meh130

I am more impressed with Deion's traditional coaching ability (staff, etc.) than his recruiting because his recruiting is an outlier that has zero comparisons (without going back 30 years to Eddie Robinson at Grambling). That said, Sanders recruiting is an outlier. We can make a decision on an outlier, but we have done that for the last three hires. I would rather not make a decision on an outlier. We have no idea if Sanders success in recruiting translates to the Power 5 and the SEC. If Sanders had experience as an SEC assistant prior to his current FCS HC job, we would have something to triangulate on. But we do not.

Auburn has a talent and recruiting problem. Also, water is wet. This does not mean only Deion can save Auburn. It just means we need a big picture, solid recruiter as a coach. The same argument could be used for Aranda.

As high level college players, as former NFL players, and two of the only successful dual-sports players in recent history, of course they probably are friendly. But that does not make Deion another Bo. They are very different. Deion played PROFESSIONAL minor league baseball at the same time he was playing collegiate football because FSU was independent, and had no rules. Bo, meanwhile lost his eligibility to play COLLEGE baseball because he took a paid flight by the Tampa Bay Bucs to fly to Tampa to take a physical prior to the NFL draft because the SOUTHEASERN CONFERENCE RULES at the time considered taking any benefit from ANY SPORT ended amateur status in ALL SEC SPORTS. This was an intentional effort by Ray Perkins to take baseball off the table for Bo. It backfired badly. Neon Deion got it all. Bo had it all taken away. I am not saying Bo would veto Sanders, but I am saying there are not more two diametrically different cases in the history of college athletics.

I agree the talent is depleted. However, I am not sold Sander's success at a subset of the FCS will translate to a superset of the Power 5 FBS. Also, I do firmly believe if Auburn hired Sanders he would immediately be released by Aflac as a spokesperson. Aflac has Saban because Saban represents something unique in the FBS. Saban has Sanders because Sanders represents something unique in the FCS. Sanders in the FBS is not unique. Sanders at Auburn turns the Saban/Sanders schtick into a local Alabama schtick. It has no national appeal. Now, could Auburn structure a contract where Sanders continued employment by Aflac was part of his compensation? Yes, they could. You get $7.5M per year as long as Aflac has you as a spokesperson. If Aflac dumps you, it drops to $5.0M. Would Sanders sign that? No.

Very appropriate.

I think that could be hard to do. You still need a coaching staff, and you can't change your schemes in mid-season. Plus, if you are an assistant, you know you will not be retained at the end of the season, and be looking for a job, so you want to perform well to maximize your opportunities when you are let go. That said, you could promote a graduate assistant or move an off the field analyst into a coaching position.

Yeah, a total Gus Malzahn 2013 style offense would give us our best shot. Pull out that inside zone read triple option with the WR hitch third option with Robby.

Regarding our current situation: I think there is no doubt Hugh Freeze has thrown his hat into the ring. I think Kiffin would be interested. He knows there is a ceiling at Ole Miss. There was something in the sports press about Sanders being considered.

Interesting.

To be fair, I have trouble considering a 6-6 regular season followed by a bowl loss as a losing season in the same way a 5-7 season with no bowl. Back when the regular season was 11 games, you could have a 6-5 season, and lose a bowl and not have a losing season. Now, with 12 game seasons, with the additional game being a conference game, you can end the regular season 6-6, but then go to a bowl game and end up with a losing season. This is due in part to the massive expansion of bowl games, where before that a 6-6 record might not get you to a bowl. Then add in the current trend of NFL eligible players opting out of the bowl game, and that makes things more challenging. There are now 44 bowl games, meaning 88 bowl teams (out of 131 FBS schools). In the 1999-2000 season, there were 23 bowl games with 46 teams participating.

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.

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.

I think the lack of AD, and lack of an ideal interim coach will push it to after A&M or until the end of the season.

Mizzou is not Penn State.

This is closer to what I am thinking. Mizzou lost to Kansas State. I think our defense will play angry, and get some big plays. i think Tank goes for about 150 yards. Robby in the Red Zone should make our offense more interesting. Expect some different looks on both offense and defense next week.

I think Scout rated Frazier 5-stars. 247, Rivals, and ESPN rated him 4-stars.

Kiffin is cheaper than some (it will not take $10M). Kiffin could win championships at AU, but not at OM. We could structure a contract in a way to benefit high performance, but not poor performance. Kiffin is smart enough to consider that. Sidebar: AU: "We will pay your $10M for a good season, but just $5M for a bad season." Kiffin: "I want more!" AUS: "We will pay you $12 million for a good season, but $3 million for a bad season." Kiffin: "Let's talk about the previous offer." My point is Kiffin is not an idiot, and a well structured comp plan would be appealing to him. Maybe that is an increase each year in part based on how many wins he gets. A 6 win season gets on increase. a 7 win season gets $250K. And 8 win season gets $500K, etc. We could make this happen.

Kiffin's "past" is weak, compared to someone like Freeze. Did Kiffin have something to do with a coed? Perhaps. But if so, Ole Miss swept it under the rug. I really do not care. Kiffin would be a major upgrade.

Live feed of Jake Crain right now: Jake Crain. Captain Obvious.

It's SMU.

Norvell is in his third year. His first year he was 3-6. His second, 5-7. People were calling for his head. Now he is 3-0. But yes, Norvell was a high potential Power 5 head coaching prospect. He was Group of 5 head coach at Memphis. He was Gus Malzahn's successor as OC at Tulsa after being one of Malzhan's graduate assistants. He got Power 5 assistant experience at Pitt and Arizona State before becoming Memphis' HC. It has taken him time to grow into being a Power 5 HC.

Honestly, any change will bring improvement. Kiffin and Freeze could bring immediate offensive improvement. Grimes, Pittman, or Stoops could bring steady across the board improvement.

Crain is right when he says "two things can be true." I will go further. Many things were true. Corn was not a good WR coach. Mason's defensive system was not the right fit for a Kevin Steele recruited defense. Mason's defensive system may have been the wrong defensive system for the SEC. Bobo was not a good OC. Harsin had no clue how to recruit in the deep south. Harsin and many of his assistants did not have the right fit to recruit in the SEC. Changing the offensive system from a spread option to an NFL pro-style in no way fit our personnel, especially our offensive line talent. Harsin dropped the ball on using the Portal and JUCO transfers to build a new offensive line. Harsin's system worked at Boise. It worked in the Group of 5 in the Pacific Northwest. It simply does not translate to the Power 5 nor to the Southeast. I do not think Harsin would be very successful at an Oregon or Washington without major adjustments. I do not think Harsin would be very successful at a Sun Belt Group of 5 school without major adjustments. Power 5 in the South? Disaster. Harsin wants to run an NFL-like program where every player is bought in and brings their A-game every day. That happened at Boise, where most of the players were just happy to be on scholarship after being ignored by Oregon and USC. You could go after the smart, motivated 2-star players and get a lot out of them. Boise's program was more appealing than Fresno State's. There is a similar "NFL-like program" in the Power 5, and it is Bama. Nick Saban has a program where every player is bought in and brings their A-game every day. But his players are prima-donna 5-stars and high 4-stars. And it takes a very different kind of coach and a very different kind of staff to get that kind of mindset out of players who have been told they are future NFL talent since they were 14 years old. That is not something that can easily be created overnight, at least not in a sustainable way. How do you make a 5-star all-state player hungry at the college level? How do you get a 5-star to wait their turn? How do you avoid the "Screw it, I'll just go to The Portal if I don't get what I want" mindset? How do you get a 5-star, or a high 4-star, to WANT to come to your program even if they may not start until their junior year? We are not going to have that overnight. We are going to have to build a Kentucky or Ole Miss level of success before we can get to an Alabama or Georgia level of success. We need an SEC program builder, not a Pacific Northwest Group of 5 program maintainer.

The problem with just running plays is you have far too many plays in your playbook, and you don't get synergy you can get with similar play styles. Think about the inside zone running play. You can run the inside zone. You can run the inside zone read option. You can run play-action off of the inside zone play. You can run the inside zone RPO with a slot receiver slant. You can run a split zone. You can run a split zone read option. In addition, you can have pre-snap reads for quick pass options coming off of the same running play. It is going to be similar blocking on all of those plays, and the complement each other because they create constraints on the defense that can then be exploited. You can do similar stuff with a buck sweep. Sweep to the RB, QB bootleg keeper, QB bootleg RPO, play action with a drop-back rather than bootleg, and pre-snap reads to the opposite side with a WR bubble screen. Again, the blocking will be similar, but since a bootleg pass take longer to develop the OL will pull to sell the run but not go down field, and for a drop-back they would pull then drop into pass protection. Finally, look at the Air Raid teams and how similar their plays can be. Again, there may be pre-snap reads that are included that dictate the side where the QB's first post-snap read goes.