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ADOB: An unsightly slide
Jay G. Tate | Publisher
TUSCALOOSA | A strange season has ended for Auburn.
That's one of the only things we actually know about Gus Malzahn's fourth team as head coach. Well, the defense is good. We know that. Yet that offensive renaissance, presumably brought about by a new play-caller and Sean White's autonomy and Kam Pettway's rise to prominence, has turned out to be more of a façade than anyone realized.
At least that's how it appears after another miserable performance Saturday in Auburn's biggest and more important game of the season. Thirty-one yards in the first half? Can you believe a Malzahn team could sink to those depths?
Jay G. Tate/AuburnSports.com
Yes you can. You saw it during the second half at Georgia.
Sean White played poorly in Athens, obviously felled by a shoulder problem that's more serious than most realized. The coaching staff wasn't particularly worried about that for reasons only it understands, thought, and it kept asking White to throw. Perhaps the Tigers' ballyhooed run game can't trive, or even tread water, without Kam Pettway.
Well, Pettway was back for the Iron Bowl. That didn't matter. He was paired with a fully healthy Jeremy Johnson this time, but that's not much of a weapon at all. The senior completed just four of his 13 pass attempts Saturday, which added almost nothing to a rushing attack that was accomplishing almost nothing.
So here he is, Gus Malzahn, a fourth-year coach headed down a dark road. He's lost three consecutive games against Georgia. He's now lost three consecutive games against Alabama as well. That's 0-for-6 in his last six games versus primary rivals.
That's a bad rut. A strikingly bad rut.
There are some who will defend Malzahn and offensive coordinator Rhett Lashlee for the team's November swoon. They'll say Auburn was forced to play those games (in 2016) without their two best offensive players, which would have undermined even the nation's most elite teams.
That statement isn't wrong. Malzahn's defenders have a point. Injuries matter.
With that said, this isn't good enough. Malzahn shouldn't be required to run the table every year, but no Auburn coach should be given free rein to amass back-to-back-to-back Amen Corner O-fers.
That's not to say he's happy about it. He's not. Malzahn hates losing more than just about anyone, no doubt, but that disgust hasn't (yet) yielded any substantive improvements in his ability to fill his roster with capable quarterbacks.
A season shouldn't come down to keeping one undersized quarterback healthy. Where are the other guys? Why is Jeremy Johnson this ineffective? Heck, they've now had 10 months with John Franklin. Why isn't he more effective?
Maybe he is.
Franklin came into the game Saturday and provided a spark. He completed two fruitful passes to Eli Stove during the fourth quarter, which accounted for 85 of Auburn's 182 total yards. He simply couldn't have been a worse option than Johnson, but Malzahn and Lashlee nonetheless stuck with Johnson long after it was clear he couldn't provide any meaningful support.
Yet that's part of the deal with this staff. It has preconceived ideas about what should happen -- and keeps waiting for that scenario to unfold long after it doesn't actually happen. They keep banging their head against the wall.
Some might call it remarkable faith.
Others call it insanity. Or panic.
There are so many questions in that same vein. Many observers, and Malzahn himself, said in August that Eli Stove clearly was in position to help this team. He didn't become anything more than a sideshow until November. Why? If he's reliable and explosive, why was he playing behind Marcus Davis?
Where was Kyle Davis Saturday? He may be the team's best big-play receiver, but he is afforded so few opportunities. Why?
Pettway didn't earn one carry against Clemson. Why?
Maybe that's kvetching over personnel idiosyncrasies, but these results aren't subjective. This isn't working. That's been proven for three consecutive Novembers in a row, which simply is below a reasonable standard. There's every reason to believe Malzahn will return for a fifth season in 2017, which means two more chances to snap this brutal run of late-season folly and failure.
Maybe White will stay healthy this time and maybe Pettway won't go down and maybe Kerryon Johnson won't be at 75 percent for months and maybe the offensive line will be better without Alex Kozan. It could happen.
If it doesn't, well, a lot of people will find their careers at a crossroads.
The program already is there.
AuburnSports.com - ADOB: An unsightly slide
Jay G. Tate | Publisher
TUSCALOOSA | A strange season has ended for Auburn.
That's one of the only things we actually know about Gus Malzahn's fourth team as head coach. Well, the defense is good. We know that. Yet that offensive renaissance, presumably brought about by a new play-caller and Sean White's autonomy and Kam Pettway's rise to prominence, has turned out to be more of a façade than anyone realized.
At least that's how it appears after another miserable performance Saturday in Auburn's biggest and more important game of the season. Thirty-one yards in the first half? Can you believe a Malzahn team could sink to those depths?
Jay G. Tate/AuburnSports.com
Yes you can. You saw it during the second half at Georgia.
Sean White played poorly in Athens, obviously felled by a shoulder problem that's more serious than most realized. The coaching staff wasn't particularly worried about that for reasons only it understands, thought, and it kept asking White to throw. Perhaps the Tigers' ballyhooed run game can't trive, or even tread water, without Kam Pettway.
Well, Pettway was back for the Iron Bowl. That didn't matter. He was paired with a fully healthy Jeremy Johnson this time, but that's not much of a weapon at all. The senior completed just four of his 13 pass attempts Saturday, which added almost nothing to a rushing attack that was accomplishing almost nothing.
So here he is, Gus Malzahn, a fourth-year coach headed down a dark road. He's lost three consecutive games against Georgia. He's now lost three consecutive games against Alabama as well. That's 0-for-6 in his last six games versus primary rivals.
That's a bad rut. A strikingly bad rut.
There are some who will defend Malzahn and offensive coordinator Rhett Lashlee for the team's November swoon. They'll say Auburn was forced to play those games (in 2016) without their two best offensive players, which would have undermined even the nation's most elite teams.
That statement isn't wrong. Malzahn's defenders have a point. Injuries matter.
With that said, this isn't good enough. Malzahn shouldn't be required to run the table every year, but no Auburn coach should be given free rein to amass back-to-back-to-back Amen Corner O-fers.
That's not to say he's happy about it. He's not. Malzahn hates losing more than just about anyone, no doubt, but that disgust hasn't (yet) yielded any substantive improvements in his ability to fill his roster with capable quarterbacks.
A season shouldn't come down to keeping one undersized quarterback healthy. Where are the other guys? Why is Jeremy Johnson this ineffective? Heck, they've now had 10 months with John Franklin. Why isn't he more effective?
Maybe he is.
Franklin came into the game Saturday and provided a spark. He completed two fruitful passes to Eli Stove during the fourth quarter, which accounted for 85 of Auburn's 182 total yards. He simply couldn't have been a worse option than Johnson, but Malzahn and Lashlee nonetheless stuck with Johnson long after it was clear he couldn't provide any meaningful support.
Yet that's part of the deal with this staff. It has preconceived ideas about what should happen -- and keeps waiting for that scenario to unfold long after it doesn't actually happen. They keep banging their head against the wall.
Some might call it remarkable faith.
Others call it insanity. Or panic.
There are so many questions in that same vein. Many observers, and Malzahn himself, said in August that Eli Stove clearly was in position to help this team. He didn't become anything more than a sideshow until November. Why? If he's reliable and explosive, why was he playing behind Marcus Davis?
Where was Kyle Davis Saturday? He may be the team's best big-play receiver, but he is afforded so few opportunities. Why?
Pettway didn't earn one carry against Clemson. Why?
Maybe that's kvetching over personnel idiosyncrasies, but these results aren't subjective. This isn't working. That's been proven for three consecutive Novembers in a row, which simply is below a reasonable standard. There's every reason to believe Malzahn will return for a fifth season in 2017, which means two more chances to snap this brutal run of late-season folly and failure.
Maybe White will stay healthy this time and maybe Pettway won't go down and maybe Kerryon Johnson won't be at 75 percent for months and maybe the offensive line will be better without Alex Kozan. It could happen.
If it doesn't, well, a lot of people will find their careers at a crossroads.
The program already is there.
AuburnSports.com - ADOB: An unsightly slide
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