re: Harsh reality

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Pettifogger that’s what we have been the last 8 years prior. 1 mediocre year 1 meh year 1 good year. Throw in an SEC championship or 2 each decade and that’s been Auburn for the past 40 years. This year and sequence of events has been like no other I’ve ever witnessed at AU

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Eh, I think after 2013 Gus was decidedly below a reasonable ambition for AU. Averaging 8 wins (including bowls) probably isn't the #15ish clip I think is a reasonable objective for AU.

But yeah, my ambitions for Auburn are based on modest and achievable improvements on our long term history. ie, bumping a 8.5 win average to 9, etc.

Getting to a 9 win average means we'll have many more "good" years where we're winning 10/11 games and competing for the conference. Having one of those every 3 or so years instead of every 4-6 years would make a huge difference for the morale of this program and fan base, even if it doesn't necessarily lead to more titles.

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But yeah, my ambitions for Auburn are based on modest and achievable improvements on our long term history. ie, bumping a 8.5 win average to 9, etc.

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I agree. 9 is where we should be on average.

I want to be slightly better every year until we never lose. Let’s just start with winning some recruiting battles first.

I'm not just talking Defense. We used to play physical across the board both ways. We have not been consistently that team since the Tuberville days.

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leading the league in rushing multiple years

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We were #1 in the league multiple years this past decade?

When I do the stats yds per game we led the league twice the last decade so you were correct. I was looking at just total yds.

By the way, I don't disagree with you about it taking physicality gain yards, 2013 was amazing of how physical our running game was.


Can we have the defense from 2004 or 2019 and the offense from 2013 or 2010 every year? Asking for a friend

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sidewalk fans

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Raises hand!!! Sorry can I be in the club still? I went AU most weekends that I could while in college. I dated a majorette at AU.

Not knocking you, but that is a huge divider between AU and other schools. The majority of our fanbase has an actual connection to our university. That's why the gumps disappear when they start losing.

I know, was curious which posters he thinks are

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Oh we only ran it down teams throats the past decade that’s all.

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From 2010 to about 2016 I'd agree with you. It was a downward trend after that. Gus got away from what made his offense tick and our OL became a complete mess, which is part of the problem right now. The way our OL personnel was going, it would have been impossible for Malzahn to ever get back to having an offense that worked in this league.

Here's where we ranked in every year of his head coaching tenure at rush offense in comparison to total offense, which I think puts rush offense in context just showing how unbalanced our offenses were in certain years. No one doesn't enjoy running it at will, but you have to have balance over the long term, which was obviously not the case and I don't think ever would have been under Malzahn.

.......Rush...Total
2013....1.....11
2014....14....17
2015....35....94
2016....6.....42
2017....26....26
2018....68....79
2019....33....64
2020....67....77

And by some miracle(Kevin Steele at DC) we kept squeaking out wins because our defense was steadily improving over the past few years of his tenure.

All this to say that just because we threw the ball more this year than we're used to isn't a bad thing. I love running at will, but I would like to have a passing game to go along with that. Unless we somehow start recruiting with the likes of bama and uga, we're going to have to have balance to compete. We're not going to be able to just run it all over people anymore.