re: If tre mason kneels on the 5, does auburn win?

Hindsight is 50/50. You should have mortgaged your house and bought Apple stock a long time ago.

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From a coaching perspective you just tell your guys before they go out there, hey if you break a run and there's over a minute to go, take a knee at the 1. We have the best rushing offense in the country you kneel at the one, we'll put it in and we won't leave them any time to answer.

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You could probably tell a player that 50 times before the offense took over and they probably still wouldn't do it with all the adrenaline of a long run and the NC on the line. Also, there were a number of false starts in this game. So you could get a false start after kneeling at the 1 and might not make it in and have to rely on a FG kicker that missed an easy one earlier. You could also fumble, etc. Things could still go wrong.

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Why would you put your trust in a shaky defense instead of an outstanding running game? I guess you like to lose more games than you have to?

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A Bama fan telling others how to secure victory at the end of the game... But seriously, there's validity to what you're saying, but I'm just saying it's easier said than done in the environment/situation they were in at the time.

And if you're team can't stop the other team from reaching the end zone with just over a minute left, well then maybe the other team deserves the W.

fwiw id rather my defense face fsu while fsu is down and with a time crunch. FSU would have been under much greater pressure on that last drive than if you stall and are forced into a fg. They get into ot where time is no factor at all.

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You don't want to leave them 1:20

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Your defense SHOULD be able to stop a team from driving the length of the field and having to score a td to beat you with only 1:20 left on the clock. Not many drives for Td's and starting at the 25 yard line are accomplished in 1:20.

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yea but you have a 4 point lead in regulation and you have 80 yards to defend. FSU also had all the momentum because of the come back so its best to score and turn it over to the defense. If there had been a defender closing on him i could see the argument because no need to fight for the touch down but when its open like that you take it and trust the d.

FSU has the momentum if they force a fg, they are under much less pressure in overtime. You also run the risk of having your field goal blocked or a botched snap.

Im all for thinking outside the box and using stats but in that situation you take the points.

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All of this.

Auburn lost the game on special teams and defense.

FSU slowed Auburn just enough in the 2nd half to give themselves a shot.

But Auburn should feel no shame. They gave their all and were heavy underdogs. They proved themselves more than worthy.

The Gus Bus is legit.

Such a dumb proposition. The TD puts them up 4 and makes FSU have to score a TD to win. You play the odds, and the odds are in your favor FSU doesn't get a TD.


Even without that, you're expecting a RB with the mentality to take the ball to the house every time he touches it to have the presence in that situation to take a knee? Seriously?

And if the au defense makes a tackle, they likely stop them.

I still say that Auburn should have tackled the FSU WR in the end zone to prevent the last TD.

It would have been another PI penalty with the ball on the one yard line, but the pressure still would have been all on FSU with only 13 seconds left.

Excellent point. I started a thread in the score board on this very topic. Everyone said I was stupid, while everyone watch Auburn go down like a $2 whore. Everyone against this train of thought just saw Auburn lose but are too set in their ways to see an alternative.

The bottom line for me is that Auburn hasn't been very good on defense all year long. They couldn't stop FSU in the 4th quarter. FSU was moving the ball at will in the 4th quarter. 1:19 is an eternity in CFB. Do you trust your offense with a first and goal or do you trust your defense with 1:19? The answer was very clear to me watching the game.

As soon as Auburn scored, I said to several people the game was over and FSU was going to win. Coincidentally, everyone of them agreed with me that Auburn left too much time on the clock like dummies. Hell, even Musberger asked if it was too much time left on the clock.

Football has evolved. The 2 yards and a cloud of dust mentality is over. Teams can move the ball in this pass happy, clock stops on every first down, we call PI if you blow on someone, game. It's ludicrous to give your opponent a CHANCE to beat you. You bleed the clock then go beat them.

Anyone trusting Auburn's defense was just foolish. They were what we thought they were. Porous, leaky, and inept. Way to setup Winston for his Heisman moment. Stupid.

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No what's dumb is the archaic belief that "You always take the points when you are losing".

The game has changed the good coaches adapt (Belichik, Gus, etc.) You should go for it on 4th and less than 5 most of the time. You should call time outs on defense when another team is about to score to preserve enough time for your offense. There are certain times where running the clock is much more important than scoring points.

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