AUFriction

Involving TEs in the passing game more doesn't necessarily mean throwing to them more. It means designing routes where they are more likely to be usable. I saw a lot more complexity on TE routes on Saturday than I've seen from Malzahn's offense in some time (if ever). Put another way, they were running routes and getting open, but so were our receivers. The receivers were more open and created a better opportunity for a big play. If the receivers weren't getting open, we would have seen a lot more TE receptions.

The pats will have my support as long as Cam/Stiddy are under center, unless of course New England pulls the same kind of nonsense Carolina did. Once they’re gone, I’ll stop caring about the pats.

There’s a lot of people saying this, and I don’t agree either. He was never elite, but he was solid. His vision was hit or miss (probably because he’s only played the position for 2 years), and he lacked elite speed. But he was a patient and very powerful runner, and had good lateral quickness (i.e., he juked defenders well). He was also a legit threat in the wildcat because he was a qb in high school. He also had decent hands. Reminded me a lot of a young Peyton barber but with more versatility, and we know how he did after college despite everyone doubting him as Auburn’s starter.

I can’t believe no one has picked him yet. Tyrone Truesdell!

Well, the weird thing was that they were actually pretty good during Ellis Johnson’s first year. Maybe Chizik’s staff was developing defensive guys but was schematically bad at calling plays and Johnson was good at calling plays but couldn’t develop talent? Im not sold on that explanation per se. I’m just legitimately confused at how 2009-2015 had such bad defenses except a good front 7 in 2010 and a randomly overall good defense in 2013.

Hastings is now back with the Pats.

https://247sports.com/Player/Caylin-Newton-67427/ While it is exciting to have another Newton on campus, he wasn’t that highly rated out of high school. We’ve had better rated quarterbacks buried in the depth chart in recent years. He will probably be 3-4 on the depth chart next year if he remains at QB.

I’m not up there, but I’m the offspring of someone who lived in Wisconsin in the glory years and still have a ton of family up there. I’m hearing that it’s a little more split within the fan base. Some fans went into the draft expecting a high round receiver to be a part of the plan and were furious when we walked away with no receiver in the draft and a QB drafted in the first round. Others were initially surprised by the draft, but felt better about it after the organization explained their decision. Love was apparently drafted because he was available. The original plan was to pick up an elite receiver in the first round, but, when they got to their first pick, they didn’t feel like any of the receivers that were left were any better than what was already on their roster. So they instead grabbed a QB that they felt could be AR’s eventual successor.

Most of the projections I’ve read have Cam either going to the Pats or the Jags. As much as I hate Bellichek, I’d much rather see him in New England.

Strongest positions on the packers roster: QB RB Packers draft picks so far: QB RB Any outsiders have any insight here? Us packer fans are confused.

I just hope he ends up anywhere but Chicago or Minnesota. If he did, I’d have to root against him. 😕 I’d actually be fine with NE. He could spend a few years as a mentor to Stidham, who I think could really develop a lot working with Cam.

More likely that they are going to sign a vet to get them through a few years with a plan to try to keep developing Stidham. I think Stidham could become a good NFL quarterback, but I’m not sure he’s ready. Maybe they’ll sign Cam, and Cam can help mentor him. One thing Stidham still needs to develop is in being more of a vocal leader... One of Cam’s strengths.

I agree with the odd officiating in the secondary. It was even more apparent after rewatching the game this morning. At least it seemed mostly even, but I'm sure the aggie fans, having lost, are griping about 1 or 2 of those calls that may have legitimately ended scoring drives for them. Still, they don't have much to complain about since they were holding our defensive line all game. We would have stopped them on a few of those later scoring drives if they had been correctly called for holds. It seems like the refs were mostly content to just let them play the game, which I'd prefer to flags coming out every 20 seconds over anything that even resembles a penalty.

Honestly, I think we are trying to keep other teams from having film. If Gatewood threw it more, other teams (including A&M) would strategize around that. By making him exclusively a runner in these early games, defenses will expect him to be only used in that capacity. Wouldn’t surprise me to see Gatewood throw a deep pass next week when they sell out to stop him from running it. I was a little surprised about the flea flicker. We have kept things really vanilla so far, aside from that one play. I think Gus has some stuff up his sleeve for later. Also, I noticed he had Joey and Bo in at the same time during some plays. I expect that will turn into some kind of reverse pass at some point this season.

Most of the plays in the first half were perimeter runs and perimeter passes. We seemed to focus on inside runs more in the second half. So maybe all the perimeter stuff just paid off in the second half?

Bingo. We got cute on first down last night. Too many perimeter runs and screen passes. Would be interesting to see how the number would have been different if we had committed to the downhill running game early instead of this dink-and-dunk perimeter stuff. To be fair though, the 1-16 is a little misleading. We didn't use a lot of tempo last night, and Tulane was milking the play clock on every play. We only got 5 possessions in the 2nd half, and one of them ended after 1 play (with the fumble). We also sat on the ball in the redzone on the final drive instead of scoring, which we could have easily done. Take that into account and it is likely that 4, 7, 8, 10, and 16 would have been passes. Most of the rest of the numbers would have come up if we had committed to the inside run game early instead of trying to throw underneath and run to the perimeter.

OL did better than they’re getting credit for. Oregon was blitzing the heck out of us, and using odd looks to do it.

To add to your point, MSU only had 69 yards passing. We held their passing attack almost completely in check. It was by no means a stellar day for the defense, but keeping an opponent under 25 points and under 100 yards passing is hardly bad defense. That game was lost because we didn’t put the ball in the end zone once.

Unless he signs with UGA.

Something I’ve noticed (and has been pointed out on here) about Kam... He’s not a patient runner. He tries to hit the prespecified hole as quickly as possible rather than patiently waiting on the blocking to develop. Honestly, I think he’s more powerful than folks give him credit for, and I think he’s still a very talented RB. Unfortunately, with our poor blocking this year, holes aren’t opening where they are expected to, so he’s not able to be effective in our offense right now. Thus, I think Kam getting buried in the depth chart is less about talent and more about how his talent is more limited than some of the others with the poor OL play.

We clearly went passive defensively in the 4th quarter once the game was in hand. I wonder what the defensive numbers would have looked like if we accounted for that.

I don’t actually mind us going passive in that 4th quarter. The game was more or less in hand. We want A&M thinking we are worse than we are. Better chance that they come into the game expecting us to roll over. Also, we’re pretty beat up right now. No reason to risk further injury. Schwartz was clearly involved in several RPO plays in the second half. Ole Miss was selling out on the perimeter pass game. No idea what Gus said, but apparently it fired up the players. So I’m glad he did It. Ole Miss threw it a lot, and our guys did a reasonably good job defending the pass. Ole Miss’s completion percentage was not very good.