aucom96

That’s it on me and Thorne. Get a QB in the portal. This kid isn’t ready for this level.

All the recruiting in the world isn’t going to fix this. Hugh is discount Gus. Three years, rinse and repeat.

Once again, we look unmotivated and poorly prepared.

That was a POWER stache. He did a discredit to the art with his performance here.

We haven’t had much to lose. That will change with top ten classes. All I’m saying is that Freeze will not be able to ignore the portal in favor of a traditional long term approach because both are now very much connected. Our hotshot receiver recruits will all come with a higher price tag next season, for example.

That's the problem with the traditional approach. You are having to strain your resources to keep these guys on the roster year after year. The further we get into the NIL era, the transfer portal will become impossible to ignore managing talent will be more important than just traditional recruiting. Freeze is going to have to get better at this part of the game, because no SEC team is waiting for year 5 or 6 to figure it out anymore.

Yeah, I suspect that is going to be pretty glaring in year three and four for Freeze if he doesn't change that trajectory. 2 and 3 star benchwarmers at Jack St. can only take you so far. I've heard the 25 class is much stronger for line, so hopefully we rectify that next year.

And unless you're loaded, kiss any quality depth goodbye. You'll have to shell out money to your bench to keep them from filling holes at rivals or the starting lineups at smaller schools. College football is really going to test its fans in the coming years.

Does record mean something? Well, if you play a P5 schedule. Now that apparently doesn't mean anything either. bammers are waving the SEC banner as an excuse, but we all know if it weren't bama or UGA in question, FSU would have been in. We've seen ourselves get screwed in a similar scenario. If we're going to dictate playoff selection on "who we just know" is better, then the regular season, the power fiver, none of that means anything.

If badgers, I wonder if they’ll shove Alvarez ceremonially back on the sidelines to beat us yet again?

I was pulling for the giant, fiery meteor to win, but like Linus waiting for the Great Pumpkin, I'm always left disappointed.

That's what I meant by it just being the reality, but it's also going to hurt the game. It already is. Players are going to keep jumping for more money, their development is going to suffer because they're jumping from one system to another but also because it's much harder to coach a "pro" who only cares about the NIL dollars. Teams that don't have big bank accounts are going to struggle to put rosters together, won't be able to keep top playmakers and the haves versus have nots is going to become more pronounced. That's not going to help Auburn. Personally, I wish the NFL would just form a minor league and let those who are in it for the paycheck go ahead and get started out of college. There are still a lot of young men and women who value a full-ride scholarship with food, training, equipment, lodging, million dollar facilities, free promotion, etc. enough to make college sports enjoyable. But, again, this is a new game now. It's certainly good for the players, but it's going to have definite downsides for more fanbases than not.

I don't really know what Thorne can do. We started out with a bad offensive line built of transfer bandaids and one of the worst group of receivers I've seen at Auburn. We didn't have a coherent offensive plan at all until late in the season, and that was largely built around read-option and the run... due to receivers who drop more than they catch. He has a good arm, seems to have adjusted more to the speed of the game and is a gutsy player. But no defense is going to worry about him or our passing game next season. We are still going to be patching an offense together with bandaids and that's going to keep us playing more option and running the ball. I'm much more wary of transfers after this past year. They can have good looking numbers due to their competition level and come to the SEC and be completely ineffective. If there is a difference making QB in the portal, it will cost us probably most of whatever we have in NIL to get them against numerous teams with bigger bank accounts. And we'll need that money to buy more patches on the lines, in the secondary, at receiver again... NIL has really ruined this game, in my opinion. It's just the reality, now, but it's going to make things harder.

We just lost in embarrassing fashion to Alabama. They usually are at their most benevolent when that happens.

Muschamp, Steele, Jeff Grimes, Garner, Rocker

Gus also padded his numbers with a lot of undersized projects that didn't really fit at any position, tight ends that never played and the QBs in the timeframe you mentioned were Gatewood (a bust) and Nix, who spent most of his time at Auburn running for his life due to lack of OL. Gus' best recruiting was for the side of the ball he didn't run and was pretty much FORCED to acknowledge when Muschamp was shoved into the picture. The talent gap we are dealing with is more due to Gus than anyone else. He thought his scheme had an answer for everything and it very much didn't. Harsin was the worst possible follow-up, because he thought his on the field coaching could make up for not recruiting at all.

I think NIL and the portal are going to substantially slow down rebuilds rather than help them along, so it might not be a quickly as we want. Regardless, Finebaum is quick to praise Auburn when we're down. That's nothing new. He'll be just a quick to tear them apart when we do get back on our feet.

Ok. It was a clearly targeted pass to a receiver in one on one coverage rather than an up for grabs throw, crowding receivers into a spot which is what signifies most Hail Mary passes. It wasn’t a lucky grab. Our man was beat and we gave the QB an easy throw.

That wasn’t a Hail Mary. It was a QB with a big arm making a successful fade pass to a top college receiver with zero pressure. It was one of the stupidest defensive coaching calls I’ve ever seen and that was the result.

Freeze is at best an 8 win coach and not sure he gets there. Then UT will likely have run Heupel off. He beat Saban, once. He’s next. The he’ll have no talent. And on and on.

Never the coaches fault… until you can’t deny it. Three or four more years, rinse, repeat.

Not saying much.

Maybe, but you can also stop pretending Freeze is anywhere near that level. (Saban) He’d better recruit at the top of the SEC, because U have yet to watch a game where I’ve felt this guy was in control.

We had players who could field a punt. Coaches put one in who couldn’t. We had players who had kept Milroe off balance with pressure all night. Coaching let him sit back and wait for a receiver to get open. Coaching tells a guy to let a high kickoff go so we have time for a few plays. Coaching results in a player running right at the heart of the coverage behind his 10. We had the players to win this game. We didn’t have the coaching when it counted.