aucom96

It already is. Harsin had better up his recruiting very quickly. Some Auburn fans think they'll tolerate another 5-6 win season now, but the reality will have Harsin's seat blazing hot with a quickness.

Harsin had better be this Saban-esque miracle maker many seem to think he is because right now we look to have a number of very lean, unpleasant seasons ahead of us at this rate.

I hate bend don’t break, but I hate the idea we’re something less than a parallel move to a team like A&M. Those who have always wanted Auburn to be that perpetual underdog who gets a big win or two a decade may be getting their wish.

But does he want school? Probably not. I don't see how this doesn't transform college football into a giant, unbalanced shell of itself in the end. The idea that schools like Auburn are going to be able to come up with some formula and hold their own in this world is laughable. For the small schools, why even invest the money?

If Dillingham is brought in, it's to recruit. Frankly, that's not a bad notion if we can't land some major improvement. If we can't improve our talent base, it won't matter what offense we run.

That sort of thinking was why we hired Malzahn and stuck with him so many years. Yes, he can't recruit lines, his defenses typically suck and his offense is monotonous...but he can beat the big boys with less. Look at his record against Saban! If we're going to fight with the Mississippi schools for third or fourth, we never should have bought Gus out.

Our last coach floundered around Auburn for nearly a decade before we parted ways. His predecessor was only fired because he had completely lost control of the program to an alarming degree. The guy before that had about a decade to get his program going. Harsin will get his time, but he's also got to show results. He won't get forever.

Ok. When 95% of the teams in college football can't realistically compete anymore, that massive amounts of money will get considerably less massive. I hope their "fair share" adjusts accordingly.

Returning talent levels looked to be roughly on par with an 8 win Malzahn type season, but with a new coach and system I expected some bumps. My preseason prediction was 7 wins. My expectations... More physical. This didn't happen. We played a very loose zone defense with minimal pass rush, our offensive line looked worse at times from last season, we couldn't run the ball with any consistency and relied primarily on Bo Nix scrambling out of the pocket...same as last season. Better discipline. We were very slightly better in overall penalties committed per game over the course of the season. We still have issues tackling. Turnover margin was much worse this season and our receivers were pretty bad all around. Special teams was as bad as I've seen in a number of years. Improvement over the season. This was the most disturbing to me. We definitely seemed to regress over the course of the season, continually blowing leads and looking lost in the second half. The defense showed some improvement in spots, but overall it was not encouraging. Improved recruiting. This remains to be seen, but right now things aren't looking good. So...I didn't expect championships or anything, but I also didn't expect our biggest successes to come against Arkansas and Ole Miss either... or to be returning to the Birmingham Bowl. Harsin has a lot to prove.

Ehhh… I still don’t miss Gus.

Harsin was always a big gamble. He’s obviously been given leave to play this his way and we will see. There’s a big difference between Boise and the SEC and we saw that exemplified in his first year. All of this “culture” talk had better pan out because excitement has come crashing back down to earth. The honeymoon is over.

Do you people who keep posting this realize how silly it is? If you don’t like the roads, why don’t you go fix them yourself? If you don’t like what the cardiologist says, why don’t you go operate on yourself?

He's pulling down 5 mill a year to do so. He has to recruit. I'll wait and see on whoever he hires, but if it's Hill... it's hard to see how that puts us in a better position in recruiting then we were in with Bobo.

Recruiting has to be priority number one right now. I expect us to promote or bring on another Harsin Boise guy and I think that move would set us back quite a bit. Maybe the PTB have told Harsin he has a decade to turn this thing around, but that's the only thing that would explain a lot of what we're doing. It would make sense to bring in an exciting hire at OC as offense is where the game is being played right now, but I just don't see that sort of move with this coach unless someone makes him.

I think it’s more about recruiting. Unless the Boise coaches have ties in our recruiting areas I don’t know about, a Boise heavy staff could put us farther behind on the trail for a few years.

Wow. That was a complete waste of text. (The blog post, not your post)

He should say that. This team went backwards over the course of the season. Some of that is injury and depth related, but we got manhandled by an average A&M team, choked on a historical level against state, managed to lose to a much less talented and equally banged up South Carolina squad and even though we played above our heads, we still blew a double digit lead to bama. There’s certainly positives, but this was not a good start for Harsin.

Harsin commands respect NOW because he’s Saban-like in his process/culture talk and rock-faced demeanor. If he can recruit, I think he’ll even start to scare them. If he can’t pick it up on that end, however, he’ll be Gus 2.0

I appreciate the post and all but I’m interested in Auburn winning those games, not just really getting close and playing the forever scrappy underdog role. We’re better than that.

Development was decent. It had hiccups, but I think escaping Malzahn’s schemes helped tremendously. Harsin has proven that he and his staff can pre-plan well, but their ability to adjust in game is not SEC level. He got abused by some veteran coaches. Talent was a major issue,yes, but outside of bama and UGA, all of the SEC is struggling with the portal and keeping up in recruiting. And as others have said, that’s the key to what we’ve got with Harsin. Recruiting should be better than it is right now. Hopefully it improves dramatically, because if we have a successful head coach with Harsin, it’s going to take a few years for him to grow into an SEC level coach. If he’s still turning in six or seven win seasons in year four - scrappy teams or not - those doing the hiring will likely run out of patience.

I still think we made a mistake with Harsin, but we were prepared to play this game with significant handicaps. Unfortunately with Harsin, adjusting seems as much a problem for him as his predecessor.

Great effort by our D, but we lost it. Sad thing is this might have been our best shot at bama for several years going forward.

If that was the plan, it was a huge failure. Auburn ranks 92 in average TOP. This offense has not consistently attempted to establish the run all season long.

I keep seeing this word. Saban likes to use it, but the only "culture" that leads to Saban winning is that blue chip recruits see Alabama as the top launching pad to the NFL. We can recruit a bunch of high 20 classes with the "right culture" and we'll be fighting with the Mississippi schools for last in the west every year. Harsin had better recruit or he's out in under five.