 3 and outs on offense.

[PoetTiger 1,896]

18 minutes ago, AUTigerTime said:

He's been a part of an AU program that has seen a ton of success over the years. Especially in the trenches. This is one year. A year in which the only glaring hole (strength wise) just so happens to coincide with a new set of players on the OL. And the only players on this team that really don't look/play the part of big beefy guys is....the OL.

You can only put on so much muscle each year. It's not as if you can take a freshman, and put on 50lbs of muscle in 2 years. Our OL are pretty weak. And they're taking poor angles. And they're missing assignments. So on and so on. We only had one returning starter from last year in Harrell, and he was probably the worst of the 5. We're starting over from scratch up front. 3 (redshirt) freshmen have played on the OL this year as well. It's just a worst case scenario that can't be put on Ryan Russell's back right now.

Our recruiting is to blame for much of this (thanks Grimes). And it's finally come to bite us in the butt. We've missed on players we wanted, and the players we've got haven't lived up to expectations. This is mostly due to poor OL recruiting in 2014 and 2016. 2016 was a virtually a complete whiff. We only signed one guy (Hamm who wound up with cancer). In 2014, we signed Braden Smith and a Juco. That's about it. You can't sign 1-2 OL some years and expect to have the depth to compete in the SEC if some players don't come through. 

It's unfortunate, but i haven't seen an AU OL this bad in YEARS, and it's a train wreck that's been years in the making. It's not a Ryan Russell issue.

Very well said.

[metafour 4,968]

On 10/17/2018 at 11:06 PM, Auburn2Eugene said:

Our players are consistently smaller than our rivals.

What a load of s***.  Name some actual examples.  Our AVERAGE DL weight is like 300 pounds LMFAO.  We run out ~280+ pound ENDS.  Where exactly are we small? And don't list some true freshmen that are straight out of HS.

I've been following this crap for 10+ years.  Every time the team sucks, its supposedly because our players are half the size of everyone else LOL.  Its bull****.