Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Dr. Z's Arkansas Review-Implosion



I have no idea where to begin with my review. Rob pretty much summed up my feelings. If you you haven't read his post, you should. He has been there. In 1998, I sat in the stands for Rob's entire season that began with a debacle against Virginia and ended with a lead blown against Alabama.

1998 and 2012 are very different monsters in my opinion. In '98, Auburn suffered through a myriad of injuries to go with a lack of offensive talent. The 2012 team is just a group of underachievers with little to no leadership, and very poor coaching and planning on the offensive side of the football.

Why Scott Leoffler continues to throw 2 out of every three times flummoxes me. He has neither a quarterback or an offensive line that are capable of doing so. When he chooses to call a running play, he insists on doing so with a 165 pound running back and no lead blocker. Our most successful runner so far this season had 6 carries in the game Saturday. The All American fullback, the only All American on the offense, was on the field about 20% of the time.

Loeffler has no, or at least appears to have no consistent plan for his offense. Are we a spread team? A power eye team? I wonder if even Loeffler knows. And for a guy who was touted as being a specialist in quarterback development, he showed Saturday that he has two that haven't even come close to developing.

All of this falls at the feet of Gene Chizik, who has utterly failed the Auburn family since the second half of 2011 and first half of this season. Now we have players calling each other out to the media. This team is imploding, and fast. It makes 2008 look like a good situation.

At this point I don't know if Chiz survives to coach the Tigers in 2013. Raise your had if you think Auburn wins two conference games. How about 1? At this point AU has little hope of beating Ole Miss and Vandy on the road, much less A&M and UGA at home. And forget about the Iron Bowl. Trust me, I am trying to. I may find myself doing yard work or volunteering in a soup kitchen that day. 3-9 after three straight top 5 recruiting classes will not get it done.

My advice to Chizik and Leoffler is to burn the playbook. Find yourself about 12 power running plays and 6 pass plays. Play middle school football on offense and let the defense keep you in the game. It's the only shot we have.

I cannot believe what I have seen so far in 2012. This is one of the most disappointing Autumns that I can recall.

War Eagle anyway.

5 comments:

  1. I agree with you 100%. Chizik said he was going to run the ball against Arkansas. What happened? Why is Prosch on the bench? Why aren't we running some option with Frazier, Mason, McCalebb, Prosch.

    Prosch ran the ball well. McCalebb can catch on the run. Stallworth made two nice catches.

    We have the players for a nice little offense. But Loeffler seems impatient at knocking out four yards. He needs bigger chunks. He also thinks he has to "fool" opposing defenses by putting in confusing personnel packages that spell "run" when intends to "pass" and vice versa.

    The upshot is we have the wrong people on the field to maximize the intended play call. SEC defenses don't get fooled by sets, packages, etc.

    Just line up the biggest baddest 11 guys and run it. You can't tell me with Prosch, Lutzenkirchen and Uzomah on the field we can't get some push on a running play with Mason blowing somebody up. I don't care if they stack the box with 12, we have to be able to power run with those guys.

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  2. Amen. As bad as the Nallsmenger offense was, at least they eventually decided to screw the whole "what the defense gives you" notion and just lined up and ran the ball until the other teams stopped it. Check out the play-by-play starting in the 2nd quarter of the 2003 UT game: http://espn.go.com/ncf/playbyplay?gameId=232770002&period=3 That's 17 straight running plays in a row! For the game we ran 57 times while throwing 18 passes! That's a defense minded head coach going to his inept OC and saying "just run the damn ball"! Why hasn't Chizik done that yet? I wish I knew. War Eagle, always.

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  3. The 12 yd sacks killed us.
    Run the ball.

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  4. .....Thus far, this year is far worse than the 1998 year Rob played in, by far. That team played a ton of ranked teams, and nearly every one of them went to a bowl. The Virginia 19-0 opener was pretty ugly, but UVA went 9-2, and played UGA to the wire in the Peach.

    .....Ole Miss beat Texas Tech in the Weedeater. (and we blanked them 17-0). LSU melted down that year, but beat us with some extremely fluky QB play. UT won the national title, but we only lost 17-9, chunking hail mary's at their end zone at the end. Rob's defense dominated that bunch after the first quarter.

    .....MSU was ugly, but it wasn't the defense. It was 4 blocked punts. And MSU won the West. Florida beat us pretty good, but I don't think too many folks held them to 24 points like Auburn did. Auburn beat La Tech/Tim Rattay/Troy Edwards by double digits.

    .....Arkansas was a close one, done in by a bad snap. The Razorbacks finished 9-2 before a Citrus meltdown against Meechegan. Auburn shut down Dante Culpepper and the UCF Knights.

    .....Last came 11 and 14 point losses to UGA and Bama, both bowl teams. I know I'd trade Loeffler to Akron and let Terry and Jimbo come back and run our offense with the talent we have right now!

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    ReplyDelete