Am I crazy?

Since I'm not a football coach and the closest I ever came to the actual coaching and playing of the game was my two years running 12th-string for my junior high team in 7th and 8th grade, it always feels awful presumptuous of me to question coaching strategy. Not individual coaching decisions, so much--when the other team is down one and in easy field goal range with under two minutes to play, the head coach should call the timeouts burning a hole in his pocket--but the broader, gameplanning-type stuff still mostly seems a notch or two above my blogging pay grade.

But geez louise, this habit of Auburn's to play their corners waaaaaaay off the line of scrimmage (as documented painfully against both Ole Miss and West Virginia) drives me bonkers. Good defense just shouldn't hand its opponents 8-10 yards whenever said opponents feel like taking them, should it? I can sort of understand that thinking against Ole Miss--Jevon Snead has both a cannon and the receivers with which to aim it at--but shouldn't the first order of business in defending Pat "recruited as a wideout at LSU" White be to force him to complete downfield passes instead of long handoffs? When facing a I-AA quarterback, even if it's a decent one, shouldn't he be forced to prove he can complete low-percentage downfield passes first before giving up the easy stuff? Apparently not, according to Will:

Auburn had no answer for basically one play, namely a very simple pitch-and-catch from quarterback Cade Thompson to receiver Mike Hicks. Number 19 was camped out and wide open over on the short-side flat for what felt like a hundred snaps. Thompson, who was only sacked once, had pleny of time to throw, and Hicks must have thought he was playing pre-game drills without a defense most of the time. Not being stupid, UTM's play callers kept calling a play that worked fine, and AU rarely did anything about it.

I understand the theory of playing off, or at least I think I do. You prevent the big play. You force an opponent to drive the length of the field without making mistakes (and, admittedly, there were several times UT-Martin failed to pull this off). You give a secondary both as green and as banged-up as it could possibly be as much rope as you can. Auburn's coaches have decided that living with the eight-yard devil we know is better than living with the potential 50-yard devil we don't.

Maybe they're right. Maybe this is the best fit for our hobbled personnel. And maybe we'll see something different against Georgia or 'Bama (though against such precision deep ball-tossers as Stafford and Wilson, I'll be surprised).

But it's hard to see how this approach has worked for Auburn thus far. West Virginia shredded it. Ole Miss stuttered, but this seemed to have as much to do with Snead's hiccups as anything Auburn did (5.7 yards-per-rush). With the game still very much in doubt, I-AA Tennessee-Martin gained 30 or more yards on six of seven midgame possessions.

I won't say it with complete conviction, but I do have to wonder: at some point, doesn't the Auburn defense needs to focus on forcing the offense to make a difficult play as opposed to hoping they screw up an easy one? There's not a whole lot left for Auburn to lose this season. Might as well lose it charging forward instead of sitting back on one's heels.