meh130

The appeal of McCall last year was he ran a read-heavy RPO offense. Probably the most RPO centric offense ever in football at any level. That fit what Freeze and Montgomery wanted to do last year. Who knows what their plans are for 2024.

Dye lost to Southern Miss in both 1990 and 1991. Farve was the QB in 1990.

When considering great Auburn centers, don’t forget four year starter Ben Tamburello.

I have often wondered had we won the Natty in 2013 would we have claimed 1913 to keep the number of Natties even so they would present well on the scoreboard and stadium. I imagined the never uncased flags might have had 1913 and 2013 on them had we won and the cheerleaders uncased them. There were some pushing for a 1913 throwback uniform that year for at least one game.

Give Ashford a shot.

The quarterback swapping needs to stop. Thorne came in to replace Robbie, and completely overthrew an open receiver. QBs need to get into a rhythm. It is one thing to bring in a short yardage or goal-line package, but realize if you are first and goal from the 2, and you end up after a TFL and a penalty third and goal from the 11, switching the QB back means you are putting in a QB that may be out of rhythm.

Time for a very serious “Come to Jesus” for Hugh Freeze. Some assistants need to be reassigned. Some players need to be demoted. But decisions need to be made.

Payton chose to run out of bounds on 4th down instead of turning it up field. Bench him. Permanently.

Regression.

We are really bad. We are really, really bad. Yes, LSU has a great offense, but over 300 yards in the the first half against a decent AU defense? And a 107 yards offense against a bad defense? We just are not good at all. We played inspired against UGA, as did Arky. Maybe UGA is not that good. Maybe UAT is not that good. But we don’t seem to be in the Ole Miss level of mid-tier SEC West right now.

In the ATL this week has seen a couple of days with sub 65° morning lows, and 85° and 86° degree highs. After a week of mid 90s with heat indexes in the 105-110 range, this was definitely a nip.

The four most talented teams we will face are Texas A&M, LSU, UGA, and Bama. Ole Miss and Arkansas are toss-ups. But I can't see us losing to either Mississippi team at home. I think we will be up for the Arkansas game. That puts things at an 8-4. We could lose to an Ole Miss or an Arkansas, but win Texas A&M. My gut says we are more likely to beat Bama than Texas A&M, because of the intangibles. Of course, we could struggle, and lose to Cal or some other team and end up 7-5 or even 6-6. But we also could go 9-3. We seem to have a solid enough defense, offensive line, wide receivers, tight-ends, and running backs. We have a two-year starter transfer QB. Many positions are upgraded from last year. That puts me at 8-4, with a 7-5 floor and a 9-3 upside.

We could claim 1913 and 1914 also. I often wondered had we beaten FSU in the 2013 season BCS game, if we would have made a claim for 1913.

Not sure where this comes from. The DL will be above average, the DBs will be among the best in the SEC. The question is the LBs. I am more concerned with offense than defense.

Back in 2013, in the "Mark My Word" thread, I predicted we would win the SEC West, but that was based on Texas A&M being disqualified by the NCAA. This time, my "Mark My Word" is Auburn will win 10 regular season games.

I have DirecTV stream, as part of my AT&T fiber Internet. I like it, but it is as expensive as cable. If I could get the ESPN streams separately, I would probably dump them.

I have seem some crazy speculation on QB. The conservative choice is Thorne. But I have a gut feel Geriner will get significant playing time against UMass, and we will have a QB controversy going into week two. I definitely want Hooks among the starting WRs. The rest I am not concerned with.

Last few evenings have cooled off significantly after sundown, or perhaps it just feels that way given how hot it is.

I don't think Nix was ever underrated. Well, perhaps a little. I compared him to Johnny Manziel once because of his ability to evade the rush and make a crazy play, and I was dragged for it. But I would say Cox, Leard, and White were the three most underrated.

Regarding NIL, the problem is the collectives. They were a weasel way to dance around the law to change the ability for an NCAA athlete to get paid for endorsements, to a straight pay for pay plan. "NIL" was a legal term in the court case. In pro sports, we don't hear that an NBA player signed an "NIL deal" with Nike. We hear they signed an "endorsement deal" with Nike. But we literally have collectives paying players to solicit donations to the collective. Soliciting donations is the quid pro quo "work" the athletes are doing to earn the money from the collective. Total self-dealing. Meanwhile, the #1 NIL issue, the NCAA video game, still can't figure it out 2 years after the court case. The collectives aren't out there soliciting endorsement deals for the athletes they have signed, that is on the athlete and the athlete's agent to find those opportunities.

The problems that led to Gus's struggles and downfall would have been there regardless.

Movies would have been made.

Yep. I will be happy with 7-5, and very happy with 8-4. If that 8-4 includes a win over Bama I will be ecstatic. Of course that last point will be challenging. In 2021, on pass defense we were exceptional in that game. When you have two NFL caliber edge rushers and you put both of them in the game at the same time, you really can disrupt a high quality quarterback. It reminded me of the times both Dee Ford and Carl Lawson were on the field at the same time in 2013. But we ran Hall and Leota at the same time a lot in 2021.

Justin Ferguson at The Auburn Observer did a story based on ESPN's recently released SP+ metric, which is used to predict head to head matchups. As the SP+ metrics require an ESPN+ subscription, and this article is behind the paywall at the Observer, I will limit what I say. Last year, SP+ pegged Auburn to go 5-7. It tends to be an accurate metric. That said, the SP+ prediction had the highest probability for Auburn to land at 7-5, with the second most likely being 6-6, and the third most likely being 8-4. Overall, it had Auburn at about a 60% chance of a winning season (7-4 or better), and only about a 16% chance of a losing season (5-7 or worse). So SP+ is similar to what I predict, but it has the 6-6 and 8-4 flip-flopped with a slightly higher chance of going 6-6 rather than 8-4. But that is understandable as my thoughts about Auburn hitting 8-4 is solely based on intangibles like the desire for Freeze to beat his old school Ole Miss, and the expectation that a coaching change usually results in a first year overachievement.