quote:
But, it seems that Auburn is really being considered one of the elite teams of 2014, with the likes of teams like Alabama, Mich. St., Oregon, Stanford, FSU, etc. and that seems absurd to me.

Why is that absurd? The team that lost the NC game with 13 seconds left, that returns most of it's two deep isn't going to be right back in it?

Was this a team that was coming off a winless SEC schedule the previous year and had an entirely new coaching staff and a QB that didn't arrive on campus until August? Yes. Did we win some close games last year? Yes. Were we lucky at the end against uga? Yes. Say what you will about the Iron Bowl, but we went toe to toe with bama for the entire game, and just out executed them on the last play.

The fact that they were able to play like they were, and improve from game to game, as the year went on just shows A. what kind of coaching staff we have to be able to get that kind of resolve and attitude reversal out of the team and B. that the team has more talent in place that the coaching staff can take advantage of than people give us credit for, I think.

Some of the key factors this year is that our OL, imo, will be better than it was last year, even without Robinson. We had 2 RFr starting on the OL last year, and Robinson was only in his second year of playing after a Redshirt year. Dismukes and Slade were the only real upper classmen and Slade is the weakest OL of the bunch. They were one of the best OL units in the country last year and they'll only be better this year and most likely Shon Coleman will fill in at LT to compliment that. Marshall having a full offseason to work will be huge for him. We're loaded at skill positions on offense, so as long as his passing improves by just a few % points, that should open up the run game even more. It's almost a given that our main RB will have 1000 yards, and if Marshall repeats with that, Malzahn will have his 13th 1000 yard rusher since he's been a college coach.

On defense, we'll have a deep DL, with 5 seniors. Lawson, Adams and Daniel are all coming into their second year. We should be able to comfortably rotate 8-10 guys on the DL every game and not really lose much with who's out there. We'll be pretty flexible too, as we're probably going to play a jumbo package with guys like Gabe Wright and Montravious Adams moving out to DE at times. LB is addition by subtraction with Jake Holland gone. The only reason he played was because he knew the defense better than anyone else and could make play calls on the field. Cassanova McKinzey is moving back inside, where he should have been playing, and Frost to the outside where he should have been playing. Justin Garrett and Therezie will be a very good rotation at Star. There are a few question marks in the secondary, but the addition of juco transfer Moncrief at safety will be a huge help in run stopping, and having Josh Holsey back from a knee injury will help at both corner and safety, because he can play both. We made so many big stops last year when we had to. We've got to work on giving up less points, but there were some pretty dynamic QB's we went up against last year that aren't around this year.

I see both sides of the ball improving this year. Whether that means we make the playoff, I don't know, but we should be right in the thick of the race all year. The attitude is different. The S&C is different(i.e. better). And I think frankly, the talent is different. We've pulling in guys like Carl Lawson, Montravious Adams, Dhaquille Williams, etc that we've really never gotten before. We've gotten our share of highly ranked guys in the past, but not as many as we've gotten in the past few years.