i felt this needed a separate thread

[bigbird 60,371]

3 minutes ago, ElkRiver said:

which is to vindicate himself- to say that he was right all along about Harsin. I agree that Harsin had this team ill-prepared and that his days at Auburn are numbered, but the glee with which this guy spews attacks on folk’s character and personal integrity in an article about a football game turns my stomach.

There are a few here that share that giddiness. It's sad.

 

Again, what would've been best for Auburn is CBH to be successful.  Why so many were actively cheering for his failing even before he took the field is sad and beyond my comprehension. Immediately running to spam "I told you so's" is petty. Especially when those are the ones perpetuating rumors, fanning flames, and giving zero support towards his success.

If Auburn feels it time, then great move on but do so in a professional manner. It been far too long to not have things straightened out. Time to get the house right.

[Bro Johnny Mac 1,391]

My take from Harsin’s quotes

He’s interviewing for his next gig. He knows that he’s done and he’s trying to save  his reputation as a good coach. 

 

[GreenTiger 1,000]

This article is trash. Selective quotes to paint a negative narrative about a person. 
It was a team loss. All around really bad. It’s frustrating for everyone. Goodmans zeal to create this crap is sad and speaks of his character. Onward and Upward friends 

[gr82b4au 5,568]

1 hour ago, fishepa said:

Oh look, another Joseph Goodman article.  <leaves thread immediately>

Just realized that. Yep I’m out. 

[meh130 1,043]

3 hours ago, autiger88 said:

That's simply not true and I hate defending Saban but he does take responsibility. 😂 Good lord quit lying to yourself. 

You are watching a different Saban. From 2008 to 2021 I never heard him say "I failed our players." Or "Our coaches failed our players." I have never seen a post-loss locker room speech by Saban where he apologized to his team for failing them as a coach.

I have seen Saban blame everybody but himself, such as when he went off about no-huddle offenses and the inability to situationally substitute his defense every single down like he did in his early years, and turning attention on his team's failure instead to college football trends: "Is this what we want football to be?" Of course, a few years later Saban hired Kiffin and started running a no-huddle spread offense and often would use pace to prevent defensive substitutions. This is a guy that got a rule changed because of a weird punt formation Auburn used in the 2019 Iron Bowl, when clearly it was his and his coaching staff's inability to game day coach that created the penalty. Did Saban blame his special teams coach? No, he blamed the NCAA rulebook. What is next? If some team wins against Bama because they scored a two-point conversion on a "swinging gate" PAT formation is Saban going to get the rules changed around PATs?

I have seen Saban call you his players dozens of times. I have seen very, very similar verbiage to that quoted from Harsin stated by Saban.

Bear Bryant and Pat Dye would always take the blame for their teams' losses. They would always credit the players for their wins. The sole exception I can recall was a statement by Bryant that said something like: Close wins and close losses are due to coaching, blowout wins and blowout losses are due to talent differential.

And yes, I have seen clips of Bryant and Dye in post-loss locker rooms taking the blame in front of their players.

Now, that all said, yes Saban did start to take some of the blame last year. That was such a shock to the sports media some started suggesting Saban was approaching the end of his career.

And my final point is nobody in the sports media would ever write a column critical of Saban in this way. Because they know it would get their organization's reporter kicked out of the Bama locker room and out of Saban's press conferences.

[meh130 1,043]

And here is another thought. How would the sports media, especially the southern sports media (which is a cross between Peyton Place and Real Housewives, with an addiction to clicks greater than Hunter Biden's addiction to crack and strippers) treat a Mike Shula tenure if it were to happen to Bama today?

Would their tabloid reporting, addiction to clicks, and desire for viral Tweets outweigh their deference to Bama's legacy?

Given the under-reporting of the various proven and perceived scandals around Bama in the last 15 odd years my guess is no.

[LeonardAU 237]

1 hour ago, Bro Johnny Mac said:

My take from Harsin’s quotes

He’s interviewing for his next gig. He knows that he’s done and he’s trying to save  his reputation as a good coach. 

 

Yep.  But it's all performative nonsense with nothing to back it up.  I wouldn't trust Harsin to run a program on the NCAA 2014 video game.

 

Oh and Goodman sucks.

[Bro Johnny Mac 1,391]

7 minutes ago, LeonardAU said:

Yep.  But it's all performative nonsense with nothing to back it up.  I wouldn't trust Harsin to run a program on the NCAA 2014 video game.

 

Oh and Goodman sucks.

He will do fine out west somewhere...
 

 

[autiger88 3,777]

1 hour ago, meh130 said:

You are watching a different Saban. From 2008 to 2021 I never heard him say "I failed our players." Or "Our coaches failed our players." I have never seen a post-loss locker room speech by Saban where he apologized to his team for failing them as a coach.

I have seen Saban blame everybody but himself, such as when he went off about no-huddle offenses and the inability to situationally substitute his defense every single down like he did in his early years, and turning attention on his team's failure instead to college football trends: "Is this what we want football to be?" Of course, a few years later Saban hired Kiffin and started running a no-huddle spread offense and often would use pace to prevent defensive substitutions. This is a guy that got a rule changed because of a weird punt formation Auburn used in the 2019 Iron Bowl, when clearly it was his and his coaching staff's inability to game day coach that created the penalty. Did Saban blame his special teams coach? No, he blamed the NCAA rulebook. What is next? If some team wins against Bama because they scored a two-point conversion on a "swinging gate" PAT formation is Saban going to get the rules changed around PATs?

I have seen Saban call you his players dozens of times. I have seen very, very similar verbiage to that quoted from Harsin stated by Saban.

Bear Bryant and Pat Dye would always take the blame for their teams' losses. They would always credit the players for their wins. The sole exception I can recall was a statement by Bryant that said something like: Close wins and close losses are due to coaching, blowout wins and blowout losses are due to talent differential.

And yes, I have seen clips of Bryant and Dye in post-loss locker rooms taking the blame in front of their players.

Now, that all said, yes Saban did start to take some of the blame last year. That was such a shock to the sports media some started suggesting Saban was approaching the end of his career.

And my final point is nobody in the sports media would ever write a column critical of Saban in this way. Because they know it would get their organization's reporter kicked out of the Bama locker room and out of Saban's press conferences.

That's a lot of words for simply saying you don't pay attention 😂

[tightendoverthemiddle 102]

6 hours ago, aubiefifty said:

Joseph Goodman: Auburn’s Bryan Harsin critical of players but not himself

Published: Sep. 21, 2022, 7:03 a.m.

6-7 minutes

---

In football, the true character of a team comes out in the second half of tough games.

How well did a team train in the offseason? Are the second-teamers adequate? Can a coach adjust against a worthy opponent?

All these things are revealed when the paint is no longer fresh on the helmets and lungs are hot. Home-field advantage helps, too, and the Auburn football Tigers had it on Saturday when the second half started against Penn State.

Auburn only trailed Penn State 12-6 at halftime. What happened after that? Auburn was exposed, and outscored 27-6 in the second half for a program-defining 41-12 loss against the first Big Ten team to ever play in Jordan-Hare Stadium.

Everything went wrong for Auburn in that second half, and the team looked untrained for the fight. It was plain for everyone to see.

Everyone except for Auburn coach Bryan Harsin apparently.

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The situation at Auburn is worse than I could have imagined. The guy in charge apparently thinks he’s doing a good job of coaching his team, and that the players are the problem.

Three games into his second season, Harsin has mastered the art of excuses and pointing fingers, but I guess that’s what happens when a university launches an internal investigation and then doesn’t follow through with the point of it all.

A good coach takes the blame after a bad loss. They own it. In the Monday news conference after an embarrassing Saturday of Auburn football, Harsin instead serviced his ego by talking down to reporters and shifting the weight of responsibility away from himself. To hear him tell it, Harsin is above accountability for what happens during games.

Preparation wasn’t the problem, the coach said, it was all the players and their mistakes.

Harsin blamed his players about a dozen times for a lack of “execution” with obnoxious levels of peevishness and obfuscation.

This long, rambling rationalization for Auburn’s day of blunders explains everything about Harsin’s lack of respect for those around him.

“It is not necessarily the mentality of the team,” Harsin said. “There were mess ups, and there were things that we didn’t do correctly. That’s the execution piece. That’s the part I talk about that execution is the key.

“If you have to be in a gap, you’re in the gap. If you have to cover a man, you cover the man. If you have to run the right route, you run the right route. And that does not have anything to do with mentality. That’s simply executing the job you’re supposed to do.

“There are 11 guys who all have an assignment…You have to do your job. When you don’t do that, and somebody exposes you on that, then things happen. Then you wonder why a big play happens or they rip off a big run or we don’t have somebody in the flat when a quarterback is rolling out.

“That wasn’t designed that way, so if we execute what’s designed, we have a better shot of executing our plays and they’re going to work better and at least give ourselves a chance. To me, that’s really what it is. It’s about execution, and not so much about mentality and all those things that create the drama.”

Which is to say, Harsin is either smell-blind to the huge piles of horse manure he’s heaving over his shoulder, or he didn’t watch the same second half that I did.

Once a standard bearer of SEC toughness, Auburn’s defense allowed Penn State running backs to gain nine yards per carry in the second half. Meanwhile, Auburn abandoned its running game run (the team’s strength), and benched its quarterback.

Auburn football, after two warm-up games to begin the season, is a mystery no more. The team is soft, and ill-equipped for the rigors of second-half football just as competition in the SEC begins. That’s the coach’s fault, and speaks to something greater than one loss to Penn State. In its last five games against Power 5 opponents, Auburn has been outscored 94-18 in second halves.

Coach, the car isn’t broken. It’s out of gas.

In a game between two struggling teams, Auburn (2-1) plays Missouri (2-1) at 11 a.m. on Saturday at Jordan-Hare Stadium. Auburn is favored by seven points, but has now lost six games in a row against teams it didn’t pay after a victory.

How far has Auburn fallen over the last five years? Since 2018, the Tigers are 2-8 against teams from the SEC East. The only victories against SEC East teams during that span were in the unprecedented pandemic season of 2020 in which SEC teams played all 10 games against conference opponents. Gus Malzahn’s final season at Auburn featured wins against Kentucky and Tennessee.

Not bad in hindsight. Not nearly the standard of success Auburn demands from its football team. At least Malzahn knew how to put his players in positions to win, though, and didn’t blame the personnel for ill-suited schemes.

No wonder quarterback Bo Nix left for Oregon and defensive coordinator Derek Mason bolted for Oklahoma State. They saw what was coming before anyone else because they were on the inside and knew the truth.

How could a team play so poorly as Auburn did against Penn State? It’s got nothing to do with a game plan. A loss like that all starts with the head coach and how he built and trained his team months before the season.

Auburn’s true character under Harsin was revealed in those painful moments after halftime, and it was a brutally honest accounting of a football team unprepared.

Joseph Goodman is a columnist for the Alabama Media Group, and author of “We Want Bama: A season of hope and the making of Nick Saban’s ‘ultimate team’”. You can find him on Twitter @JoeGoodmanJr.

Year	School	G	W	L	T	Pct	SRS	SOS	AP Pre	AP High	AP Post	Bowl ▲	Notes
2013	Auburn	14	12	2	0	.857	18.80	7.88		2	2	BCS Championship-L
2015	Auburn	13	7	6	0	.538	7.16	5.39	6	6		Birmingham Bowl-W
2018	Auburn	13	8	5	0	.615	10.76	5.60	9	7		Music City Bowl-W
2014	Auburn	13	8	5	0	.615	14.99	9.06	6	2	22	Outback Bowl-L
2019	Auburn	13	9	4	0	.692	16.26	7.72	16	7	14	Outback Bowl-L
2017	Auburn	14	10	4	0	.714	17.95	6.38	12	4	10	Peach Bowl-L
2016	Auburn	13	8	5	0	.615	11.97	5.51		8	24	Sugar Bowl-L
2021	UCF	13	9	4	0	.692	3.07	-2.08				Union Home Mortgage Gasparilla Bowl-W
2022	UCF	3	2	1	0	.667	10.70	-2.97
2020	Auburn	10	6	4	0	.600	9.61	9.52	11	7
2012	Arkansas State	12	9	3	0	.750	4.94	-2.22
11 Yrs	Overall	131	88	43	0	.672	11.47	4.53				3-5
1 Yr	Arkansas State	12	9	3	0	.750	4.94	-2.22				0-0
8 Yrs	Auburn	103	68	35	0	.660	13.44	7.13				2-5
2 Yrs	UCF	16	11	5	0	.688	6.89	-2.52				1-0