It took me 20 minutes to think of how to start this post, I usually try and find the bright side to everything in life, even when you lose you can't help but bring out the sunshine pumper in yourself and say something like "at least we didn't lose" or "he played well, that's a good thing isn't it?".Offensively we were poor yet again yesterday. The play-calling was beyond confusing and it seemed almost vanilla to me. We seemed to run the same plays, which were Dyer up the middle, bubble screens to Reed, wildcat with Bray and the occasional pass downfield, whenever our receivers were "open". Trotter looked average to me last night, this was not his best game and I have been behind him for a while and in all honesty it looks like we have reached the ceiling with him. Barrett can make some throws, but at other times he looks as indecisive as Brett Favre. As I watched him, there were numerous times when he couldn't make a pass because he either couldn't find open receivers, or FAU really did do a good job of covering our receivers, I really don't know which one it was, I hope our receivers aren't that bad.
Is it time to give Frazier a start? Kiehl did well running the ball last night and looks confident when doing it, almost Cam-esque. Frazier brings a lot more to the offense, and I honestly think sooner or later Gus will throw Frazier into a full series against an SEC opponent. Can't hurt can it?
What happened to Dyer's thirty carries a game? To be fair, there is no use risking him to injury in a game like this when our October stretch is coming up, but when he did run nothing seemed to open up for him, and that falls on the offensive line. The blocking was horrendous, as numerous times the pocket was collapsing and we had to take the sack. There was no aggressiveness on the line last night, and that is really, really concerning.
Defensively it was all the same yet again, although in retrospect the tackling did look a tad better and one person that did impress me with his tackling was Therezie. He was always in the right place at the right time and even prevented a touchdown run through the middle. I think he needs to hold a tackling clinic for the team one of these days.
FAU had the worst offense in the country when they walked into Jordan-Hare, and it's as if we just called them up and said "Look, I know things aren't going your way but we will help boost the confidence of your players by letting you get some yards on us, this can hopefully kick-start your season".
It's frustrating having to write out the same old deficiencies that are evident in this team, we are trying to simplify the playbook but if we simplify it anymore there will be two plays left on offense called "run" and "pass".
I find it hard to believe that an "elite" coaching staff like ours would allow performances like this. I don't believe that Gus is keeping his playbook to himself before October because teams have already sussed out how to stop us. Defensively, we can't even function at an average level right now which is incredibly dis-heartening.
Last year, we were able to outscore opponents because of our elite offense, but if teams are able to stop our offense more frequently then we won't be winning many more games. We can't keep calling ourselves "young" because that can't be a free pass to keep playing football at a poor level. We played Florida Atlantic last night and won by just 16 points, which is nowhere near good enough.
It all gets tough from here on out. Seven of our next eight opponents are SEC games and only two of them are at home. Ask yourself the question, where are the next wins going to come from? Samford? Ole Miss? Thats two...If we could win at least 2 more SEC games that would be excellent. I'd certainly take that right now. I think we have a good chance against Georgia, Ole Miss, Florida and even South Carolina. Stephen Garcia doesn't look very good right now. Forget about LSU and Bama because those two are on another level right now, hell even Arkansas will play us tough because they always do. The season is not over yet, and believe it or not progress CAN still be made, I haven't lost faith just yet.
In Chizik's post game comments he always points out the obvious, but week in, week out we don't make the necessary changes to become a better and more efficient team.
You know it's funny, Chizik always goes on about carrying the torch for former teams and players, and that Auburn was "made great way before you got here".
Well guess what Gene, we had great defenses before you got here too, one of which was yours.
Get it done.
