TitanTiger

not happening

Louder for the folks in the back.

“After taking time to pray and reflect, I have made the decision to resign from my position with Auburn football to pursue other opportunities. I love Auburn, the players and AU family with all my heart, but this decision is what is best for me, my wife and sons. I am extremely grateful for the coaching opportunity given to me first by Coach Malzahn and most recently by Coach Freeze. These past five years on the Plains have been nothing short of incredible. Auburn is and always will be a special part of my life.” War Eagle! Carnell “Cadillac” Williams

Carnell has resigned.

Jay Tate is saying to expect more changes to the coaching staff, perhaps even as soon as later this evening. He, like us, will not get into specifics at this juncture as it is, in his words, "unfair, unprofessional and, frankly, gauche."

The staff over there isn't saying much different than I just did either. Whether they are keeping things as tight among the regular members I can't say. We're just trying to handle the situation in a way we feel right about under the circumstance. I understand everyone's idea of where the line should be will be different. There's no exact perfect answer right now, this is just how we feel it should be handled here.

There's been some sort of internal investigation going on with Caddy and Zac. I'm not comfortable yet getting more specific than that. It's not anything Auburn or Coach Freeze has done wrong. We will likely know a lot more tomorrow.

Ok. I'm just letting you know. Wasn't trying to start anything and responding to your question on the thread was to remind/inform others as well.

You asked why things couldn't be discussed since other places are talking about. We simply said yesterday that we were going to err on the side of conservative here on this. Stuff will come out in due time but we're not going to let rumors run amok.

We didn't say it couldn't be discussed at all. All we've said is, we're going to keep a tight rein speculative rumors. Things will come out soon.

Jason Caldwell is reporting Crime has had a change of heart and is expected to come back to Auburn!

Saban speaks to ESPN: https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/39286863/nick-saban-says-ready-support-alabama-transition

Sorry if someone's already said it, but the saying goes, "You don't want to follow the legend, you want to follow the guy that followed the legend." Bama's always gonna get theirs, but Saban was a generational coach. There's no continuing on without a blip.

So, you're still punching a strawman that no one was advocating for. Got it.

Ok, I read it and I still don't see it. I see people who, like me, are saying that he tried something that was reasonable at the time and it didn't work out on the field (but did in recruiting) and it's right to fix that now. I see people saying the on field results weren't good but they're ok with it for this year because recruiting went so well. What I'm not seeing are people acting like it was a success and didn't need to be corrected. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You seem to be arguing against a point I'm not making and I'm not sure I've seen anyone else make here either. Was someone arguing for calling it a success? Or that he was playing 4D chess? I think what I've seen is people saying, he made a choice he thought could allow him to focus on recruiting more and that the it wasn't an unreasonable plan. It just didn't work out in terms of on the field production and now he's fixing the problem. I mean, maybe somebody out there is treating it like some kind of masterplan that's played out to perfection and I missed it. And admittedly I haven't read every post on the subject here so maybe that person exists. But neither do I see it as some kind of catastrophe or something to get all that concerned about at this point in his tenure.

I don't "fear" anything of the sort. I'm saying, it's not unique or even all that rare and even the best coaches in the game have done it. It's just not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things unless it becomes some kind of repeated pattern.

I just don't necessarily see it as being any different than Saban firing Applewhite and letting Steele walk after year one at Bama (incidentally he also replaced both coordinators after year one in the NFL with Miami and replaced one of his coordinators after year one at LSU). I suppose all those moves were failures. Which is fine. Better to cut bait and fix the issue than to stubbornly stand behind a choice that wasn't working.

A general bulletin for everyone here. Solid information on this doesn't really exist. A whole lot of rumor and speculation at best, some of which might be true and some of which is made up or who knows. As a mod/admin staff, we're going to be very conservative on throwing out or allowing specifics on what this may be about. Just not going to indulge salacious stuff with little/no backing to it. So if your post goes poof and it's related to these rumors, just know that's why.

I don't think he saw them as disagreeing on scheme. Montgomery's scheme isn't radically different from Freeze's. And terminology isn't necessarily a difference in scheme either. Lots of dudes run essentially the same offense with different terminology. I think as it played out though, Hugh didn't like the play calling - not the sequencing on how to set things up for later nor the decisions on what to run at times in terms of what our guys were good at and confident doing. It did seem to me that when Hugh got more involved in the offense, the offense looked better. And that's what I was hearing from people who'd be in position to know what was happening in practice and in the game planning leading up to games. I will agree that I didn't like the degree to which he emphasized the talent disparity. I know Hugh leans toward just saying it like it is bluntly and that's an acquired taste for sure. And he probably wanted to send a signal out to recruits that roster slots were there for the taking at Auburn. But it went too far to me to the point of hurting the confidence of some current guy. Just my opinion. I'm going to give a pass on the early 2 QB rotation thing. Neither QB was really separating themselves and on top of that he was trying to carefully navigate team dynamics with those who wanted Robby to be given a real shot vs getting people aligned behind the new guy while neither was lighting the world on fire. I do think he's learned his lesson on that and it's why Robby is in the portal.

I think Hugh looked at the roster then looked at the rosters of our rivals, looked at the sad state of relationships with HS coaches in the area, and thought his most important task was to go full bore after improving this roster. He thought maybe if he hired a couple of experienced coordinators capable of running their side of the ball without him having to be deeply involved, he could sort of assume a CEO role at least for the first 2-3 years, and be able to devote more time to recruiting, relationship building with high school programs, to the politicking involved with $$ folks at Auburn, and all of those things. It's not a crazy thought. It just didn't work as planned, particularly on the offensive side of the ball. Ultimately it's his responsibility - both the results on the field this year, and for him to fix going forward. I think the DC situation was something you wouldn't have predicted. Roberts had a reputation for being hard nosed and abrasive, but it's not like there'd been a mutiny among his players at previous stops or assistants bailing and calling him impossible to work for. He and Aranda weren't seeing eye to eye on how to run the defense his last year there but that was about it. I don't think anyone could have reasonably foreseen the situation with the secondary players and McGriff. So he's fixing the problem. He's taking back over play calling and will hire an OC that's good with that paradigm. He encouraged Roberts to find a new job and repaired the relationships with the players getting ready to bail. Unfortunately the timeline didn't work to keep Crime on board but the bottom line is, he's not just letting things ride and unafraid to make the necessary moves. It's not ideal to fire both coordinators after year one. It's also not unprecedented for very good coaches to make big changes of this nature after their first season. So neither is it a catastrophe indicative of a bad head coach. We'll see how it works out. His HS efforts in recruiting clearly panned out well in his first full recruiting cycle. He tried something a little different given the circumstances he walked into, it didn't work and he's going back to what got him here. Saban fired both coordinators after his first season at Alabama then had 4 years of stability at both positions after that (and several more on the DC side with Smart).

That’s called winning ugly. What a friggin grind that was. But the operative word is “win.” Way to get that dub.

No, I'm just saying, that 1. We have no idea if this rumor of physical assault is even true. 2. We don't know what was said or done, to McGriff or players, to escalate things 3. We don't know what is meant by physical assault - was it a shove, or someone just putting their hands on someone, or was it a punch? Absent those details, I don't think blaming Crime (or saying he's not an innocent victim) is really on solid footing here. I'm not a violent person but there are some things a person could say that might get me to put hands on someone, especially if it had been building for a while.

If true, even that depends on if there was a provocation that led to said assault and if so, what that was.

Last time he fired both was last year. Got rid of O'Brien (OC) and Golding/Kelly (Co-DCs). Replaced by Rees and Steele respectively. He did it one other time - after his first season when he fired Applewhite (OC) and Steele (DC), replacing them with McElwain/Pendry (OC) and Kirby Smart (DC). Two other years he partially did it. Fired/lost Daboll (OC) and one of his Co-DCs (Pruitt) one year. Another he lost Lockley/Gattis (Co-OCs) and Lupoi (one of the Co-DCs).