Auburn's Outgoing Transfers

[DAG 33,979]

1 minute ago, abw0004 said:

up. Don’t show up. Where is your culture? Is it still solid or has it gone backwards? The culture piece is about expectations and behaviors. … To do that day-in and and day-out is the consistency piece. Are you disciplined enough to do that? Are you tough enough to do that? Do you believe in what we’re doing?”

Love it. Thanks for adding context 

[gravejd 3,270]

9 minutes ago, abw0004 said:

I guess where I am confused is it seems from the outside looking in that the majority of the players entering the portal are from the defensive side of the ball.  Before the transfers, if I was forced to make a guess I would have guessed it would be the offensive side of the ball where the transfers would happen due to the more complex offense.  To me, the defensive players would easily be able to adjust to Mason’s system due to their discipline from Steele.  Could maybe a defensive mind on here help clarify for me?  Genuinely asking so I can better understand and be better educated. 

Well we did change defensive schemes more than we changed offensive schemes. Yes the offensive is going to be different but it is more tweaks on lineups and passing schemes and such. But we are still running a spread offense just like Malzahn liked to run. On defense its a whole new ballgame. I was curious to see how much we went 3-4 and if A-day was an accurate picture we have went totally to 3-4. And where are we seeing most of people leave?? from the DL 

[bigbird 60,509]

26 minutes ago, abw0004 said:

I guess where I am confused is it seems from the outside looking in that the majority of the players entering the portal are from the defensive side of the ball.  Before the transfers, if I was forced to make a guess I would have guessed it would be the offensive side of the ball where the transfers would happen due to the more complex offense.  To me, the defensive players would easily be able to adjust to Mason’s system due to their discipline from Steele.  Could maybe a defensive mind on here help clarify for me?  Genuinely asking so I can better understand and be better educated. 

I think the offensive players were excited about the opportunities of playing in a real offense. Every position, no matter the player type was going to be used. Defensively, fit is more important.  There's a difference between 3-4, 4-3, or 4-2-5 personnel, both in size/shape as well as skill sets. Simply put, in a 3-4, DL are wider, LB are thicker, and corners are longer.  The departures may be scheme or cultural, but either way, they don't necessarily fit.

[DAG 33,979]

23 minutes ago, bigbird said:

I think the offensive players were excited about the opportunities of playing in a real offense. Every position, no matter the player type was going to be used. Defensively, fit is more important.  There's a difference between 3-4, 4-3, or 4-2-5 personnel, both in size/shape as well as skill sets. Simply put, in a 3-4, DL are wider, LB are thicker, and corners are longer.  The departures may be scheme or cultural, but either way, they don't necessarily fit.

I think we are doing a lot of over thinking. Ultimately, it is summed up well in your last sentence BB. I am so ready to get this season started. 

[Gowebb11 9,314]

23 hours ago, BigBlueWDE said:

Transfer portal needs a revisit. No way you can lose 15-20 transfer players annually (in addition to the graduating class and early exits to the draft) and expect to fill out a team of 85 w/ only the +25 allotment. 

We are going to look like an expansion team this year. 50% of the roster is turning over.

https://auburn.rivals.com/news/tracking-the-transfers-1

[AUApostle 7,651]

All hell's breaking loose and Harsin's just out there playing golf with celebrities.

[gr82be 14,423]

10 minutes ago, Gowebb11 said:

https://auburn.rivals.com/news/tracking-the-transfers-1

Well, Mikey's not alone...

 

The Skinny: Bell played in one game as a redshirt freshman last season and wasn’t in line for significant playing time this fall. With no additional attrition, Auburn will head into fall camp with 16 offensive linemen, which is more than enough. The run blocking is certainly ahead of the pass protection in this group but there’s plenty of competition and potential to get better within a new offense and new offensive line coach.

 

 

 

[Dual-Threat Rigby 8,662]

2 hours ago, McLoofus said:

Think about why those were really so memorable, though. 

He gets credit for beating some really good bama teams and one good uga team- remember,  we were ranked 7th in 2013 and uga was ranked 25th, and we still needed extraordinary luck on a terrible pass to beat them at home- but the fact that we were such big underdogs in most of them isn't really an endorsement of his tenure. 

2013 bama, 2017 bama and uga, and 2019 bama were very good wins. I'll give him that. But after 8 years of a schedule that provided opportunity for 4-5 really good wins a year, we didn't get so many. 

Gus was better than Chizik, for sure. And a better overall program runner than Tot, maybe. Definitely not as good of a play caller. He wasn't as good of a coach as Tubs or Dye. Also, keep in mind that his 2010 national title was with Tubs's OLs and his 2013 appearance was with Chizik's. And he never even sniffed another year like 2013. No, 2017 wasn't particularly close just because of those wins in November. 

Oh, and Tot would be remembered much, much differently if those '93 games had been on TV. Plus he had '94 LSU and UF. That was like a '13 and '17 in back to back seasons. 

Eh, if your go to examples are arguably two of Auburn’s best HCs and one that one the only concrete natty we have, I think he did fine. He’s not the best Auburn coach ever, but he’s far better than most. 

 

[Win4AU 4,052]

JLee mentioned another Harsin comment on yesterday’s podcast.  Harsin said he was shocked by the number of guys who couldn’t finish sprint drills when he got here.  For a “fast and physical” offense you’d think conditioning wouldn’t have been an issue.  I mentioned this before but this reeks of 2007 Bama.  

[McLoofus 35,182]

21 minutes ago, Dual-Threat Rigby said:

Eh, if your go to examples are arguably two of Auburn’s best HCs and one that one the only concrete natty we have, I think he did fine. He’s not the best Auburn coach ever, but he’s far better than most. 

Ah. Well, if we're talking about every Auburn coach ever, he's 10th out of 27 in win percentage. We'll say 9th out of 26, though, since the guy at the top only coached one game.

It only gets worse as you make the parameters more meaningful, though. Out of coaches who have coached at least 30 games, he's 7th out of 15. 

Of coaches who coached 100 games, he's 6th out of 7. Ouch. 

I suppose you can call that "fine"- I wouldn't- but it's certainly not "better than 80%". Even with a few warm fuzzies, most of which were defined by people having a very low opinion of Gus Malzahn's team relative to the opponent. 

I'll be more excited when we beat bama in JHS and fans *don't* storm the field. 

 

 

[keesler 5,924]

56 minutes ago, Win4AU said:

JLee mentioned another Harsin comment on yesterday’s podcast.  Harsin said he was shocked by the number of guys who couldn’t finish sprint drills when he got here.  For a “fast and physical” offense you’d think conditioning wouldn’t have been an issue.  I mentioned this before but this reeks of 2007 Bama.  

Harsin got here at the end of the season. How the hell was conditioning an issue at the end to the year when players had already played 10 games and were going through bowl game practice/prep? 

Every year we'd see videos of the gym rats and power lifters on this board. Many folks bragged about the hype video's, now the new HC basically says they were slow and weak?  

[bigbird 60,509]

14 hours ago, keesler said:

Harsin got here at the end of the season. How the hell was conditioning an issue at the end to the year when players had already played 10 games and were going through bowl game practice/prep? 

Every year we'd see videos of the gym rats and power lifters on this board. Many folks bragged about the hype video's, now the new HC basically says they were slow and weak?  

People often have different definitions of things. I'm glad our new guy wants our toughness to be better

[Dual-Threat Rigby 8,662]

33 minutes ago, McLoofus said:

Ah. Well, if we're talking about every Auburn coach ever, he's 10th out of 27 in win percentage. We'll say 9th out of 26, though, since the guy at the top only coached one game.

It only gets worse as you make the parameters more meaningful, though. Out of coaches who have coached at least 30 games, he's 7th out of 15. 

Of coaches who coached 100 games, he's 6th out of 7. Ouch. 

I suppose you can call that "fine"- I wouldn't- but it's certainly not "better than 80%". Even with a few warm fuzzies, most of which were defined by people having a very low opinion of Gus Malzahn's team relative to the opponent. 

I'll be more excited when we beat bama in JHS and fans *don't* storm the field. 

 

 

I'm not really looking at percentages tbh. For my tastes, the majority of CFB history (I also hold this view on the NBA) isn't really relevant. Coach Jimbob from the 50s killed it when there was 1/4th of the total teams and you had 0 black athletes (not mentioning this to "bring up race" btw). Just not a particularly relevant comparison. I think there's less than 15 coaches before the 70s that would even survive in this era, and idk if Auburn has one of them. 

Regardless of losing winnable games and not recruiting well in certain positions, Gus still has by far the hardest job any Auburn coach has had, even when we had to politic just to play Bama at home. There's no other coach that could just walk outside their office, point in any cardinal direction and say "yep there's a team that recruits at a top 10 level". Not to mention the in-state resources that the secondary programs seem to be ever-accruing. We can be mad about the lows, but outside of Dye, Jordan (im iffy in counting this but the guy did have multiple nattys depending on how you view things) and Tuberville, who has the same quantity of highs? Tuberville likely also gets smoked as much as Gus did in that series, if not more, with the caliber of Alabama teams he was beating by only one score. 

There's also such a massively small chance in your life time or mine where that ever occurs, the entire sport has too much money centered around Alabama for them to be allowed to have a near-decade where they hire straight bums. It'd be just as insane to me if Auburn could be at a consistent point to where fans would feel like they aren't upsetting Alabama. 

[Dual-Threat Rigby 8,662]

36 minutes ago, keesler said:

Harsin got here at the end of the season. How the hell was conditioning an issue at the end to the year when players had already played 10 games and were going through bowl game practice/prep? 

Every year we'd see videos of the gym rats and power lifters on this board. Many folks bragged about the hype video's, now the new HC basically says they were slow and weak?  

I think it might be some hyperbole involved somewhere with these reports, but if you look at our games, it's not like we didn't usually look out-conditioned in most of the big ones. You can argue that's due to our offense usually coming in and out like a revolving door, but I haven't thought of our boys as being physically top tier in a while 

[japantiger 4,051]

That list is an entire recruiting class.  Who needs depth....Harsin has a tough job in front of him.  Anything better than 6-6 this year looks like a successful year to me.

[Maverick.AU 13,279]

8 hours ago, bigbird said:

I think the offensive players were excited about the opportunities of playing in a real offense. Every position, no matter the player type was going to be used. Defensively, fit is more important.  There's a difference between 3-4, 4-3, or 4-2-5 personnel, both in size/shape as well as skill sets. Simply put, in a 3-4, DL are wider, LB are thicker, and corners are longer.  The departures may be scheme or cultural, but either way, they don't necessarily fit.

Teams spend so much time in nickel/dime these days it’s hard to gauge “scheme fit”, as far as “tradition” goes

[Mikey 16,578]

On 5/4/2021 at 10:28 AM, keesler said:

So just curious, what number of departures are in the "we're fine category" and what number gets to the "worried/concerned" category? 

We are in the "Coaching change so we are going to take a number of hits" category.  It's not great but it's part of the price teams normally pay for a coaching change.

[McLoofus 35,182]

16 hours ago, Dual-Threat Rigby said:

I'm not really looking at percentages tbh. For my tastes, the majority of CFB history (I also hold this view on the NBA) isn't really relevant. Coach Jimbob from the 50s killed it when there was 1/4th of the total teams and you had 0 black athletes (not mentioning this to "bring up race" btw). Just not a particularly relevant comparison. I think there's less than 15 coaches before the 70s that would even survive in this era, and idk if Auburn has one of them. 

Regardless of losing winnable games and not recruiting well in certain positions, Gus still has by far the hardest job any Auburn coach has had, even when we had to politic just to play Bama at home. There's no other coach that could just walk outside their office, point in any cardinal direction and say "yep there's a team that recruits at a top 10 level". Not to mention the in-state resources that the secondary programs seem to be ever-accruing. We can be mad about the lows, but outside of Dye, Jordan (im iffy in counting this but the guy did have multiple nattys depending on how you view things) and Tuberville, who has the same quantity of highs? Tuberville likely also gets smoked as much as Gus did in that series, if not more, with the caliber of Alabama teams he was beating by only one score. 

There's also such a massively small chance in your life time or mine where that ever occurs, the entire sport has too much money centered around Alabama for them to be allowed to have a near-decade where they hire straight bums. It'd be just as insane to me if Auburn could be at a consistent point to where fans would feel like they aren't upsetting Alabama. 

Okay. I was just responding to the 80% comment, and had initially only listed recent coaches. 

"Quantity of highs"- who else had as many opportunities? That's the flip side of the "hardest job" thing. He was put on the big stage time after time after time. And he usually failed to meet the moment. Sometimes in historically embarrassing fashion.

And you can't just disregard his failures that had nothing to do with our rivals being good. Or at least I can't disregard them. And that includes most of his failures. He mostly failed because he doesn't actually know how to be a big time head coach. He's got some innate skills that serve him well, but just look at his resume and it's crystal clear that there's no reason he should know how to successfully run a football program. 1 year under Houston Nutt, 2 years under Todd Graham, 3 years under Gene Chizik, 1 year as HC at Arkansas State. It is quite honestly insane that we hired the guy. To his credit, it's even more insane that he ended up having 2 good seasons out of his 8 at Auburn...

...but it's also almost ironclad proof that Auburn is a school where literally anyone can win big and where a real coach should be able to win big more consistently than Auburn coaches usually do. 

[MCPeePants 227]

 

[casatiger 513]

Good luck to all of these guys in the portal.  I truly hope they find a good fit.   

[bigbird 60,509]

1 hour ago, MCPeePants said:

 

Another spot opens up...

[Dual-Threat Rigby 8,662]

3 hours ago, McLoofus said:

but it's also almost ironclad proof that Auburn is a school where literally anyone can win big and where a real coach should be able to win big more consistently than Auburn coaches usually do. 

I hear people say that, but I don’t think it’s based on anything except Auburn fans desire to not be where we are at, which is probably fourth-fifth right now in conference? I think with history plus recent success, unbiased parties have Bama, UF, LSU and UGA higher.
 

If Auburn has consistently attracted these smaller, zany hires, and is typically marked by a coach having one or two near-big seasons, then a varying range of meh...that might just be Auburn. Dye got close, had a couple bad luck situations occur during his best seasons, same for Tubs and same for Gus. I would be lead to believe THAT is Auburn and not some century long sleeping giant that just keeps hiring poorly 

Edited May 6, 2021 by Dual-Threat Rigby

[Howard Roark 195]

20 minutes ago, Dual-Threat Rigby said:

I hear people say that, but I don’t think it’s based on anything except Auburn fans desire to not be where we are at, which is probably fourth-fifth right now in conference? I think with history plus recent success, unbiased parties have Bama, UF, LSU and UGA higher.
 

If Auburn has consistently attracted these smaller, zany hires, and is typically marked by a coach having one or two near-big seasons, then a varying range of meh...that might just be Auburn. Dye got close, had a couple bad luck situations occur during his best seasons, same for Tubs and same for Gus. I would be lead to believe THAT is Auburn and not some century long sleeping giant that just keeps hiring poorly 

Most people who have access to the inner workings of Auburn athletics, believe our main problem is politics.  You need a leader who can manage the politics while still standing up and making hard decisions.  Maybe the Harsin hire is a sign this is changing.  Time will tell.  Auburn does have some natural hills to climb our rivals do not.  spuat, UGA, LSU, and UF all are the state university in a state loaded with talent (spuat not exactly, but they get to cheat).  Auburn can recruit against these schools, but we start the race behind or rivals.  We need a united Ath Dept and fanbase to compete consistently. I am optimistic about where we are, we will see soon if it is well founded.  I plan to be patient for 3 years to give Harsin a chance to build his program.    

[McLoofus 35,182]

17 minutes ago, Dual-Threat Rigby said:

I think with history plus recent success, unbiased parties have Bama, UF, LSU and UGA higher.

Neither UF nor LSU were higher until they hired Spurrier and saban. And uga has always been dead even until the last 10 years. But yes, all 4 are currently above us. Having a mediocre coach for 8 years has quite a bit to do with that.

20 minutes ago, Dual-Threat Rigby said:

If Auburn has consistently attracted these smaller, zany hires, and is typically marked by a coach having one or two near-big seasons, then a varying range of meh...that might just be Auburn.

Well, it would be if we'd made another one of those hires. But we didn't. Harsin might not be successful here, but on paper he is in a completely different class than our previous hires. That's the whole point. 

22 minutes ago, Dual-Threat Rigby said:

same for Gus

2015 was the only year that Gus experienced bad luck. The rest of his time here and in fact his entire college career is defined by extraordinarily good luck. Those games in November 2017 were the exception, not the rule. Tubs and Dye ran far more consistent programs and their win percentages were bolstered by what *they* built, not what they did in their first year. 

 

[McLoofus 35,182]

Just now, Howard Roark said:

Maybe the Harsin hire is a sign this is changing. 

100%. And it's also directly resultant from another major change, which was the hiring of ADAG. 

Combine that with Bruce Pearl- who was admittedly more lucky timing than brave new world- and I just don't understand the dogged adherence to JABA doctrine.