This article could not be any more spot on about Saturday IMO

I mean - jesus. He nails it all.



From Will Collier, Rivals


AUBURN | The LSU loss exposed a host of Auburn's weaknesses, although they were hardly hidden before Saturday: A defense that can't make stops or cover in the middle, an offense without a dependable passing game and general inconsistency in all three phases of the game.

The rain Saturday night did little to cool Gus Malzahn's temper during the first quarter.
Even the kicking game, where the Tigers have been remarkably solid through thick and thin during the past three coaching regimes, let Auburn down with a devastating dropped snap and a goose-egg-for-two on AU's signature onside-kick coverage.

In a wet night on the road, those things are going to happen (and as we saw in the Florida-Tennessee comedy of errors, it doesn't even have to be raining). The trouble was, Auburn didn't have enough in the tank to overcome the inevitable slop of a rain game and couldn't come up with a coherent strategy to out-duel a loaded Bengal squad.

Anybody looking at these two teams could see Auburn was physically outmatched at many positions, particularly up front. To pull off the win, Auburn would have to take chances, game plan and execute perfectly -- and probably still need a couple of breaks. Only two of those four things happened. The Tigers took all kinds of chances and got a break or two (most notably at the beginning of the second half), but the in-game calls and execution were inconsistent at best. The defense has no answer for an up-the-gut running game and still can't get enough pressure on the quarterback. Nick Marshall took a big step backward in terms of passing accuracy and didn't get enough help from his stone-handed receivers or his coaches.

I understand and generally agree with going for it on 4th-and-short in a game like this. Auburn had to play aggressive to have any chance to win, butm of course, if you don't convert on those aggressive calls, the other guys' band is going to play a lot. The four-of-five failed conversions were essentially extra turnovers added to Marshall's two picks, a fumble (itself on a failing fourth-down conversation, making the fumble itself superfluous), and Steven Clark's bobbled punt. Two of those miscues set up easy LSU touchdowns.

That was the difference in the game.

Sum all that up and Auburn handed the ball over to LSU seven times, which would be a recipe for disaster even under optimal conditions against a weak opponent. And that's not counting the two failed onside kicks, a play that Auburn had previously run better than anybody else in the country for at least a decade.

One recurring criticism of Malzahn's play calling is a tendency to change tactics in mid-game (or even mid-drive) when the plays his team had been running up to that point were working fine. In this case, LSU's defense had no more of an answer for Tre Mason than Auburn's did for sucker-punching running back Jeremy Hill, but Malzahn repeatedly switched gears to Marshall's erratic arm, or worse, a fooling-nobody Kiehl Frazier "Wildcat" play.

Granted, Malzahn and his assistants are a lot better at reading a defense than I am, but I still don't get that. It's one thing to throw a defense a change they aren't expecting trying for a big play. It's something else to "get cute" and kill a drive with plays that haven't worked before and aren't likely to work now.

It wasn't what I'd call a good loss. Those are more rare than a sober fan in Baton Rouge and teams that like to talk about how they played well in losing tend to lose a lot. But even commenters who accurately noted that LSU controlled most of the game also agreed that Auburn has come a long way in a short time.

The two teams tallied up remarkably similar statistics although you have to think a good portion of Auburn's offensive numbers were courtesy of an LSU defense that didn't maintain its intensity during the second half. Still, I don't think Auburn could have moved the ball 437 yards against air in an SEC game a year ago -- and there was certainly no quit in the Tigers Saturday night.

Those are good things and should be valuable going forward. But while the first third of 2013 has shown that, yes, Auburn is up off the mat and getting better, the gaps in the Tigers' attack are also out there for everyone to see.

And you can bet the rest of the league, most of which is looming on the schedule after Auburn returns from this week's break, is taking notes.