The Works, "Auburn"-style

This is the problem. Dr. Saturday on the game:

At halftime, I was ready to gush about Auburn's resilience and return to form off a solid month of pessimism and decline. This really was Tuberville Classic: a run-heavy, 20-play drive to open the game, a massive advantage in time of possession, a crazy-like-a-fox onside kick, and even a touchdown, Kodi Burns' scramble to put the Tigers up 17-6, off the old Auburn standby, the play-action waggle with the shallow tight end cross. You can't get more Auburn than the first quarter and a half.

But aye, there's the rub: that Auburn has had some mighty fine triumphs these last couple of seasons, but it never won a championship. It went a hella-fortunate 11-2 in 2006 and scrambled to 9-4 in 2007. If you want to say this was Auburn in 2002 and 2003, it didn't win so much as a divisional title either of those years, uh, either.

The offense that did win a title for Auburn (and the 2005 version that was one made Vaughn field goal on the bayou from quite possibly doing the same) was not what we saw last night; they may have used some of the same plays, but those teams threw with aggression and effectiveness rather than as a last resort, they tested opponents with the deep ball repeatedly, they ran sweeps and off-tackle plays and went right up the gut and never let the opposing rush defense get into a groove. Obviously, an awful lot of those 2004 and 2005 teams' success was the personnel on hand--an awful, awful lot--but the stereotypical "Auburn" play-calling and offensive design in the first half of last night's game did not bear a whole lot of resemblance to the offenses of 2004 and 2005.

Even if it said schemes did succeed in that first half and even if it had succeeded in the second half, we've already seen the ceiling of that offense. Going forward, Auburn needs to be something besides "Auburn." Whether that's best accomplished by employing a fresh spread-style operation or by recruiting by hook or crook (well, OK, not "crook" please) a second generation of Campbell-McNeill-Cadillac-Brown players that would allow a Borgesesque scheme to re-blossom into the 2004-2005 editions, I don't know. Whatever happens to the offense here in these last four games, it had better just be a stopgap. "Auburn" shouldn't be codeword for "the very opposite of explosive offense"--particularly not when that offense has fallen short of where we want it to finish the last three years.

The usual suspects react. Acid Reign with a point I completely agree with regarding Auburn's problems on defense:

Our corners were generally good, but Auburn's safety play was nearly non-existent. Auburn's two safeties have become nearly invisible, neither covering, nor making tackles. We're really searching for answers, once the play moves past the line of scrimmage up the middle.

Not just on running plays, either; the first WVU touchdown resulted from Mike McNeil just not seeing the receiver who caught the pass and breaking instead on an already-covered receiver several yards in front of him. And where on earth is the battering-ram Zac Etheridge we saw last year?

At TWER Jeremy makes a point I really wish I'd made myself:

A quick thought on a contributing factor, a nauseating trend: The quarterback debate has raged, the Franklin fiasco unfolded, but this anguished season has also been marked with what now, eight games in, appears to be habitually shoddy 4th quarter clock management. For years the dice have been rolled properly against all odds and Tuberville would vanilla the hell out of the 4th quarter and we’d hang on to win or come behind at just the right time. This year, the Plinko is screwed up. Maybe it’s just me, but a strange complacency seems to rule our come-from-behind strategy, as if a 5th quarter will flicker on the scoreboard and eventually make wise an uncalled timeout or a decision not to go for it - only four yards - down two scores with six minutes (or even eight minutes on the possession before!) left and facing a most unpleasant and unstoppable greased midget able to spin broken plays into 30 yard runs at will. There was just no way, no way in the world we were going to score twice the way things were going.

On WVU's final drive, by watching the clock tick-tick-tick away from 4 minutes to 3:15 to 2:30 without even bothering to use one of his timouts, Tubby basically told his team he had given up. Is it any wonder they responded by laying down and letting Devine walk in for that final score?

In one of several choice Grotus Acorn bits, he wishes for the spreads of heaven*:

So when I watched that game... when I watched the play-action screen go for a first down, the zone read run to perfection, simple swing passes rocket through our secondary like Patriot missiles... I thought if only we had done that. And in a bizarre, Stockholm Syndrome-like turn of events, I kind of turned off. It was fun watching West Virginia's plays succeed, because they were good plays and well-executed. Yes, it sucked mightily that it was happening to Auburn, but in West Virginia I saw a shadow of the Spread Eagle and I exhaled.

Like Isaac, who watched his eldest son sell his birthright and himself was deceived, as I watched my Esau of the plains get clobbered by the mountaineers I could only think this is what what I wanted for you.

I wasn't expecting the spread-n'-shred overnight, but ... yeah.It didn't have to be this way.

The MSM didn't have much of interest to say--same-ol' waily-waily about Tubby's job prospects and a few cliched quotes. K-Scar's "2001 all over again LOLZ" column did have one interesting tidbit to pass along:

The defense, which had been a solution most of the time, gave up more points than any Auburn defense to any team not named Georgia in the Past six years.

Yay.

Pollwatch. Before I started voting in the Blog Poll, I took as a given that the AP, Harris, and particularly the coaches' voters (be they the actual coaches or their SID's) were ignorant slack-asses who slapped their ballots together at the last minute based on 1) team reputations forged in the late 1980s 2) win-loss record. Now that I'm filling out my own weekly top-25 and finding it ... um ... not all that difficult, I'm realizing exactly how "ignorant" and "slack-assed" we're talking about here. Exhibit A, your honor, is the Register's Tommy Hicks's "logic" in putting together his Harris Poll ballot:

This week's ballot includes newcomers (for me) Pitt, Florida State, Boston College and Georgia Tech. Still no Tulsa because I don't believe it has played a quality schedule thus far.

Well, Tulsa's been pretty impressive in all but one of their wins, but that's a fair argument. So, if you're a schedule guy, Tommy, then I'm assuming Texas Tech (schedule: 103rd-ranked) and Florida St. (126th, plus a loss to an unranked team) are going to come in for some punishment too, huh?

-- 3. Penn State

-- 4. Oklahoma

-- 5. Texas Tech

-- 6. Florida ...

-- 20. Minnesota

-- 21. Florida State

-- 22. Ball State

If there wasn't so staggeringly much on the line with these stupid things, I might not care. But dammit, there is. Tommy Hicks' ballot matters. It's his responsibility to look past back-loaded joke schedules and meaningless 2007 results (this is a big chunk of Kansas's and Missouri's appeal) to rank teams where they deserve to be ranked. And he, and dozens of his fellow poll voters, just aren't doing it. (While the stakes are lower and they do have the Big 12 impostors lower-ranked than their AP and coaches' poll brethren, Blog Poll voters certainly aren't innocent; when even Stewart Mandel has figured out that Kansas didn't belong in the poll this week and Missouri's only in the bottom five, we can't exactly hold our blogging heads high.)

Etc. The Plainsman confuses malaria with smallpox in this column about the D-Rays dropping the "D," but that doesn't make it any less funny ... Getting a jump on next week's opponent, Red Solo Cup argues Ole Miss isn't as talented as people (specifically Arkansas fans) might have you believe.