Utah St. Reax: Better Get Better

Just continuing with the French Revolution mantra.

That could only have been uglier had we not pulled off the miracle of all miracles in the last 2 minutes. I had given up. And mentally I had done what many of the Auburn fans did Saturday...left early. But our guys showed they still have a little bit of magic left in the jar from 2010. A touchdown followed by the best onside kick I've ever seen, followed by another touchdown, and we get to celebrate (sort of) a win.

That fortunately masks the worst performance by a Chizik coached AU team. I include the 2009 LSU and Kentucky games in that bunch. It was bad enough that Rob goes Charles Dickens on us. I would've chosen Oliver Twist, where a poor young street urchin grows up before our very eyes, leaving a sad commentary on the welfare system of England in the 17 and 18th century.*

Rob raises some interesting points and questions about our defense. Did Ted Roof ultimately feel like he could stay in the game playing base defense? Was it complacency or genius that we stayed so vanilla against a freshman QB making his first start? Whatever the reason, the tackling was flat out awful. If that doesn't improve, it will be a long, long year for the boys in blue.

I will say I thought Barrett Trotter was pretty good in this game. His throws were right there. He got the ball to the receivers who in turn made plays. He did all we asked of him and more, leading two TD drives in two minutes to snatch a victory quite literally from the jaws of defeat. Our QB will be fine. He's the least of our worries.

The offensive line generated almost no push, and Gus, in my opinion, kept going back to the run when he could have (and maybe should have?) thrown the ball more on first down. I like Dyer in the wildcat, but something seems amiss with him. We saw him very little on the first two series. But then again, we saw the whole offense very little in the first half. Most of that we can lay at the foot of the defense, who absolutely could not get off the field on 3rd down.

Tre Mason will be a great one before he leaves. That kid has some wheels. I hope he touches it even more in the weeks to come, at least in a non special teams setting.

The meme for this week better be "Get better". And fast. The SEC schedule is brutal, and as Coach Dye said recently, The boys in Starkville will be licking their chops after watching us on Saturday.

Here's hoping our guys get better this week...and fast.

*Yeah, that's right, an Auburn blog with Charles Dickens references.