Most Auburn people don't want Gus gone

Call me crazy, but I want my head coach to succeed. Kinda like I want the POTUS to succeed.

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So AU fans- is Tailback right in that most AU fans don't want Gus gone?

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I don't want him gone.

What's the rate of coaches who have early success, then fall off, ever come back up to that same level of success? Saban has maintained a high level of success, but most don't I think.

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He lost me vs. Tennessee last year, but I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and I think most AU grads are at this point.

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Then he didn’t really lose you.

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The Sabans and Meyers of the college coaching world are very rare. Auburn was wise to give Malzahn a long term deal imo.

He has Auburn competitive at the very least and he's a good offensive mind.

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I don't think the deal was a good one.

However, I do think it's very reasonable to target Auburn being CFP competitive every 3ish years, rather than on a yearly basis. IMO we're a top 15ish program all time and I want to maintain and gradually improve on that, which is reasonable in light of the Big 10 fall off, etc.

But, we can't have 7-8 wins in the non-competitive years. We should remain competitive with our rivals even when we're not going to win a title and should be getting into and winning good bowl games.

Gus isn't doing that, he's getting smoked by our rivals most of the time (and occasionally beating them all) and he's keeping us competitive by being a CFP/top 10 contender in October before finishing #22, unranked, etc.

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It's kind of a theoretical question.

Sure, I want to avoid the instability of a coaching change and I do believe Gus has some top tier coach ability within him. I think he's stubborn and a meddler, however, and doesn't necessarily recruit in a consistent/coherent fashion that is designed to produce a consistent and productive offense.

I have no idea if it is possible/realistic for Gus to settle down and stop getting in his own way, and if so, whether that is sufficient to keep Auburn competitive in the SECW most years.

So in short, sure I want to keep Gus if he can and will do those things, but I don't know if he can/will, and if he doesn't show me that quickly I want to go find someone else.

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Basically exactly how I'd think about it if I was an Auburn person.

It's almost more frustrating that he's shown he can win big and then also shown he can massively underachieve......all randomly and multiple times. You have to keep hoping it's part of growing as a coach, but if things look disjointed this year I think it's hard to keep saying that.

However, if a guy's ceiling is SEC Champs and CFP and his floor is 8-5..........I gotta put the odds of replacing that with something better at like 20-25% tops, right? But then again, a lot of those 8-5 years are very empty with beat down losses to rivals, a bad loss, and wins against Ole Miss/Arky/bad East team/4 OOC games/bad bowl opponent.

It's a tough spot, especially in 2019.

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Probably, at least over the long term.

But, you have to include that 8-5 under Gus appears to mean bad losses to UGA, UA and LSU, which changes things a bit IMO. I don't pretend that Auburn should necessarily be close with Alabama or even UGA right now. That said, I do think Auburn should always be a difficult game for Alabama and we should probably be winning a fair share of UGA and LSU games. Both are probably better positioned than us in recruiting but neither are the machine that Bama is (see close, ridiculous losses to LSU, for example).

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Yea I think that's about as reasonable and level headed a position to take on expectations.

If I was an Auburn person the biggest frustration for me would be, in the "off" years, losing barely competitive or non competitive games to UGA/Bama and the tendency to just kind of look completely lost (especially on offense) when things aren't clicking. There doesn't seem to be an in between - either the offense is white hot unstoppable or it is a jumbled mess.

I concur with Pettifogger's take.

I think Gustav runs a solid, clean program, but is too controlling/paranoid/stubborn to adjust when things don't go as planned, and has not demonstrated any consistency on the field. For that reason, I feel AU made a huge mistake giving into his (and Jimmy Sexton's) ridiculous contract demands based on potential rather than results.

Still, I'd much rather see him get his shite in one sock than go through a coaching search. He has the pieces in place, just has to make them work. Can he do that? Frankly, I don't have a clue. Perhaps we'll get a better read this season (but perhaps not).

However, I would like to point out this flaw in the OP:

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We could be in for one of those magical Auburn runs.

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Having been an AU fan for roughly half a century, those 'magical AU runs' last about two years, tops, if that. For what we are paying, we should expect to experience double-digit wins in back-to-back seasons at least once every few years - but that's still something we've only achieved once in our long history.

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It's almost more frustrating that he's shown he can win big and then also shown he can massively underachieve

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The most maddening thing about Gus is his inconsistency. His highs are very high and then he has inexplicable losses. He is just as capable of beating Bama and Georgia as he is losing to Tennessee.

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I think it is important to Auburn people not to have a thug like Kirby or Urban, and not to have a shyster used car salesman like Jimbo at the helm.

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LOL the most loved coach on campus is Bruce Pearl.

GTFOH