2016 'one of those growing years'

[keesler 5,934]

2 hours ago, cole256 said:

What is this? The fourth year in a row we've used the young team excuse? That's an entire career of players....where are we so young at? At what position? I mean our depth may be young but how is that any different than any other school on earth? Why is it that we act like we're going through some trials and tribulations that nobody else has to endure? 

I remember when Tennessee o line was like 2 sophomores and 3 true freshmen....You know how many people cared? Nobody. When we laughed at Tennessee about sucking nobody thought but they are young though....yet we think the rest of the SEC is supposed to respect us when we use that excuse

+1

The "youth" excuse no longer works for coaches just finishing up their 4th year as HC.  Bert Bielmia/Butch Jones/Gus Malzhan are all in the same boat, they all started the same year and none of their fans want to hear about youth anymore.

[I_M4_AU 8,285]

1 minute ago, WarDamnEagleWDE said:

Yep. 

Done

[WarDamnEagleWDE 12,737]

1 minute ago, I_M4_AU said:

Done

[tbone4jc 2,250]

I still have hope for Gus. When healthy, our team really started clicking against LSU, albeit the red zone, but for the 6 games following LSU the offense and defense was looking remarkably great. The injury bug hit hard in the worst possible way, #1 QB, RB, FB,CB's & LB for our last two games. No excuse for the first 2 losses. Gus has to realize his offense play makers and determine an identity before the season starts, not 3 games into the season. War Eagle!  And as always, IGTBAAT! 

[Charhair 345]

A growing year that Gus and his side of the ball decided to do no growing.

We came out and ran the exact same debacle of an offense we saw against Clemson. We were sticking players into the QB position randomly. It seems like there's no thought process behind Gus' rotating QBs it's just "I'll stick John in now! No one else would do that, that's why I'm an unpredictable offensive genius."

It didn't work in the Clemson game NBD, not all game plans are perfect, most of us even gave Gus a pass for that. 

But after it failed miserably, we trot into BDS with the same type of plays drawn up.

These whirly birds and QB rotation and never throwing it with your wild cat who actually has an arm, not letting your back up QB prepare against a cupcake team. These are all huge question marks that I cannot understand how Gus didn't try to do anything about. With all the blow outs we were involved in in the first halves of games, Gus never once let jf3 come in and get a bunch of passes under his belt. I understand that passing against our defense in practice is better but there's not 80k people watching and stuff on the line. 

The fact that every single auburn fan learned by half time of Clemson that dumbass plays like that didn't work but Gus continued to run them and rotate QBs throughout the season speaks volumes to me, especially when his biggest game against the best team features him reverting back to a game plan that he already showed was a failure against a much lesser defense. 

Gus might say it's a growing year for auburn but he made it pretty obvious with his IB actions that he didn't learn anything. And if he and lashlee are still here next year running the dumbass whirly bird, I'm 100% done. 

 

On a side note, it likely is just more of the same from Gus. I'm sure he made similar comments regarding 2014s and 2015s end of seasons. I might be able to get a long with that if it wasn't for the fact that we've had DCs who actually know what they're doing and have made huge growing strides over the past couple of season and are not sporting a top 10 defense.

[WarDamnEagleWDE 12,737]

[I_M4_AU 8,285]

1 hour ago, WarDamnEagleWDE said:

How long did that show run?

[AUld fAUx@ 2,584]

3 minutes ago, I_M4_AU said:

How long did that show run?

Some might say

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaa

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too long

[I_M4_AU 8,285]

Just now, AUinTLoosa said:

Some might say

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaa

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too long

I think the sentiment of some on this board is the same with Gus.

[AUld fAUx@ 2,584]

4 minutes ago, I_M4_AU said:

I think the sentiment of some on this board is the same with Gus.

Without a willing straight man

some bits just don't work

[The Freak 2,530]

16 minutes ago, AUinTLoosa said:

Some might say

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaa

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too long

Some people, but not Leonardo Dicaprio

[AuburnEagle79 2,171]

I don't doubt Gus. Sean progressed greatly and the line meshed well throughout the season, but if next year isn't an improvement, we should seriously consider moving on. 

[Dan-0 479]

Bottom line is most see this not as a season of "growing" but one of unfulfilled potential. Our offense needs a total reset with some fresh ideas and fresh approaches that only a new OC who is given complete autonomy over the offense could implement. If we don't get that, expect a another growing season next year.

[Tiger 8,835]

The way we finished the season, unless we really show out in the bowl game, will ensure our hype for next year will be tempered. Which, historically, might not be a bad thing. If we finished 9-3 or 10-2 (like we were on track to do if not for injuries) the hype train would be rolling hard as soon as the 4th quarter ends in our bowl game. We are in the process of growing for sure though. Next year and the following can be huge. Think about it, we had many first time players last year and won 6 regular season games. Many of those came back and we won 8 (it should've been more but the coaches royally screwed the players the for the majority of the losses). Many of those guys are coming back again next year. We are in a good spot from a personnel standpoint -- and will be even better if we get Stidham or Malik Zaire (there's no info on Zaire, but if we miss out on Stidham I can see our staff making a hard play for Zaire).

 

We have so many people coming back on O next season we are shaping up to be a real force. Let's see if Steele reverts back to who he has been over his entire career though. He did an incredible job this season, lets hope he keeps it up.

[Tiger 8,835]

Also not sure why people say "every year it seems like we are young"... That has been the case for this year and last year -- because we are/were. ~90% of your offensive production doesn't come from freshman and sophomores if you aren't young. That is an astonishing percentage of your offensive production coming from young guys. I just don't get how one can argue against that. However, we were not young in 2014. We were one of the most experienced teams in the SEC in 2014. And if we could have fielded just a bad defense rather than an embarrassment to defensive football we might've actually won 10 or 11 games.

I reallllly wish @StatTiger would just put this whole argument to bed by putting his experience numbers up! He flatly told us last year to be cautious with your expectations because when you compared experience of that team to past successful AU teams we had a long ways to go to match their experience. Even for this year's team, as he projected at the time but I don't think he posted those numbers for our true Game 1 roster for this year, was not comparing favorably to other successful AU teams in the past. It was only a slight improvement from last year.

I'd argue we may have outperformed our age actually considering our losses were mainly due to coaching blunders and health, or lack thereof. We have one hell of a roster IMO and when these guys are seniors and juniors we should be scary good.

[bigbird 60,624]

@Tiger search "experience formula"

[Tiger 8,835]

12 minutes ago, bigbird said:

@Tiger search "experience formula"

Thanks. For some reason I can't seem to find anything more recent than pre-2012 season Experience Formula posts from Stat when I use the search. I swear if I were thinking about putting money down on any AU team prior to the season I would read the Experience Formula forecast by Stat for our team beforehand. It is so telling. Here is an old version for those who are unfamiliar:

It obviously can't predict the future or a few variables like a team quitting on it's coach but it is extremely solid. And seems to hold especially true for our program and can often times predict when we will be at the peak of our game.

https://www.aufamily.com/forums/blogs/entry/149-experience-formula-20-10-part-ii/

[augolf1716 21,544]

10 hours ago, cole256 said:

Golf stole that from me

yep caught me again damn

[augolf1716 21,544]

8 hours ago, I_M4_AU said:

You mean I have to edit again?

Damn straight I'm going to keep my eye on you.

[leglessdan 1,934]

On 12/2/2016 at 7:00 AM, cole256 said:

What is this? The fourth year in a row we've used the young team excuse? That's an entire career of players....where are we so young at? At what position? I mean our depth may be young but how is that any different than any other school on earth? Why is it that we act like we're going through some trials and tribulations that nobody else has to endure? 

I remember when Tennessee o line was like 2 sophomores and 3 true freshmen....You know how many people cared? Nobody. When we laughed at Tennessee about sucking nobody thought but they are young though....yet we think the rest of the SEC is supposed to respect us when we use that excuse

Sad thing is...that "youth" produced a large amount of our success this season. The disappointment falls on coaching, not youth. We had a team that could've been major overachievers this season. The coaches tripped them up at times.

[AURex 2,103]

I don't want to hear this crap about rebuilding YEAR AFTER YEAR !!! Bama had just as much youth on offense as Auburn did this year, including a true freshman QB. There is just no excuse for Auburn to be perpetually "rebuilding."  We hear that year after year. With multi-year top 10 recruiting classes, Auburn should be as good as any other team in the league. Losing every year to UGA, Bama and other SEC West teams is just plain inexcusable.

Sorry, but I'm not buying it anymore.

 

[AURealist 2,185]

"growing year..."

"injury-plagued..."

"young team..." 

All are excellent excuses reasons for our underperformance.  Which of these will we be able to reliably roll over into next season?  We'll probably need to think up some new material and have it ready to go before next October.  What about "We just can't get the players"?  Or "the biased SEC officiating is costing us the season"?

Personally, I would have put more emphasis on "continuing adjustments due to changes in coaching staff" this season and then pushed those other excuses reasons into next year, but what do I know?  I'm no longer in PR...

Just remember:  The main thing is to keep those good excuses reasons in the public consciousness because it's the only way to rationalize the obscene amount of money we are flushing down the toilet to keep our beloved Coach Malzahn in Auburn.  Nothing is more exciting to me than the anticipation of watching yet another season of Coach Malzahn's Desperation Turtle Offense.

 

[oracle79 3,569]

4 hours ago, AURealist said:

"growing year..."

"injury-plagued..."

"young team..." 

All are excellent excuses reasons for our underperformance.  Which of these will we be able to reliably roll over into next season?  We'll probably need to think up some new material and have it ready to go before next October.  What about "We just can't get the players"?  Or "the biased SEC officiating is costing us the season"?

Personally, I would have put more emphasis on "continuing adjustments due to changes in coaching staff" this season and then pushed those other excuses reasons into next year, but what do I know?  I'm no longer in PR...

Just remember:  The main thing is to keep those good excuses reasons in the public consciousness because it's the only way to rationalize the obscene amount of money we are flushing down the toilet to keep our beloved Coach Malzahn in Auburn.  Nothing is more exciting to me than the anticipation of watching yet another season of Coach Malzahn's Desperation Turtle Offense.

 

I can think of several others:

Team Chemistry wasn't where it needed to be.

Senior Leadership didn't exert itself.

O Line needed more time to gel and find the right mix.

We're beat up with nagging injuries.

Couple of plays away from turning the corner in close games.

Attrition of some players to NFL or transfer, and it took time to find the right mix of players from their backups.

ETC, ETC, ETC, remix, same song different verse.

We had some great weeks of practices without a doubt though.

I like the players we have and the direction this team is headed; bright future.

Our coaching staff is getting in sync and coming together and figuring out the best way to complement each other.

[ToomersStreet 795]

On 12/2/2016 at 8:08 AM, WarDamnEagleWDE said:

Typical Gus. Always making excuses. 

It was Gus that said before the season the next 3-4 years will be Auburns best.  Then switched to it was a growing year when he could only muster 8-4

[Linayus 676]

On ‎12‎/‎3‎/‎2016 at 9:20 PM, AURex said:

I don't want to hear this crap about rebuilding YEAR AFTER YEAR !!! Bama had just as much youth on offense as Auburn did this year, including a true freshman QB!

That true freshman QB (and a suffocating (not young) defense) is the main reason Bama is undefeated this season. If they had to roll with either of the other two QBs (who are both transferring out now), Bama would have lost 2 games if not 3 (Ole Miss, Arkansas, LSU). If Auburn didn't have Cam Newton in 2010 or Nick Marshall in 2013, we'd have lost 3 games in both seasons (if not a few more).

Auburn doesn't have that star QB and our losses reflect that (especially Clemson and Georgia). Youth on offense shows promise for Auburn, but mostly if we solidify the QB position.

But really our "top 10" recruiting classes are more due to our recent defensive classes (though our WR class this last year helped a lot) and that at least looks to be in good form.