au302

56 minutes ago, KnightTiger said:

And according to Marcelo BJ isn’t a serious candidate so either it’s another smokescreen or Marcelo is lying

We are setting a record for the number of smokescreens in a hire

This isn't just fan rumors, the pay sites have said Cohen interviewed him a while ago and he was extremely impressive. He is part of the Moo State tree as well, but has connections with a wide array of coaches. Is he my first, second, or even fifth pick? No, but don't discount his potential just because he's young and has no HC experience. There have been successful teams to hire assistants before.

Brian Johnson and the Eagles play tonight. Make guys like Dabo and Franklin say no today, and then you can fallback to Johnson tomorrow. The Freeze frenzy is feeling more and more like either Sexton leaking him to try and pin us in a corner, or Cohen leaking it to blow up the fan reaction and make it untenable 

2 minutes ago, Browning4AU said:

Out of Riley, Kelly, and Whittingham, who would this fanbase all get behind and collectively support. Riley would be the only one that would possibly be a good fit IMO, but I question how good he could be in the SEC. 

Whittingham was who I thought of when he made the post. Always had him in the back of my mind. Feel like he'd be a great fit here IF he could recruit. Big if there of course 

I'd like to see how many unread emails Cohen has in his inbox right now, lol. I know several people were blowing him up apparently. Roberts too. 

1 hour ago, EagleEye67 said:

There is no consensus hire here - not even Caddy.  If he were hired and lost a few in '23, it would start all over again. 

Agreed, but you can limit the divisiveness. I say this because apparently one of Roberts big goals was to bring people together. No coach will get 100% buy in, but the backlash I've seen this morning to this news is crazy. I've never seen it this bad, even when Steele was rumored

It's a divisive hire, at best. I think he'd win, but the "family" will divide once again after Caddy brought us together for the first time in years

I love it too, but enjoy it now because this may be the last time we see it here. Harsin/Bobo/Friend are all stuck in 2005. Lane and Freeze.... they are pretty much exclusively out of the gun. I don't think they even have fullbacks on the roster, or ever really go under center. Jeff Grimes does use it a bit though, lol

Fortunately our new admin is slowly easing the battered fan syndrome out of me. Roberts was really scaring me, but credit to him for what's going on.... unless they hire Grimes after all of this. Just seems like a different AU where the admin is not operating off "fambly" or "emotions." That's for fans to do. Roberts seems to like the big hire, and is apparently not a yes man.

And John Cohen, well, go read up on him for yourselves. Dude apparently makes guys like Harsin and Galloway look like choir boys, but unlike them, he has won big. Point being, these guys are very to the point and possibly ruthless, and they don't seem to be the type to get caught up in the emotions of a story like Caddy and then make rash, emotion driven decisions afterwards that they end up regretting. 

Look we all want the coach to care about the players personally, and he should, but that's way overblown. It's college. These guys are 18+. Several who are engaged, married, have their own families. This isn't pee wee ball where the HC is a second dad and teaching you how to apply football to life lessons.

These guys were raised in their hometowns and prepared for college just like everyone else. It's a business, and they know that. Hell, they embrace it. Sorry to sound harsh, but it's really not. The HC should care and bond with them, but it's just one category of the job, not how you base hires imo

16 minutes ago, VegasEagle said:

I do not like the idea of hiring Lane, which opens the door for Sanders to Ole Miss

That would suck, but they'll probably just go with Jeff Lebby. Would make a lot of sense for them too

I'm begging y'all. Please do not let emotion get in the way of rational judgement. Caddy is awesome and maybe he'd be great, but this is possibly a once in a lifetime chance.

We are the biggest job on the market, new facility opening next month, 10 mil NIL war chest that is just getting underway, and a President and AD who are doing things their own way. Let's go big game hunting. I'm talking poach a P5 coach type big game

The Schmedding story is fascinating. Only Boise guy retained. Suddenly he changes like 50 things personnel wise and schematic wise. Dude disguises coverages, sends exotic blitzes. I mean it's been drastic and it's working.

This is also what was said before the year. Boise fans said he was known to be hyper aggressive DC that confuses QB's with the stuff he does. Begs the question on if Harsin wasn't letting him run what he wanted imo

You could see signs of good coaching in Nix last year. Now, was that from Bobo or Harsin I do not know. But, even though it wasn't good enough, he had better footwork and tried to stay in the pocket at times. Most of us knew it would take time. Hard to make an astronomical leap in one offseason, but he did take positive steps last year 

Dude could never catch a break. Very tough for him. He and Brahms both man. Not great players by any means, but damn they could never catch a break 

It really depends on the style of HC you want. Do you want the hotshot former OC's (Gus, Hars), defensive minded guys (Tubs, Chiz), or a third category... CEO/Culture HC (Ed O, Dabo, Pittman)

Let's use Ed O for example. The dude is not an X's and O's genius at any level. In fact, he probably shouldn't even be a HS DC. But he succeeded for 3 main reasons imo:

1. Surrounded by fantastic coordinators and stayed out their way (Brady and Aranda) to totally run their respective sides of the ball. 

2. Pumped the team up (Culture). He would do all sorts of crazy stuff like slap himself in the face in the tunnel. He looked like a maniac clown at times, but he was willing to embarrass himself to help motivate the team

3. Manage the game. This is the hardest part for a culture coach imo. It's hard for anyone.

I think right now, Caddy could fit the CEO role. And don't take this the wrong way. It's not like an Ed O situation where he's football stupid. He's not.

He just doesn't have OC experience yet, which is fine, but he'd probably need to go the CEO route unless he wants to go OC in the G5 and develop his own offense

I'd rather just remove the interim tag from Caddy and hire elite coordinators than do this, and trust me I don't want to promote Caddy yet, as much as I love him. Let him get more seasoning 

2 hours ago, JMassie11 said:

We had a ton of press coverage and was able to disrupt the routes long enough for the DL to force their QB either out of the pocket or the check down throw to the RB which it seemed to have a LB there to make a play nearly every time. In the second 1/2 their only success in passing was the occasional deep ball and the long drag route over the middle which one ended up being a TD. 

This makes sense. Usually I'm so used to seeing Will Rogers get the ball out lightning quick and carve you up methodically. It did seem like he wasn't finding guys and having to resort to what you said, or just hold the ball long and take a sack

Not an X's and O's expert either, but these are a few of what I've read...

Offense- Used outside zone more. Apparently we rarely did that under Harsin. Seemed like we also ran the toss sweep with Jarquez a bit more like we used to last year and let him find space. With Robby, looks like they started to roll him out the pocket a little bit more and let him attempt throws from there or tuck and run. Hard to scheme around him.

Defense- This is where more of the changes happened, and they were dramatic. Personnel wise a lot more rotation on DL. At LB there were massive changes. Steiner only played 6 snaps, and Barton Lester and Levant rotated in his spot. This caused them to use Pappoe more in space and as a DE type LB. Secondary JD Rhym seemed to play the whole game, and Marquise Gilbert got a lot of snaps for the first time. 

Where I am curious is what we did schematically to slow the air raid like we did. They started out fast the first two drives, but Leach and Rogers were really flustered and frustrated for most of the rest of the game. Not sure if we were disguising coverages, but whatever it was worked. 

No doubt the ACL has hurt, but I truly think Anders broke well before that. I was at the LSU game at LSU last year when things were looking promising for this staff, and he was the one guy out there that looked shell shocked. You could tell in his body language he had no confidence. Missed like 3 kicks that game.

Most of these kicks seem to have the distance. Think the ACL may affect him more on the kickoffs, but regardless, it's clear it's time to try Mcpherson. It sucks for Anders, but it's SEC football. No favorites, play the best

Steele is a guy who is as good as the personnel he has. If he has terrible personnel (2020 here/Miami now), he is absolutely horrible. If he has great personnel, like he had here from Muschamp, then he is very good. But he's not a guy you want trying to help you rebuild a defense due to this imo. His recruiting is overrated 

29 minutes ago, Dual-Threat Rigby said:

M'ba amongst others...I'm not sure why the premise of using depth was just blatantly ignored by the previous regimes. It's not like the starting guys looked so overwhelmingly good or something. Those rotational guys had heart. We got consistent pressure against a guy who can get the ball out almost immediately some plays. This team couldn't get this type of pressure against teams half as good as MSU, and our DL being dog freaking tired by halftime was a huge part of that 

Defense was a joy to watch and a lot of changes. Barton Lester and Levant really solidified MIKE and let OP play more in space, which he's good at. More rotation at DL, and JD Rhym taking over. 

Plus the adjustments were phenomenal. Leach and Rogers were very flustered and frustrated. That's extremely hard to do. Hats off to all of them 

15 minutes ago, auburnatl1 said:

Totally correct. Especially with a public institution.  The issue I had with it was simply the how.  It looked clumsy and contrived. Too public, too crisis mode, leaks everywhere, Harsin was even out of country, and with the proximity to the losing streak it was bound to spring up conspiracy thinking in the media.

AU was probably right and, to your point, obligated. But the execution imo was a who’s in charge optics train wreck.

Jay Gogue handled that as poorly as a leader could. Just absolutely incompetent and awful

Y'all are letting idiots like Goodman and Justin Lee rile y'all up like political news outlets. Starting to think Harsin stole their wives or something. They're dramatizing for clicks because "Harsin is a horrible person who sabotaged" is a lot juicier for them than "Harsin's a good guy that was in over his head". 

Seen some players call the online, behind the screen bs out. We're all guilty of it, but it doesn't make it right. From the outside looking in he's handled himself well. Apparently delivered a nice final message to the team and released a nice statement today.

He deserves all the football criticism in the world, but I've just never seen the evidence of some monster, psychopath of a person, at least yet. Not saying it's not true, but the evidence so far is weak at best