We got worse (or How I Learned To Embrace the NFL)

Keep preaching!!!

I agree with each point you stated.

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1. Sean White is a warrior and Gus, for some reason, doesn't trust him. But he DID trust the previous mentally unbalanced QB? frick you, Gus. What have we got to lose? Do you THINK we still have an actual chance at championships this year? No? Then the only reason you won't cut the kid loose is you don't trust him and you have an unreasonable, illogical attachment to the previous headcase that was our QB.

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This is all conjecture. Gus said in his post-game interview that we didn't open up the passing game because we didn't have to. The kid is in his second start. There is absolutely no reason to have him out there slinging the ball around when we were getting it done on the ground. Easing Sean White into the QB situation is not something to be losing your shite over.

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2. Gus seemed to want to salve ol' JJ's feelings by putting him out there a couple of plays. WORTHLESS distraction because (1) NOBODY is scared of Jeremy Johnson running and (2) NOBODY is scared of Jeremy Johnson passing. You're a goddam genius, Gus.

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Again, conjecture. Having JJ on the field adds another factor for the defense to consider. That, alone, is reason enough.

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3. If Barber does decide to take his chances with the NFL after this year, I wouldn't blame him one little bit

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Agreed.

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4. Sorry you had to adjust a tiny bit to catch a TD pass, Jason Smith. Don't worry. The NFL scouts blame the QB on that drop... right?

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Bad play. Give him a break.

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5. #1 on offense continues to play even though he dogs his effort at least 50% of the time. Gosh, why would anybody else try hard when it shows that trying your best means jack shite?

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Totally agree. Bench his arse.

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6. I'm embarrassed about being one of the biggest defenders of Rodney Garner over the years. Hey RG, do you practice your DL on a treadmill? Cuz thats what it looked like your DL was doing all game on passing downs, running in place at the line of scrimmage. Not to mention being physically pushed 5 yards downfield on running downs.

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Agree here. Muschamp isn't going to fix it overnight. We need better quality D-lineman.

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7. I appreciate McKinzy's effort at the Buck position. He seems to be better suited for that than LB. We still have a sucking black hole at LB behind our sucking black hole of a DL though.

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Agreed. Muschamp moving around the pieces makes me happy.

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8. Anyone bitching at the DBs is ignoring the utter vacuum in front of them. No proficient DL. No proficient LB. The DBs are actually balling out considering the help they are getting.

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Yep.

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9. So Golson is so important to this shite-show of an offense he can't be fricking benched for consistent idiot snaps when noone is ready for them?

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Maybe so.

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10. I can't wrap my mind around Will Muschamp, who has been a damned good DC wherever he has gone, being bad. Are the players he has been provided just that overrated? Or dumb? Or is it Muschamp? I tend toward the first two of my answers.

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We have sucked on offense for the better part of a decade. Muschamp isn't a fricking wizard.

Nailed it, rbWarEagle. I agree with all of that 100%

Agree with most of your points. Here's a post from Jay Tate, which is pretty good too.
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I guess that was better.

I guess.

Auburn beat San Jose State by two touchdowns on Saturday, which was approximately what I expected. The road to that particular finish line, however, didn't lead in the direction I expected. Sean White threw just 10 passes. Auburn ran the ball 48 times. That's not necessarily an alarming differential -- Gus Malzahn loves talking about how he's a run-first kind of guy -- but it leaves White in a difficult position heading into what will be a very challenging second half of the season.

He hasn't accomplished a lot through the air. And I think that's a mistake.

Let me be clear: White has been good for this team. He keeps hit wits about him, he understands his role as a collaborator. He's not a game-changing guy right now, but that's just fine with Malzahn and offensive coordinator Rhett Lashlee. They want him to be a game manager and that's what he's doing. White is making thoughtful decisions in both the run and pass game and, most important, he's avoiding mistakes.

Yeah, he had that silly interception against Mississippi State, but that was the first drive of his college life. Give him a little space to learn himself, you know? White built upon that first game against San Jose State -- managing things intelligently and rarely compromising his team's chance to score.

(He fumbled during the first quarter, but quickly regained possession. Lashlee vocalized his disgust very clearly.)

Yet White will head into a game at Kentucky less than two weeks from today without much experience breaking down a defense. Can he effectively pass around and/or underneath zone coverages? Can he place the ball accurately on quick throws against man defense?

We don't know because Auburn isn't asking him to do those things right now.

When he takes the field against Kentucky, he'd better be ready. And in some ways, his dress rehearsal hasn't been very revealing. I'm still not sure what Auburn has in the young man from south Florida. I feel like Auburn knows -- and they're not smitten. They're being too careful.

Then we have Jeremy Johnson. He lined up several times as a wideout Saturday in perhaps the most obvious attempt ever to create some kind of "tendency" that it may (or may not) be able to exploit. Johnson is not a receiver. He will not be a receiver. In fact, all the chatter we hear out of the Athletic Complex suggests this coaching staff still considers Johnson a viable candidate to play quarterback this season. I don't think they're planning to bump White in favor of Jeremy Johnson v2.1, but they believe there are ways to deploy Johnson so he won't be dogged by the troubles that forced him to the bench two weeks ago.

I'm not sure how that would even work, but I'm anticipating something.

You have to say the run game was solid Saturday since Peyton Barber scored five touchdowns, but at no point did I feel like it was overpowering. Barber broke off a few long runs late and that helped him amass a fine line (28 carries, 147 yards) that was a little misleading. He was at 24 carries and 74 yards early in the fourth quarter and I was thinking: This has been way too difficult considering it's San Jose State.The blocking is just so-so. The offensive line is hampered by the lack of a true, dual-threat quarterback in ways that are becoming very obvious. Defenses had to be careful about whom to pursue when there were two great options in the backfield. Now there's either one or one-half, depending on the personnel allocation, and the defense is better able to focus almost wholly on the tailback. That means Barber is in all kinds of disadvantageous positions after taking control of the ball, three defenders keying on his every move, and that's something Tre Mason and Cameron Artis-Payne didn't deal with.

(Tre dealt with that in 2012, but that was during The Loeffler Age and I've all but forgotten it.)

It one way, it makes me appreciate Barber's toughness that much more.

In another way, it makes me wonder why Auburn has three scholarship quarterbacks on its roster and none of them are legitimate runners. It's telling that Lashlee has opened lines of communication with a pair of JUCO, dual-threat quarterbacks during the past month.

Landing the right guy there could make a big difference in 2016. But that's 2016.

That means nothing for what's coming later in October and November.

Auburn is just a so-so team right now. It badly misses Carl Lawson's pass rushing and Nick Marshall's elusiveness. Neither problem has a straightforward solution. The off week will help the Tigers get back into better health and will give Cassanova McKinzy more time to get up to speed at Buck. Those all are positive developments for a team that really needs a few.

The gauntlet is coming. I'm not sure Auburn is ready.

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Not giving White practice passing the ball against a team we can easily beat is very much a reason toi be upset. That's what these freaking tuneup games are for, getting players experience.

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Our defense doesn't allow us the pleasure of a tune-up game. What the hell are you talking about? We did what we had to do to win the game and minimize mistakes.

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Simply running the ball up the middle 50 times is completely pointless and wastes valuable experience for White. It's dumb as hell.

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We'll have to agree to disagree.

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I'm starting to think we haven't seen it because they don't think he can do it.

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Yep

We've already seen his throwing ability, albeit sparsely. State had a solid plan for our WRs and Sean still got it to them when he needed to. Gus and Lashlee just blew it in the redzone. This game was different. They didn't open up the passing like they could because, as Gus said, "we didn't have to".

So was this a called play to throw to Louis no matter what or a case of Duke loafing? He looks back to the left like he knows the ball is going to Ricardo no matter what he does.

LINK

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This is all conjecture. Gus said in his post-game interview that we didn't open up the passing game because we didn't have to. The kid is in his second start. There is absolutely no reason to have him out there slinging the ball around when we were getting it done on the ground. Easing Sean White into the QB situation is not something to be losing your shite over.

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IMO practicing what you need from your new QB *now* rather than demanding it from him out of the blue when we need it in the future is the smart thing to do.

But I guess "frick you Sean White we don't need you to win this game" is an alternate view.

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Again, conjecture. Having JJ on the field adds another factor for the defense to consider. That, alone, is reason enough.

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Having JJ on the field on those plays added absolutely NOTHING. If you think the defense on those plays "considered" him (outside of a DB lined up wide with him, which would have happened with any other player lined up wide), you are delusional.

NOTHING about Jeremy Johnson lined up wide at WR made the SJSU defense "consider" a goddam thing. Why? Because he's not a threat at WR, he's not threat throwing the ball, and he's not a threat running the ball.

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Bad play. Give him a break.

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No.

You play WR, you catch the goddam ball.