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Huddle with Hars


Randman5000

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3 minutes ago, Mims44 said:

For instance, as a OC Gus absolutely insisted on some dude named Cam Newton to get the overwhelming majority of snaps the ENTIRE season.

Playing favorites for sure.

I hope this was a joke.

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2 hours ago, Didba said:

I hope this was a joke.

Nope, check stats for that year, Cam definitely got an overwhelming majority of snaps. 

 

 

;) 

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9 hours ago, GT2AU said:

Hello AU Family,

I enjoyed listening to both episodes of the HuddleWithHars.  Not to derail this thread, but I'm new here and wanted to introduce myself.  I'm a brand new Auburn fan and I had a question I wanted to ask about the football program.  Since, I can't start a new topic yet I hoped this would be an ok place to ask.  First, here's a super brief summary of my story:  I've been a Georgia Tech fan since I was 14 years.  I became a season-ticket holder on my own at 16 and was a regular season-ticket holder every year until just last season.  When I was in my 20s and unmarried, I went to most games home and away.  I've always been a super fan.  However, over the last 4-5 years the program support has really declined.  Going to games was miserable and nobody around us even cared. I came to the conclusion that the GT program was doomed because there just isn't enough fan support to dig it out of the hole its in.  I made the decision to look for a new team as crazy at that sounds.  I hope GT turns it around but I don't see it happening. I think they are doomed to be just like Vandy and Duke with no fan support.

I love college football a lot and still wanted to keep it in my life so I decided I could enter the fan transfer portal.  Why not, it's a new era.  I've always kind of liked Auburn and felt that Auburn fans were the best in the south.  Plus my son is starting at Auburn as a freshman this fall.  So, here I am a brand new Auburn fan.  Trying to learn more about the program.

Listening to HuddleWithHars and other interviews, I've heard a lot of comments about needing to the change the culture.  Obviously, all new coaches come in talking about changing the culture, but often a change is needed.  My question is what was the culture under Malzahn and what changes needed to be made?  As an outsider, it always looked like Auburn played hard under Gus and liked playing for him.  What were the issues, what were the culture things that AU thought Harsin could improve?

Welcome man. Glad to have you, and congrats to your son. Others have made good points, but to add a bit more. If you go watch our 2013 offense, that is who Gus really was. At his heart, Gus is a system guy, not a student of football, if that makes sense. Big nasty OL, athletic QB, and receivers that could stretch the field. After people figured his system out, he panicked and tried to completely change who he was without knowing how to do so, because, remember, he is a system guy, not a student of football. He went with pro-style QB's, smaller OL, and a gimmicky offense that was horrific to watch and had zero identity.

However, his players rarely got in off field trouble, and in his first few years, he'd kick guys off, including star players. But as his offense changed from his system to jumbled gimmicky bs, the program seemed to lose its fire and the culture eroded. Things really imploded in 2020. People say you can't speculate, so I won't. Instead I'll list concrete examples that we could see with our own eyes. Teammates having to be held back from each other, QB unloading on the OC as the camera was on them, and most damningly, players dancing on the sidelines during the bowl game where Steele was the interim, as Northwestern was kicking our butts. At least to me, that showed me we needed a major change, and that was before I even really knew anything on Harsin or his plan to go scorched earth on them.

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53 minutes ago, oracle79 said:

Didn't his backup just get drafted in the NFL?😏

Freeze is the one that made that possible. Malzahn could not develop a QB to save his life. 

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Two comments...

I just listened to the Schmedding podcast.   I think this is for high school coaches and fans.   Think about the nuggets and stories to endear themselves to HS coaches - this will help Harsin and his staff to  build relationships there.   And fans eat up any content that is shared.  I doubt recruits will have the patience to listen, but if he interviews some guys like Caddy or Reed, yeah, recruits will listen.  Or a recruit could go find their future position group coach and give it a listen...

As for the management of the QB room during the last decade - not one QB got better from season to season.  M Willis is the only QB to leave and get better, so part of the problem was with the development and some of it was probably the talent.  I think Stidham had a lot of upside that was never realized, but you know the NE Patriots didn't want to invest any more time in him either.  Actually, the Patriots had to give him and 7th round pick for the Raiders' 6th round pick ( I think).  So it's like they were almost paying the Raiders to take him....And there wasn't much of an OL room for Harsin to inherit. 

Last comment about Gustav - 2013 and 2017 were incredible years to watch and I would argue that 2017 ended prematurely b/c of poor roster management (RB room) as well.  But Gus didn't let a lot of players get into the papers doing crazy stuff and he represented Auburn very well.   He was goofy and frustrating, but we were likely one play away from a Natty in 2013.   

 

 

 

 

 

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On 6/6/2022 at 12:43 PM, GT2AU said:

 I've been a Georgia Tech fan since I was 14 years.  I became a season-ticket holder on my own at 16 and was a regular season-ticket holder every year until just last season.  When I was in my 20s and unmarried, I went to most games home and away.  I've always been a super fan.  However, over the last 4-5 years the program support has really declined.  Going to games was miserable and nobody around us even cared. I came to the conclusion that the GT program was doomed because there just isn't enough fan support to dig it out of the hole its in.  I made the decision to look for a new team as crazy at that sounds.  I hope GT turns it around but I don't see it happening. I think they are doomed to be just like Vandy and Duke with no fan support.

I am well known around here for my hatred all things g tech so congrat's on seeing the light of that god awful bobby dodd history program. I would advise not to bring up up that crappy school again may they flush down the toilet of hell soon.

Welcome to the AUF........

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31 minutes ago, augolf1716 said:

I am well known around here for my hatred all things g tech so congrat's on seeing the light of that god awful bobby dodd history program. I would advise not to bring up up that crappy school again may they flush down the toilet of hell soon.

Welcome to the AUF........

Now *this* is how a mod should roll out the red carpet for new people. Well done….

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13 hours ago, fredst said:

Now *this* is how a mod should roll out the red carpet for new people. Well done….

Thanks why I'm paid the big bucks$$.....by the way how many Mods do you see on the blog?

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14 hours ago, augolf1716 said:

I am well known around here for my hatred all things g tech so congrat's on seeing the light of that god awful bobby dodd history program. I would advise not to bring up up that crappy school again may they flush down the toilet of hell soon.

Welcome to the AUF........

Wish the younger guys could experience how much fun it was to grow up hating Tech.

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15 hours ago, augolf1716 said:

I am well known around here for my hatred all things g tech so congrat's on seeing the light of that god awful bobby dodd history program. I would advise not to bring up up that crappy school again may they flush down the toilet of hell soon.

Welcome to the AUF........

There aren't many of your kind left.  There aren't many rivals (or GT people for that matter) that even know GT football exists.  I became a serious fan around 1987, so I didn't ever get the chance to see many GT-AU games.   I did see Aundray Bruce earn the 1st overall pick as he dominated a bad GT team in the last game of the series for a while.  Then GT caught the right Auburn teams in '03 and '05 with some solid upset performances.  So long-story short, I always rooted for Auburn threw the years.  I was a sidewalk GT fan and really liked the underdog nature of the program and excellent coaches like Ross, O'Leary and Paul Johnson, but I honestly didn't like most GT fans(especially obnoxious students).  Honestly GT fans were the most obnoxious I encountered in my years traveling to games.  But obnoxious is much better than the arrogant(UAT, UGA). No doubt that Auburn fans were easily the best and the reason I'm here now.  War Eagle!

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9 minutes ago, GT2AU said:

I did see Aundray Bruce earn the 1st overall pick as he dominated a bad GT team in the last game of the series for a while.  

I was at that game

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On 6/6/2022 at 11:58 AM, Didba said:

So I'm well known on this board for not being a Gus fan but I'll try to give you my objective take on it.

Gus was a major players coach in every sense of the phrase. He was buddy-buddy with players and would be very arbitrary in who received punishments for breaking team rules and who wouldn't. If you were a star player it seemed most issues would get swept under the rug unless they were so glaring he had to address them. 

With the buddy-buddy stuff, I think some players would joke around alot and Malzahn didn't really mind the lack of seriousness. That changed with Harsin and at least one player transfered out due to the culture change from relaxed to serious.

Further, there were claims that certain players wouldn't get punished for showing up late to meetings, practice, workouts, etc and these claims appeared to be validated when harsin arrived. Harsin made several comments about player discipline for things like accountability/punctuality.

And then there was Gus's blatant favoritism for certain starters. It was most obvious with Bo Nix but when he came in, Bo was crowned starter at the outset and from then on could do no wrong in Gus's eyes. It was painful to watch talent leave the QB room bc it simply was never gonna get a shot no matter how bad Bo played.

Add that to Gus's other flaws in roster management, play design, route tree complexity, play calling, player development... things were on a major downward trend IMO.

Any posters that disagree or want to add onto this feel free.

he was the worst coach to ever dawn the sidelines in Auburn history.........

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2 hours ago, eaglenest said:

he was the worst coach to ever dawn the sidelines in Auburn history.........

You said it...

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3 hours ago, eaglenest said:

he was the worst coach to ever dawn the sidelines in Auburn history.........

No way he was worse than Barfield.

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If he was the worst what does that say about the University. There is no way u pay a person millions for 8 years if they are the worst at something. Matter of fact there is no job on earth that would do that. Out of the last 4 Auburn coaches Gus didn’t have a losing season and was just as responsible for the national championship as Chizik. There is so much hatred for GUs that there isn’t no rational. Make it make sense.

*There is no other Auburn coach that played an all SEC schedule 

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On 6/8/2022 at 8:55 AM, eaglenest said:

he was the worst coach to ever dawn the sidelines in Auburn history.........

I hate that S Leath screwed up and fell into a trap after our team beat down bama and thuga in 2017.   That was our biggest problem or Gus would have been gone in 2018/2019.   I hate that Gus was so arrogant and couldn't get out of the way of his ego.    He caught lightning in a bottle in 2013, but was he the worst? 

 

I would have to study the 70's and Barfield. 

 

You may be right...I was going to argue with you, but you may be right. 

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Gus was in over his head and stayed several years too long, but he is far from the worst coach in AU football history. That's recency bias. 

He may be the worst in the modern era, depending on how you define that.

Here's all AU coaches in the SEC era:

COACH                  YEARS TENURE RECORD PCT.
Chet Wynne 4 1930-33 22-15-2 .591
Jack Meagher 9 1934-42 48-37-10 .558
Carl Voyles 4 1944-47 15-22 .405
Earl Brown 3 1948-50 3-22-4 .172
Ralph Jordan 25 1951-75 176-83-6 .675
Doug Barfield 5 1976-80 29-25-1 .536
Pat Dye 12 1981-92 99-39-4 .711
Terry Bowden 6 1993-98 47-17-1 .731
Bill Oliver *1 1998 2-3 .400
Tommy Tuberville 10 1999-2008 85-40 .680
Gene Chizik 4 2009-12 33-19 .635
Gus Malzahn 8 2013-20 68-35 .660
Kevin Steele 1* 2020 0-1 .000
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4 minutes ago, fredst said:

Cool, another thread talking about ol’ Gus, the zombie coach that will never die on message boards :popcorn::popcorn::popcorn:

Gus hacked my account. 

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6 minutes ago, cbo said:

Gus hacked my account. 

I thought that he probably had. You are definitely not a known offender,lol

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Hmmm; I just can't be still (ADD).  

 

Just limiting this to say the last 70 yrs...and not considering interim coaches, I would say it is pretty close between Doug and Gus. 

Chiz gets a pass considering we won a Natty in short order and he didn't leave the cupboards bare.  Anyone that wants to argue, is an idiot - we won the championship.  Although, if we any other program, we would claim about 4 or more...

I am not sure what kind of roster Pat Dye inherited, but that would likely be important to consider.  As I inferred, Gus was on the cusp of a Natty and if we had any RB depth in 2017, we likely would have been in the playoffs.  That was a very capable team.   Poor Gus just couldn't manage recruiting and a roster to sustain a program. 

I am not going to cast my vote...but it is not cut and dry who the worst coach in the last 70 yrs is.

 

 

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The latest episode with Cadillac Williams is the best episode in my opinion. Pretty amazing. Hars really appreciates his contribution to Auburn. Pretty inspiring.

I like the connection between Hars and Caddy with Al Borgis.

Quote

 

Edited by Randman5000
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3 hours ago, Beaker said:

I hate that S Leath screwed up and fell into a trap after our team beat down bama and thuga in 2017.   That was our biggest problem or Gus would have been gone in 2018/2019.   I hate that Gus was so arrogant and couldn't get out of the way of his ego.    He caught lightning in a bottle in 2013, but was he the worst? 

 

I would have to study the 70's and Barfield. 

 

You may be right...I was going to argue with you, but you may be right. 

beak, I agree, you touched on half of the problems I had with Gus. In my opinion he's the worst at least in my lifetime, and I can add much more as to what made him the worst coach in AU history, do I hate him no, but I don't have anything good to say about him, I guess 8 years was too long and it was time for him to go. 

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16 hours ago, Beaker said:

I would have to study the 70's and Barfield. 

 

You may be right...I was going to argue with you, but you may be right.

I wouldn't say the worst based on wins/losses. He is easily the most frustrating and divisive coach we've ever had.

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