How do we match up with Auburn?

I'm hoping and pulling for a lot of this:

he will probably try to do the same thing he did in the second half of the 2012 Florida game.

Their misdirection is going to give us fits. WM will show Kyler shite he's never seen before and that isn't going to be good. I expect to see us do pretty much the same thing we did last week, very simple offense and no run defense.

Everyone kept saying the key thing LSU did to stop Johnny was to assign a "spy" to him

I don't think a spy is really the key to stopping a Johnny type in this offense. In a typical defense a spy is just one less player who can be used in cover and against a really shifty runner he's as apt to get burned as anyone and leave you with a huge lane.

The key is a mush rush - no blitzing and train your guys to hold back their own natural desire to try to tee-off if they get penetration. To just push the pocket back uniformly and not allow ends or LBs to get too deep or "commit".

I think with an LSU type defensive talent level you could be successful with a spy if they choose a nickel who is just a freak athlete for that job; but most defenses don't have an equally freakish talent to use as a spy, they'll just use some LBer and the offense can then "freeze" that spy out of plays, essentially making it so that they're playing against only 10 players.

TLDR: Assigning a spy may be a good strategy for LSU because they have alien-like talent to use as the spy, but for most teams that would be a liability and a mush rush is the best way to neutralize a running QB in a spread offense.

Aubie 2015 =/= Florida 2012. And Kyler does not have the same offensive line JFF had.

I am not sold on Kyler being ready for SEC competition. I am not sold on the defense stopping anyone either. SC has been dog shite all around and they kept it close. Ifwe get into the same type of shootout with the war buzzards,, or anyone else cor that matter, we will lose.

I think Auburn is statistically worse on defense than SCAR though and doesn't have a QB that can run. The reason Auburn has been looking better has been because their QB has been hitting his stride as a passer, not because their defense has gotten any better. We're great against the pass. They'll run on us just like everyone has, but I think we still have the advantage even if we get into a shootout with them. People act like we automatically lose just because teams run all over us. It sucks to get run on and to watch it happen, but the thing about running-based drives is that if they have a penalty or a run stuffed in the backfield they are behind the chains and punting at the end of that series. That's what happened against Arkansauce and Bama too. We had a real shot against Bama, which is a much better team than Auburn, despite them running all over us. We lost that one because our QB threw 3 pick-6s not because they ran all over us.

I think they're mentally weaker as a team than Arkansauce or SCAR. Both of those squads took whatever we threw at them and just came back with a haymaker of their own. Auburn strikes me as a team that is waffling on a knife-edge of quitting on themselves and their coach. Hey, they have a lot of talent so if they come out playing well they will keep their confidence about them and may beat us, but I also think that if they get hit in the mouth right away, on the road, at night, against a frustratingly elusive run/slide little turd of a QB, they'll quit. Trouble with that is, Spav doesn't have the ability to script fast-scoring first possessions like Kliff did.