Aubie7 0 Posted October 3, 2005 Share Posted October 3, 2005 One glaring area that stood out was the running game for Auburn. We had 123 yards total. Yes, I understand that USC staked the line of scrimmage, but they were ranked 116 out 119 college teams in rushing defense. Surely they have stacked the line against other teams? Other teams will do this to us also.This is where coaching comes into play. I was glad to see the sprint men double teamed, while we returned punts. Also, the use of two returners seemed to help. The best thing was, finally, we punted into the sideline some and contained the return man. Good job of coaching! The kicking game is still weak in field goals and kickoffs. The ball nees to go thru the endzone for no possible return. A good job of coverage was done by the kickoff team. I fear we will fall in the polls after sitting out this coming week. Some teams win and they move by leaps and bounds. If Auburn wins against Arkansas, we may enter the top twenty. An 8-1 record, if possible, by the Georgia game may squeeze us into the top ten. There are too many "ifs" right now to tell where this team is headed. Right now we are 2-3 wins away from the Independence Bowl. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tigerwalkin 2 Posted October 3, 2005 Share Posted October 3, 2005 Until last week, USC's defensive line was moving around a lot as well as standing straight up when the play began. I wasn't a defensive lineman, but you don't have to be a genius to see that it's much easier to knock the DL off the ball if they are standing straight up! See UGA's and bama's success running the ball agains them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moe 0 Posted October 3, 2005 Share Posted October 3, 2005 Look man, our average starting field positition had to be on the 50. And yes the did put 8-9 guys in the box every play. We may have only had 123 yards rushing, but had 5 rushing TD's. I'm very impressed with the running and it will only get better. You heard it here first - Lester will be the starter by years end. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AWK 0 Posted October 3, 2005 Share Posted October 3, 2005 Quote from a Gamecocks fan(who also happened to coach High School Football), "I watched the UAT vs USC and the AU vs USC games, and I have to say, Your defense looked more solid than UAT's all around. I know High School ball is different than college, but Its easy for a coach to notice a better thing." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TitanTiger 20,539 Posted October 3, 2005 Share Posted October 3, 2005 One glaring area that stood out was the running game for Auburn. We had 123 yards total. Yes, I understand that USC staked the line of scrimmage, but they were ranked 116 out 119 college teams in rushing defense. Surely they have stacked the line against other teams? Other teams will do this to us also.This is where coaching comes into play. I'm sure they will. But very few teams can commit that many men every play to the run and not get burned by the pass, which is what we did to SC. And part of this was a change of scheme for SC. No, they did not stack the box they way they did against us to GA and AL. This was an adjustment they made to what GA and AL did on the ground to them. They stopped playing that gimmicky moving around and everyone standing crap and lined up normally. They also brought a safety down on virtually every play for run support. Frankly, I think coaching was good in that we attacked what they left vulnerable...the secondary...and did so with relative ease. Georgia was boneheaded about this...attacking what they wanted to attack instead of going after the weakness of the defense. SC was playing well against the pass but their goofy scheme left them vulnerable to being run all over. Richt didn't get a clue and kept trying to be cute and throw the ball when GA could have run it all day. Borges didn't do that. If SC wanted to overload to stop the run, we'd kill them another way. I was glad to see the sprint men double teamed, while we returned punts. Also, the use of two returners seemed to help. The best thing was, finally, we punted into the sideline some and contained the return man. Good job of coaching! Agreed. The kicking game is still weak in field goals and kickoffs. The ball nees to go thru the endzone for no possible return. A good job of coverage was done by the kickoff team. I saw at least two kickoffs go through the endzone. We kicked off 8 times yesterday. Here's the breakdown: Matt Clark - kick to the 1, SC returns to the their 16. Clark - touchback Clark - touchback Clark - touchback Clark - kick to the 1, SC returns to the 23 Clark - kick to the 4, SC returns to the 29 Zach Kutch - kick to the 3, SC returns to the 10 (I seem to remember this one being a very high hanging kick that allowed the coverage to get down and hit the returner pretty quick) Kutch - touchback I don't think that was a bad effort. Half the kicks were touchbacks. Two others were inside the 5 and resulted in starting position well inside the 20. Vaughn shouldn't have missed that FG but he did hit two others. I fear we will fall in the polls after sitting out this coming week. Some teams win and they move by leaps and bounds. If Auburn wins against Arkansas, we may enter the top twenty. An 8-1 record, if possible, by the Georgia game may squeeze us into the top ten. That's possible. People often do fall in off weeks, depending on what those below them do. But I think a win over LSU would cure that, especially if LSU wins all their next two games leading up to that one. There are too many "ifs" right now to tell where this team is headed. Right now we are 2-3 wins away from the Independence Bowl. 185880[/snapback] Not sure what that means. Of course we're 2-3 wins from the Independence Bowl if that's all we win. But we're also 2-3 wins away from bumping the top 10. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tgr4lfe 220 Posted October 3, 2005 Share Posted October 3, 2005 One glaring area that stood out was the running game for Auburn. We had 123 yards total. Yes, I understand that USC staked the line of scrimmage, but they were ranked 116 out 119 college teams in rushing defense. Surely they have stacked the line against other teams? Other teams will do this to us also.This is where coaching comes into play.I was glad to see the sprint men double teamed, while we returned punts. Also, the use of two returners seemed to help. The best thing was, finally, we punted into the sideline some and contained the return man. Good job of coaching! The kicking game is still weak in field goals and kickoffs. The ball nees to go thru the endzone for no possible return. A good job of coverage was done by the kickoff team. I fear we will fall in the polls after sitting out this coming week. Some teams win and they move by leaps and bounds. If Auburn wins against Arkansas, we may enter the top twenty. An 8-1 record, if possible, by the Georgia game may squeeze us into the top ten. There are too many "ifs" right now to tell where this team is headed. Right now we are 2-3 wins away from the Independence Bowl. 185880[/snapback] Not only good field position all day, but we had a balanced attack...39 rushes, 34 passes. They returned 5 out of 7 kickoffs and averaged 18.4 yds/return with a long of 25 !!! We have great cover teams on punts and kickoffs. Vaughn is like 5 of 7 on FG..only misses of 40+. Overall, I think our special teams are better than they have ever been. We are #1 in nation in kickoff returns. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WarTim 3,457 Posted October 3, 2005 Share Posted October 3, 2005 SC crossed mid field O N E time in the entire game. Auburn has the #1 scoring offense in the SEC Auburn has the #1 scoring defense in the SEC. Our TEAM is still improving. Sounds good to me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Proud Tiger 4,261 Posted October 3, 2005 Share Posted October 3, 2005 I'm concerned that we are constantly in 3rd down situations. It's hard to sustain long drives that way. We had a lot of short drives Saturday but I worry about being able to have long drives against better opponents. I know part of this is the running game but it's more than that. We have to get better yardage on 1st down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tarheeltiger 0 Posted October 3, 2005 Share Posted October 3, 2005 I made a post very similar to this plus added some concerns about Cox missing some passes. There was also the question of SC defensive line penetration and one - probabaly two - passes of BC's that may have been INT against better athletes. On the other hand there are gushing reviews by TT on how well the line played and I generally find what he says to be pretty straight up. I just don't know. The key game appears to be LSU. If our offense can move and avoid mistakes against athletes of that caliber than these questions are answered. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Tigrinum Major Posted October 3, 2005 Share Posted October 3, 2005 I made a post very similar to this plus added some concerns about Cox missing some passes. There was also the question of SC defensive line penetration and one - probabaly two - passes of BC's that may have been INT against better athletes. On the other hand there are gushing reviews by TT on how well the line played and I generally find what he says to be pretty straight up. I just don't know. The key game appears to be LSU. If our offense can move and avoid mistakes against athletes of that caliber than these questions are answered. 185921[/snapback] Don't know if the "potential INTs" were to his side, but Ko Simpson is a pretty good athlete. USC players are no slouches, folks. They have athletes developing into a new system on both sides of the ball. They have a horrible team, but their athletes are not bad. Sorry, didn't mean to put any more poison into your half empty glass. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcgufcm 4,107 Posted October 3, 2005 Share Posted October 3, 2005 looking back on saturday, i would say i wasn't as impressed with the running game as tuberville seems to be (from what i've read online). the thing i will say is it looked like we could have done more on the ground if that's what we were focused on. the only thing that concerns me is the number of plays where we lost yardage. i remember that being a little high, but that's my only real concern. we're getting more creative in the return game. doubling gunners, two return men, new blocking schemes on kickoff returns. it looks like we're paying more attention to those two areas than ever before. and man, brad lester is sick. my stomach jumps every time they kick to him. and devin's pretty dangerous himself. the kicking game is pretty dang good. we've found a kickoff specialist. we have the best punter in the sec. and the kicker is money inside 40. would i like vaughn's range to be longer? sure, but i'll take what he is now over what he was last year. the defense just played insane. i don't care who you play in the sec. a team crosses midfield once the entire game, that is a performance for the ages. travis williams was the difference. he hasn't been anywhere in the vacinity of himself from last year... until saturday. wow, you just forget how good folks can be until you see them play up to potential again. if he continues to play like that, like he did last year, we're the best defense in the sec. bama included. and finally, i don't care about the polls one bit. if at the end of the year, they want us to play for a mythical title, fine. but that won't matter to me near as much as winning the sec and watching this team mature. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TitanTiger 20,539 Posted October 3, 2005 Share Posted October 3, 2005 The thing I'm having a hard time understanding is why some of you think that five or six guys can consistently block eight or nine guys. Because unless you line up in a goal line formation, that's what happens when the defense is committing eight and sometimes nine guys to stopping the run. We got 123 yds rushing against mostly eight and sometimes nine man fronts. That's good. Sure, a block here or there and it could have been better, but once again, SC completely changed their strategy from what it had been leading up to this game. If they'd been stuffing the box the whole season, they would not be ranked #116 in the country against the run. They probably be getting torched via the pass like we did instead because while they have the talent to affect one facet or the other, they don't have the talent to shut down both. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WarTim 3,457 Posted October 3, 2005 Share Posted October 3, 2005 Titan is right. The old ball coach chose his poison. He didn't want us to run all over 'em, so, he decided to put Brandon Cox to the test. He passed the test. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
80Tiger 904 Posted October 3, 2005 Share Posted October 3, 2005 Don't get me wrong. I think the team executed the best it has this season. I think the competion has been very average, but you still have to execute. I did not see every play, but most times I saw USC with 2 safeties and 2 corners and the safeties did not look to be cheating up that much. I believe most of the time there was the traditional seven in the box. That said, even at the high school level the running game/blocking scheme is about creating mismatches within the point of attack. In other words " How do I a create blocking scenario where I have 3 guys blocking 2 or 4 guys blocking 3 at the point of attack?" It is done by motion, pulling, chip blocking etc. I think schematic wise AU does an excellent job with this. You constantly see guys in motion/ pulling etc from different sets. I personnaly believe that interior line play has been average with the exception of McNeil. I also believe that the running backs have made some wrong cuts or reads. I do believe both of these will improve with each game and experience. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OpelikaFan 0 Posted October 3, 2005 Share Posted October 3, 2005 Worried about a missed 46-yard field goal into a strong wind???? Man, your life must be easier than mine. I think the guys played hard, looked prepared, and had a gameplan well-designed to take advantage of the opponent's weaknesses. Hard to ask for more than that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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