MaitlandTiger

I just watched the Penn State game again. That offense was pure Gus (later years) without the misdirection, and with more TE. Passing game was not quite as slow-to-develop but was still uncreative with far too many low percentage throws. It was vanilla and mediocre without even talking about the turnover and final play abortion. With the exception of two series where we ran it consistently. I think it’s clear we need to rely on our running game more. But it’s not going to matter with our deer-in-the -headlights pass defense. They were lost. Took damn good athletes and made them look bad. Zero passes broken up. With the teams we face coming up, we have a lot of work to do. My biggest concern is that they stopped running it down their throats when it was working, and switched back to low percentage passing, one after the other. And Harsin or Mason said they just need to change “a few little things” on pass D, when it is clearly more than that. We have all seen our offenses, and defenses, make dramatic improvement overnight, unexpectedly. But that’s what we need. Tweaking ain’t gonna do it. Run, run, run the football and scratch the hybrid zone D catastrophe. Ole Miss in particular will lay some unreal numbers on us, otherwise.

I used the pause button a bunch last night. I paused the action, and it was uncanny how many times we had either a linebacker or a DB 10 or 15 yards off the line of scrimmage all by himself with open field around him with a radius of maybe 10-15 feet, then a TE with an equal amount of green around him. 28 for 32!! And they caught everything thrown at them, in stride. We were confused, flummoxed, and running in the wrong direction. They were busted-play-style wide open all night. Yes the accuracy was from lack of pressure but the fact that they were wide open was due in part from the scheme. My hat is off to Penn State. I absolutely cannot believe we did not truly adjust. 10 for 10 in the second half shows me we did not adjust. It’s the lack of adjustment that worries me more than anything. And we were still in the football game! We had a beautiful crystal punch bowl filled with delicious ice cold punch painstakingly made out of the finest ingredients, and Derek Mason squatted over it and dropped a giant turd into it.

Send 2 receivers into the first zone. DB focuses on the WR nearest him, lined up to the right on the Line, inside edge of his zone, TE is on the left side of the line running into the same “zone”. CB/ LB hoping S picks up the other. But the safety is locked on on the WR on the outside of his zone. Unaccounted-for receiver/TE in the middle is wide open when he hits the seam between the zones. He’s past the LBs And DBs are so far from him that it gives the quarterback one or two seconds to see it and another second to step into the throw. That’s why Clifford was so accurate last night. Absolutely wide-open receivers and plenty of time to get his mechanics correct. Like Disney World for a QB.

And sending those big TEs deep down the middle was brilliant. We had no idea what to do with them. Obviously. Hats off to PSU coaching. 28-32, 280/2 tds! I’m very concerned.

IMO the difference was the Coaching. Not so much the execution (which was poor except for a few offensive series where we ran heavily). A’s for PSU and F’s for AU. Mason in particular was severely outclassed. All night. The scheme was the reason we were abused through the air, I think, more so than poor execution. My hat is off to Penn State for superb scheming and play-calling. Opposing quarterbacks are torching us for 78% completion rates but Sean Clifford’s 88% was the cherry on top. It was on Mason (not figuring out how to pressure, and stubbornly sticking with that zone) with kudos to PSU OC for perfectly exploiting it. 10-10 passing in the second half. Mason crapped the bed.

Occam’s Razor Theory says the most logical conclusion is the correct conclusion the vast majority of the time. This was just a really bad decision. Just bad. Awful. Cringeworthy. And it wasn’t a catchable pass and Cole is right that pass that DRob lost sight of was also uncatchable

I think that’s on Derek Mason. He crapped the bed last night

Bo left it all on the field, extended many drives, plays his heart out. But, it is what it is. Win or lose, we are going to be doing it with Bo at the helm. He is not consistently the playmaker we hoped he would be at this point in his career, but VERY FEW are. Precious few. He sits in a large group that has that level of talent. That group is enormous compared to elite quarterbacks. He will be the reason for a win more often than being the reason for a loss. He is very serviceable, occasionally better than that, and probably slightly above average in the SEC and is showing improvement. We hoped for a little bit more, and I think he is maybe close. He may never make that jump. He hasn’t really shown anything suggesting that he will make that jump to the next level of talent. But he is the best we have. Big gap between QB 1 and QB 2/3. Now, ironically, we saw what better coaching can do when you have one of these serviceable-but-not-elite quarterbacks. Better coaching lifts a Sean Clifford.

I’m not meaning to get confrontational or anything, and you had me up to Coaching, but you stated that you were 1. pretty happy with the coaching and 2. the defense was close to being elite. Offense play calls were pedestrian, with some catastrophic. Defensively We are looking elite in stopping the run, BUT Sean Clifford, a veteran but middling-to-good quarterback, picked us apart, going 28 for 32 with 280 yards. Now, I don’t believe it is our personnel on the field that is responsible for that, and I lay that enormous turd at the feet of Derek Mason, but that is anything but elite. Again, I love our athletes and I think individually many are indeed elite, but the performance was not elite nor did allowing 28 of 32 passes for 280 yards, 2 TDS, and a win, even come close to suggesting we are improving there, much less get anywhere within 100 miles of Elite status.

I agree with the overall essence of this post in that “We are just not ready yet” but I think the reason for that is coaching and not the athletes (by and large). Per the original first post and breakdown: Football is not a democracy, it is like the military with a chain of command. With the blunders coming from the top, you can’t really pick apart the soldiers in their attempt. I believe it is the schemes, not necessarily the athletes. (WRs did play poorly). Bo tried valiantly but was meh. Play calling was Bush League. Offensively, In our attempt to be unpredictable, we were predictable. And on Defense it was coaching. And the superior coach capitalized on that. And failure to adjust. LB were put in a lose:lose situation. Then we often rushed three linemen. Two of our three are doubleteamed in that scenario. WE WERE CLEARLY OUTCOACHED. We were not just slightly outcoached, they literally saw what we were doing, exploited it perfectly and exploited it for THE FULL 60 MINUTES. And we were still in the football game because I think we have great athletes. Now the question is, do we acknowledge that, and make the changes? Or double down on this and get the crap kicked out of us by some good SEC teams? Time will tell. Bobo was just awful, and Mason was embarrassing. And we were still in the football game.

If we keep throwing to him, and keep up the play calling that we have seen, it will be very very telling. (Not talking about the gimme games). I am hoping we have coordinators that are willing to change what is obviously not working, versus coordinators that are just going to double down on their decisions. Next game doesn’t matter. I hope to see a huge change when we hit the meat of the schedule. We made little-to-no adjustments last night. Or, rather, we ran it down their throats on a couple of series but then we abandoned that strategy which was clearly working. Switched back to Low percentage throws. And the defense clearly made no adjustments as Clifford went 10 for 10 in the second half and picked us apart. I am unbelievably disappointed in Derek Mason and Mike “Retread” Bobo showed us nothing last night to indicate that he is anything other than fair-to-poor. Man, were we outcoached.

Congrats on the win. Also you all have great coaching and I hope it takes you all the way this year.

Three teams completing 78% of their passes, he’s been horrible all year. Last night, he was embarrassed. I’m a layman and could see how they exploited the zones. Picked apart the seams. Beautifully. And that’s with Sean Clifford.

Absolutely, good Lord he had all day back there, but on the PSU 2 yard run for TD late in game, I think they sent 4-wide, out all the way to the the sideline, drew our guys wide, handed ball off and waltzed in to that same side. They had a lot of well executed, creative and successful plays. We didn’t.

I am ignorant compared to most of the AuFamily. Never played, never coached. But I’m a fairly bright guy, and a rabid fan. Of all things Auburn (class of ‘96). I think what burned me up tonight was watching such wonderful play calling by PSU, then ours. Like point/counterpoint and we were clearly outclassed. If someone as ignorant as I, could see that, I’m sure the coaches/ former players were apoplectic. I fully realize that you cannot just run the ball 80 times. I know you need to mix it up and keep them honest and set up the run but, it was just such a difference in playcalling, I was just disappointed so then I started running off at the mouth. My mouth gets me in a lot of trouble.

I was wondering about that. It seemed like Franklin caught it, was screaming at the ref, and punted anyway? I figured he would have just refused to play the next down, until the situation was addressed. So instead of that, he just trotted the punt team out there? If so, your are certainly correct that that was most assuredly a huge mistake. (I was mostly just venting on not using Tank/Jarquez more, and the low-percentage throws, and of course the fade!). That fade was Taylor made for: 1. Better QB and go-to WR and 2. Up-by-21, “what the hell, let’s try that fade we were talking about”.

I very respectfully disagree with some of this. I’m no former player or coach but I think this loss is solely on the coaching. Bobo gets an F and Mason a D. Yes we need a couple of receivers to step up, badly, but these guys are following orders. I think we have serious talent overall. But we were clearly outcoached. DBs looked sloppy but i think it was the scheme. Spotted them 7, in ultra-hostile environment, and could have won. With the correct D scheme, and competent (not excellent, just competent) play calling it appeared to me that we win this game handily.

We have talent. We’ve got some great athletes. They’ve got heart. They are strong, fast, and well conditioned. This is going to sound like an overreaction, but I believe the playcalling in this game, particularly the offense but also the defense, was literally so bad that I would be OK with firing Bobo now. Vanilla, mind-boggling, predictable, I think everybody that watched that game understands that we are going to lose a lot of football games this year. It’s just not good and it’s not auburn caliber. We deserve better coaching than this. The players deserve better. Wow. Horrible. Ultra-low percentage passing on first down. The trick play. The fade. The only reason we were in that position on fourth down was because of that low percentage pass on first down I still can’t believe that fade. It played out EXACTLY like anyone would have predicted it would. And the defensive scheme was atrocious. The players deserve better. I think we have unreal talent. We spotted them seven points, and we were still in this football game. On the road against a higher rated opponent and a hostile environment. We were clearly the better athletes. I just can’t believe what I just watched. but, because Coaching is part of the overall package, and based on coaching alone, Penn State was certainly the better team tonight

Outcoached from top to bottom. They are clearly not up to the task. Athletes like this, and that is what we get out of it. Really disappointing. If we ran the ball more often, we win this ball game even with inferior coaching and the costly turnover. I just can’t believe how bad this playcalling has been.

I just can’t believe we called that play. I can’t believe any of those passing plays on that drive. On national TV, we embarrass ourselves with that playcalling. The athletes do not deserve to shoulder the blame for this loss. Unbelievable

I cant believe what I just saw. Who dialed that one up?????????

Cant believe we passed it on first down. Bobo should be embarrassed.

Once again the opponent offense is calling a much better game. We could pull this one out, but we have been outcoached.

Stop them here and then run it down their throats. Huge series here.

We tackle better, and open up the playbook, we have a shot. This is a vanilla offense we have shown.