Recently, I issued a call for submissions for a convenient nickname for this Frankensteinian horror-show of a season. Apparently I wasn't the only one thinking this Auburn teams needs some sort of handy NO WE CAN'T! NO WE CAN'T! slogan, because the suggestions poured in both via comment and e-mail.
We had straightforward "we suck" suggestions: The Little Season that Couldn't, The Execrable Season, The Season of Utter Failure, the F.O.R.D. Season (i.e. "Fix or Repair Daily", via Acid), the Late Unpleasantness, the Season of Bitter Emptiness, and in a sharp bit of Bowden-era parody, God-AUful. We had a bevy of Franklin and/or spread-related suggestions: Spread Too Thin 2008, Season of Spread and Sputter, the Year of Spreading Dangerously, War Feeble: the Tony Franklin Story (or how I Stooped Worrying and Learned to Hate the Spread), The Season of Country Crock Spread (100% Offense-Free), the Season of Dread-Spread, the Season of Unintended Consequences, 2000-Franklin-8, the Season of Lost Minds, or the Spread Evil Season. We had a host of musically-related suggestions, including System of a Down(er), the Season I Started To Hate You, and a bunch from Grotus: the Hard Time Killin' Floor, the Long Gone Lonesome Season, the Lonesome Johnny Season, the Season That Should Not Be, and, um, the Season of Race-Car Ya-Yas. We had a handful referring to Auburn's penchant for first-half heroics and second-half collapses: the Season of Bad Halftime Speeches, the First Half National Championship Season, the Year of All-You-Can-Drink Jager Bombs at Halftime. And lastly, we had a couple of appeals to to the Arts, with Grotus offering Winesburg, Alabama to warm the cockles of my English-major heart and Sullivan013 suggesting the Duck! Rabbit, Duck! Season, which leads us to this rather excellent visual metaphor for the experience of being an Auburn fan in 2008:
That's it exactly, actually: every week we take look at the opponent and expect our team to find a way to dispose of them, every week they instead take aim and give us another embarrassing faceful of pain. ("More briefing? More briefing." = "We've removed another 20 percent of the playbook.") But no matter how violent it might look, it has to keep happening, over and over and over. Cartoon characters don't die. Auburn fans stay Auburn fans. We just have to put ourselves together again, and again, until we're out of anger or any kind of rational responses. That's when we crack and start gibbering about this being Fiddler Crab Season. Shoot us again. We enjoy it.
The depths are such that there's a reason I've listed above every single suggestion I received: they're all appropriate, they're all a just description of what's happened to Auburn in 2008. Which, I think, I'm going to go ahead and refer to as the Season of DEATH or 2008=DEATH. Is it ridiculously over-the-top? Yes. But humorously so, in that wonderful all-caps way that we all love about the Internets.
More than that, though, when we think of 2008, I don't think it's necessarily wrong to think about it as a sort of death. Oh, we the fans are still Daffy, still there, still sporting our shotgun shiners. But the dangerous, exciting, successful Auburn of 2000-2007 is gone. And let's face facts: I'd prefer he stick around, but it's possible the coach behind the Auburn of 2000-2007 is, too. If he's not, 2009 might be rebirth or it might be just a sad confirmation about what was lost this year. A wake. Either way: 2008=DEATH.
Assorted thoughts
--I'm not expecting Auburn fans to be too harsh on Kodi Burns, but for the record: Auburn fans shouldn't be too harsh on Kodi Burns. Yes, he threw three interceptions, all three of which were eye-gougingly ugly. But he's a sophomore who's already working on his third quarterback coach, the first of which treated him as a running back who had a bit of an arm; the second of which championed a rag-armed Daniel Cobb clone at Burns's expense; the third of which is the same sometime tight ends coach who turned Jason Campbell into a basket case. It's going to take time.
--I couldn't care less that Ensminger called 43 passes to 27 runs. The runs at Ole Miss's fearsome defensive front averaged 3.0 yards (and got a full third of its yardage from the single Ben Tate TD run) and the passes against Ole Miss's eminently torchable secondary averaged 7.4 yards. I'll take potential turnovers in the Rebels' territory over an endless series of punts from Auburn's own 25, thanks.
--Entering the season, the one position at which Auburn simply could not afford to have injuries was cornerback. So, of course, now Auburn's top four corners are all questionable-at-best for Saturday and there's a good chance our nominal starters will be D'Antoine Hood and Harry Adams, two inexperienced true freshman. When it rains on the Season of DEATH, it's time to start leading the animals two-by-two.
--Chris Slaughter, 8 catches for 131 yards FTW?!?
--True, it was more-than-a-little encouraging to see the battered, bruised, Rocky-esque Auburn defense stand up and take a few punches without collapsing this time. They even got in a few jabs here and there and thanks to Jevan Snead showing up like he expected the fight to be thrown, hung in there to Round 10 or 12 or however long you'd like to stretch the metaphor for. But they never landed the haymaker, either: in a game in which we all knew forcing turnovers would be critical, they finished with zero forced fumbles and zero interceptions. So it goes.
--Another zero: sacks for Ole Miss. On 43 attempts, that's not too shabby. The stuffing of the run game was obviously, yes, on the shabby side, but eight-man fronts in which several of those eight men will stuff the run for a living in the NFL means it was never going to be an easy job.
--I'm pretty sure we've reached a consensus that this is the worst season of Tuberville's tenure, the worst Auburn season since the 3-8 debacle in 1998. But is it worse? It could be. Expectations were fairly low in 1998 with Dameyune Craig out the door and the obvious talent deficiencies up-and-down Auburn's roster by that point. Maybe it's just the recency effect talking, but here at the JCCW, the plummet in 2008 feels more painful, more disastrous. Is this the darkest period for Auburn since Dye was forced out under the cloud of five-win seasons and Ramseygate? It might be. I think it might be.
3 comments:
We have talent deficiencies at the O-line, WR, and RB (yes Running Back) positions. We are also very average on the Defensive Line. I think we have all been drinking too much Auburn cool-aid to think otherwise.
West Virginia and Ole Miss both had scat back speed to run outside and make cuts to hurt our defense. We do not have that type of runner. Lester, Smith, Davis, Fannin, and Smith are average running backs. None of them have the speed we have seen the last two weeks. Auburn has to replenish speed in its recruiting efforts. War Eagle
I don't think we have talent deficiencies at O-line. After all, look at last year and what they were able to accomplish. Certainly we've taken a big step back but IMHO that's due to the same poor conditioning that plagues our entire team. And due to playing Bosley at RT where, God bless him, he simply doesn't belong. He's our center.
We do suck at WR. When I look at these guys, I wish we had Aromashadu, Obomanu, and Taylor back. Then I remember that those guys are basically non-impact players in the NFL. It's baaad.
And the D-line? Coleman? Doolittle? Marks? If that's average then sheesh. I think we're just playing banged up and poorly conditioned. Rhoads has to take some of the blame for that.
Jerry,
Thanks for the choice of 'Duck Rabbit Duck Season' for 2008. It's good to know those Saturday mornings watching Warner Brother's cartoons weren't as uselessly spent as my mother imagined.
I remember some time ago reading an essay by Chuck Jones on the characters he drew: Daffy KNOWS he will likely fail, often painfully, but keeps picking himself off the floor and trying again. Despite his frailties, he is more the eternal optimist than any other of the WB characters and his persistance borders on the heroic.
As people, Bugs may be who we want to be like, but Daffy is who we are.
War Eagle!
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