TitanTiger

Bama loses by 50 without Sears in that game. Dude was out there for 37 minutes and had 25 pts, 9 reb, and 4 assists. Oats is a pretty good floor coach but the stuff that comes out of that man's mouth...

The strategy to (almost) never double the driver was a great adjustment from last game. Bama loves to drive and kick out for open threes. We just let the interior guys deal with drivers and stayed on the perimeter players, making kickouts more difficult and shots from out there contested. Really frustrated their flow.

Sit yo white ass down!

I've always said the Lord has a sneaky good jumper.

Pretty smart actually.

Gotta give Bama a chance to cut into the lead with the clock stopped. Can't have the SEC leader get run out the gym by 35.

Jay Tate is saying it looks like we're going to promote Vontrell King-Williams to the DL coach slot. He was an off-field guy for us last year but has been a on-field assistant at Liberty and Eastern Michigan. Apparently is very loved and respected by the current kids at Auburn. According to hunter48 (coach and long time Bunker member), he's been very involved with the recruiting this past year, which seems to be backed up by this 247 Sports article from one of their national writers on off-field assistants that made their mark for the top recruiting classes of 2024: I was hoping for Pope but I like this better than bringing RG back for round three.

Regardless of whether you think he’s on target with these comparisons, Goodman is about the last journalist on earth that would be writing pro-Auburn propaganda pieces.

My guess is, he was willing to bring in a portal QB, but the ones available either were asking way too much in NIL given our other needs (like the entire WR room for instance) or they weren't enough of an upgrade to bother. And we may have a healthy NIL fund but it's not limitless. So I kinda read it more as (italics unspoken) "under the circumstances of this year's portal and our roster needs, I'm good with the QB room."

No, I've said that having read the Maryland report and heard from various others in a position to know, I'm satisfied that the Durkin hire was a good one. I'm just pushing back against people dismissing the Maryland stuff as "these kids today are soft and can't handle being coached hard" and acting like it's almost silly to even have been concerned.

Yes. But in our situation you don’t just read a report and that’s it. You dig a little deeper Find out what was going on in the locker room that caused so much dissension with Durkin after he was reinstated. Was it just a university admin caved to bad PR or something more? You talk to players, coaches and others at Ole Miss and A&M where he spent the last four years. See if the complaints at Maryland repeat themselves other places he’s been. This is like the bare minimum for “due diligence” and it’s standard procedure. Writing it off as “kids can’t take hard coaching anymore”‘ ain't it. I’m satisfied that Durkin isn’t the monster some at MD made him out to be. But you only get there by actually taking the situation seriously and looking into it. I get that but I think we had to be more cautious because of not only just PR stuff from Freeze but even more importantly, we just fired a DC for crossing the line professionally with his mouth and way he interacted with players. We had one of college football’s best assistants and recruiters bailing to A&M if he stayed and players ready to hit the portal for the same reasons. So yeah, we have to go a little further than some other places might when you’re hiring a replacement who was accused of having a “toxic culture.” I don’t think that’s actually true after what I’ve read but there’s no avoiding it being an issue.

I will say that after reading the relevant portions of the Maryland investigation report, I can see why the the Maryland administration decided to keep Durkin on as coach. My take on it is pretty much in line with what Barnacle summarized and having read this, the ESPN article and a smattering of other sources, I'm much more comfortable with the Durkin hire than I was when his name first surfaced. Despite what some of the Auburn twitter hand wringers will say about it, I think most of them are just going off some sensational headlines or actually don't care because they don't need any nudging to latch onto another way to bash Auburn for hiring Freeze. They certainly didn't read the report.

The Society of Eeyore is a chorus around here with a one-note song.

Well, the offensive struggles the last few years are what ultimately caused A&M to fall short in the win column and got Jimbo fired (particularly since he's an offensive coach and until last year called his own plays). The two years Durkin was there, A&M's offense was middling to bad: 2023: 50th in total offense (406.9 yds per game) and 25th in scoring (33.3 pts per game) 2022: 93rd in total offense (361.2 ypg) and 101st in scoring (22.8 ppg) But Durkin's defenses did pretty well and improved in total defense year over year: 2023: 19th in total defense (316.2 ypg) and 36th in scoring defense (22.1 ppg) 2022: 52nd in total defense (365.2 ypg) and 25th in scoring defense (21.2 ppg) There was drop off from when their DC Mike Elko left after the 2021 season to take the Duke HC job, but they also lost 5 defensive players to the portal and 2 more to the NFL Draft. And 2022 was a particularly abysmal year for them on offense as you can see above.

hunter also mentioned paying more attention to the metric "points per play" rather than "points per game." The latter fails to take into account the situations a defense is put into such as having a terrible offense that gives the ball back to the opponent a lot, or whether you're facing hurry up or more traditional ball control type offenses more. According to him, a 0.25 number in PPP is elite, anything between 0.25 and 0.30 is really good. A 0.25 PPP stat would mean it takes an offense an average of 28 plays to get 7 points. And according to hunter, DJD's teams have had very good PPP numbers everywhere he's been.

I'll try to summarize some things hunter48 (a well known poster and coach on the various Auburn boards) posted on one of the pay sites: -------------------- His scheme is "versatile". Runs it out of a 4-2-5, which is the preferred scheme by most defensive coaches in this era of spread, no huddle and RPO offenses but can adjust to run heavy schemes as well, depending on how you employ the Edge LB and the "star" (safety/nickel/LB hybrid). Tends to use sound "pattern match" zone schemes in coverage, but when he wants to go blitz heavy will shift to more man concepts. Places a lot of responsibility and pressure on the safeties, so pairing him with McGriff and Kelly is a good brain trust to have for this aspect. ---------- Others more knowledgable than me can chime in if they want. I'm just delivering the news. I've never been a coach and don't know all the terminology such as 'pattern match zone.'

What's the old adage I hear from time to time? You can push them as hard as you love them. If a player really feels and believes that you care about him, want the best for him, want to help him be not just the best player he can be, but the best person he can be, he'll take a whole lot of intense coaching from you. You can yell, push him to his limits, and all sorts of things we'd call "hard coaching" or being a "hard-nosed disciplinarian" and he'll take it and work his ass off to meet those expectations - because you've shown him it's more than just a job. It's more than football (or whatever sport). It's more than just somebody with power getting to exercise it. He knows you're doing all of it to help the kid reach his goals and his full potential.

I think they should certainly be given serious consideration. It's quite possible that people on the coaching staff, in the athletic department, and in the broader university administration have relationships with people in similar roles at Maryland, Ole Miss and Texas A&M. I'd think those people's experiences and thoughts on Durkin while he was there would also hold significant weight. But I don't think any of us are in good position to accurately assign appropriate "weight" to the various sources. Too many moving parts. I trust that people involved in the hire did give such things serious thought however.

This wasn't "mistreated a kid." A kid died. It's completely reasonable for such a thing to be throughly investigated, especially when there are reports and complaints of how hard the coaches were pushing the kids in these workouts and the treatment of anyone who wasn't doing well in them. Things change. We know more. When I was playing football as a kid and my teens, hydration breaks were almost unheard of. They told us not to drink too much. Water was withheld and we were made to run more because a coach didn't like the effort we were giving. We practiced hard no matter how hot it was. We rightly don't do stupid stuff like that anymore because the consequences can be lethal. We learn there are coaches that can get the best out of players by using a different approach. You can sit here an bemoan the fact that coaches can't get away with the Bobby Knight or "Junction Boys" methods anymore or you can just adapt and move on with your life. The options aren't to be an a**hole that yells, screams, punishes, belittles and insults or to "coddle." The best coaches learn to adjust their motivational style as they get to know their players. They learn that a lot of kids come from s***ty homes with rotten dads who beat and berate them or their moms and they aren't responding to a coach that does the same. They're looking for someone that cares about them and will push them without all that. I can't help if you think that's soft. But to get back to the Durkin situation, as I told Swamp, this HAD to be throughly investigated. And when you have the complaints about how things were done at MD when he was HC there, if you're Auburn who just jettisoned a good X's and O's coach because his acidic personality was not just about to run off key players, but was running off key coaches - you can't just dismiss the MD stuff as kids who want to be coddled and babied and can't handle a disciplinarian. And there's nothing wrong with the fans talking about it either.

Yes, Maryland investigated it. Those making or signing off on these decisions at Auburn wouldn't be doing their jobs if they didn't follow up on that, which involves more than just reading Maryland's report and moving on. They're going to dig a bit deeper, talk to some more people, especially at his stops since then in Oxford and College Station. And consequently, it is completely normal for fans on a forum to talk about it too. Maybe eventually it'll get to be more "good Lord, give it a rest" but I don't think a few weeks into a coaching search and less than two days into the actual hire is where you hit that breaking point.

Because when you’re hiring someone for a position where you just let a guy walk/shoved him to a conference rival over concerns about the culture he was fostering with his abrasive style, you’re going to dig a little deeper into why a previous program he ran had similar (but worse) accusations about it reported to the university admin. You’re going to analyze it. And frankly, the many only the people already bent because we hired a head coach with a scandalous past are going to use him hiring an assistant with something like this in his past as well because - well you know why. It serves an end. All that to say, it’s unavoidable. It should be investigated more and there’s nothing weird or wrong about discussing it.

I stated earlier in the search some hesitancy about Durkin. It wasn't really because of that kid's death though, as tragic as it was. He wasn't there at the workout where it happened (and under NCAA rules wasn't permitted to be there for these conditioning workouts), and didn't make any of the decisions surrounding it. His responsibility basically comes down it being his employee (the S&C coach) that ran the workouts. My problem was with the culture of the Maryland program with Durkin as HC. Several players claiming they were mistreated, humiliated, belittled, harassed, insulted, and so on. Some of the anecdotes seemed over the line. That's on Durkin. Then after the Maryland administration cleared him of any wrongdoing in the player's death, he had a team meeting and 2-3 or so players got upset and walked out the meeting. A day or so later Maryland seemed to cave to the bad PR coming from that and the deceased kid's parents and fired Durkin. So I wondered what playing for Durkin is like. I wondered what kind of leader he is. Having told Roberts to find another job because of his abrasive nature and the dysfunctional culture it was creating here (McGriff quitting, then staying in an off field role, then deciding to leave for A&M when Roberts wasn't gone immediately after the season, only to come back once he was shown the door. Multiple players threatening to transfer only to stay after Roberts was gone, etc), I was worried about whether we were going to hire another guy with similar personality traits and be back in this same turmoil ala Roberts in a season or two. I think it was a valid point to bring up. Apparently some at Auburn had similar questions and wanted to be sure about what happened at Maryland and what people who played for or coached with Durkin the last four years at OM and A&M had to say about some of these things. I think it was something that needed to be done. So all that said, I believe these folks must have received feedback that settled their issues. I'm trusting that's part of the reason it took this long to pull the trigger on him. So I'm on board with Durkin until I hear a (current) reason not to be.

Our long national nightmare is over!

The way Pettiford is shooting up the rankings and how he's playing, whatever he does he's not scaring him off.