Can Auburn achieve a bowl game this year?

[Viper 3,573]

1 hour ago, AUx said:

Seasons are scrimmage through 2025

Spot on. Maybe next year.

This is a 5-win season at best.

As for what Freeze has built in recruiting...

[jluvah 748]

1 hour ago, Viper said:

Spot on. Maybe next year.

This is a 5-win season at best.

As for what Freeze has built in recruiting...

I’ll hold on to my butt. If this season goes south (likely), can he hold on to recruits?

[ScotsAU 1,390]

On 9/13/2024 at 1:05 PM, Old fan 47 said:

I don’t think we beat OK and Vandy has me a bit concerned. Arky won’t be easy either. Unless our O begins to look better against teams with a pulse, six wins will be difficult. 

Have you watched Oklahoma this year? The went down to the wire with Houston, and they beat Tulane yesterday by about 2 scores. We’ll have to play better than we have to win that game. But they  absolutely look beatable. 

[TripleDegreeTiger 210]

Who cares if it isn't one of the playoff games.

Majority of the bowl games have no meaning, are set up to be winter vacations for fans, and teams/players hope to just get away with no injuries especially with the NFL and transfer portals.

[Viper 3,573]

14 minutes ago, jluvah said:

I’ll hold on to my butt. If this season goes south (likely), can he hold on to recruits?

It's been the question I've been asking for weeks in the recruiting forum. Jimbo. Napier. Is Freeze next?

When does the recruiting czar start coaching well enough so that he doesn't have to re-recruit the guys that other HCs are relentlessly coming after and will be using our poor season as a reason to flip?

[TigerHorn 1,448]

On 9/13/2024 at 7:08 AM, aucom96 said:

We're good enough to, but we'll have to improve quickly. I don't think Cal is better than Arky, maybe not even Vanderbilt and as bad as UK appears to be, we have to play them on the road. 

You know, when you made that post on Friday, I would have nodded in agreement. After Vandy got punked yesterday, Arky got a full blown scare from a UAB team that looked like it might win for a good bit of the game, and KY lost by 1 to UGA, that didn't age well at all!

I think the real bottom line is that no one really knows what they have yet this season aside from the top 3-5 loaded teams that have four years of elite recruiting and very few portal players. Everyone else is still growing up. 

[Old fan 47 825]

3 hours ago, ScotsAU said:

Have you watched Oklahoma this year? The went down to the wire with Houston, and they beat Tulane yesterday by about 2 scores. We’ll have to play better than we have to win that game. But they  absolutely look beatable. 

I have watched clips of them. I’ve only seen highlights of AU as well, outside of the Mex game. Over history, we have struggled with OU. Their down years, tend to be better than our down years. I agree, they are beatable and we will need to beat them, just to have a shot at a 7 win regular season this year. As decent as HB looked last night, this AU team to me doesn’t appear to be much improved from last year. JH usual home field, does not appear to be the advantage it once was. I’m attempting to be patient with HF and his very good recruiting, but at some point it has to translate to on field results and there in lies my beliefs, he is not the answer to our 5 year slide. Guess we will all see. 

[Hank2020 3,408]

2 hours ago, TigerHorn said:

You know, when you made that post on Friday, I would have nodded in agreement. After Vandy got punked yesterday, Arky got a full blown scare from a UAB team that looked like it might win for a good bit of the game, and KY lost by 1 to UGA, that didn't age well at all!

I think the real bottom line is that no one really knows what they have yet this season aside from the top 3-5 loaded teams that have four years of elite recruiting and very few portal players. Everyone else is still growing up. 

They have very few portal players because they don’t need them. Lol. If they have a need they fill it.

[TigerHorn 1,448]

7 minutes ago, Hank2020 said:

They have very few portal players because they don’t need them. Lol. If they have a need they fill it.

That's the point. CHF is trying to emphasize elite HS recruits over the portal, but the rebuild job is too big to abandon the portal for now. That takes time to build. You can get away with starting 1 freshman superstar on a team full of veterans. What we have is a team full of freshmen and guys who have never played together or in our system. 

Nine of our starting 11 on O are either TF, RSF, or transfers. 2nd team O features another seven

On D, 11 of 12 starters (yes 12) are SO or younger or transfers, ALL 12 2nd teamers are either RSFR, FR or transfers.

On the combined two-deep for O and D, we have THREE UPPERCLASSMEN, and two of them, Jarquez and Damari, play the same position. The only other upperclassman who's been here is Brandon Frazier. 

Do you guys realize just how big of a hole we're trying to crawl out of?

[AUwent 3,845]

Can we agree that the seat will be red hot entering 2025 if we fail to make a bowl? It would be going backwards. Just imagine how bad it would look to lose to Arky a year after massacring them.

2025 has been sold as our breakout year, so going to need *at least* 8 RS wins next year.

@TigerHorn: Oh and a lot of those transfer starters are seniors. I was under no illusion that this was a playoff contender but being able to win a game more each year wasn’t an unfair ask.

Edited September 16 by AUwent

[AU120289 563]

Can they - sure. Will they - looking iffy right now.

They are playing worse ball with a better roster and a hand picked staff, after canning the original hand picked staff.

Proof of concept keeps the class together and the portal exits minimal.

I picked 6-6 for the season. Freeze has not bolstered my confidence.  If you do earn the invite, you better dang well win that bowl game and set the tone for ‘25.

Stay tuned! 

[TripleDegreeTiger 210]

5 hours ago, Old fan 47 said:

I have watched clips of them. I’ve only seen highlights of AU as well, outside of the Mex game. Over history, we have struggled with OU. Their down years, tend to be better than our down years. I agree, they are beatable and we will need to beat them, just to have a shot at a 7 win regular season this year. As decent as HB looked last night, this AU team to me doesn’t appear to be much improved from last year. JH usual home field, does not appear to be the advantage it once was. I’m attempting to be patient with HF and his very good recruiting, but at some point it has to translate to on field results and there in lies my beliefs, he is not the answer to our 5 year slide. Guess we will all see. 

Well we lost twice in a 50 plus year period. Hell with it.. give em the win.. no use playing the game. Auburn may lose, but I doubt 1971 and 2017 will be the reason why.

Lol, with fans like ours who needs opponents.

 

[TripleDegreeTiger 210]

8 hours ago, Viper said:

It's been the question I've been asking for weeks in the recruiting forum. Jimbo. Napier. Is Freeze next?

When does the recruiting czar start coaching well enough so that he doesn't have to re-recruit the guys that other HCs are relentlessly coming after and will be using our poor season as a reason to flip?

Coaches are now going to have to re-recruit their players  every single year with the current NIL and transfer portal. That is just the nature of the business now. Bank accounts are greater than win/loss records and universities.

[TripleDegreeTiger 210]

6 hours ago, TigerHorn said:

You know, when you made that post on Friday, I would have nodded in agreement. After Vandy got punked yesterday, Arky got a full blown scare from a UAB team that looked like it might win for a good bit of the game, and KY lost by 1 to UGA, that didn't age well at all!

I think the real bottom line is that no one really knows what they have yet this season aside from the top 3-5 loaded teams that have four years of elite recruiting and very few portal players. Everyone else is still growing up. 

Will be interesting to see reactions if if we get a undefeated match up between Cal and Miami in a couple weeks.

[Viper 3,573]

1 hour ago, TripleDegreeTiger said:

Coaches are now going to have to re-recruit their players  every single year with the current NIL and transfer portal. That is just the nature of the business now. Bank accounts are greater than win/loss records and universities.

Absolutely but there is still a factor in that equation for emotional ties to a coach(es) and the projection of their program. It’s exactly why Knight cannot fully detach from Marcus Freeman. That’s just one example of many active recruitments and current enrollees. It isn’t 100% about money.

[TeamZero77 1,967]

9 hours ago, TigerHorn said:

That's the point. CHF is trying to emphasize elite HS recruits over the portal, but the rebuild job is too big to abandon the portal for now. That takes time to build. You can get away with starting 1 freshman superstar on a team full of veterans. What we have is a team full of freshmen and guys who have never played together or in our system. 

Nine of our starting 11 on O are either TF, RSF, or transfers. 2nd team O features another seven

On D, 11 of 12 starters (yes 12) are SO or younger or transfers, ALL 12 2nd teamers are either RSFR, FR or transfers.

On the combined two-deep for O and D, we have THREE UPPERCLASSMEN, and two of them, Jarquez and Damari, play the same position. The only other upperclassman who's been here is Brandon Frazier. 

Do you guys realize just how big of a hole we're trying to crawl out of?

Some rebuilds are faster than others. When Brian Kelly got to LSU, I think they only had like 38 scholarship players on roster because so many players entered the portal when Coach Orgeron was fired. Brian Kelly immediately got Jayden Daniels from the portal out of Arizona State and Mekhi Wingo from Missouri and both popped. He had to flip the roster quick and he did. They went on to beat Alabama and got to the SECCG in his first year. Lincoln Riley had to do the exact same. He signed 20 players from the transfer portal just from 3 schools: Oklahoma, Ohio State and Alabama. He got other transfers in as well but his bulk came from those 3 schools. His first year at USC they finished 11-2.

The Cal team that beat us has 58 new players on the team that weren't on the roster last year. 28 of those players are from the transfer portal. 

There's definitely different approaches to building rosters through the portal (Kiffin, Deion Sanders) or get a big haul from the portal in year 1 but then build through high school recruiting and sprinkle in portal players where need be (Freeze, Brian Kelly, Lincoln Riley). Some schools go after the top portal guys from top programs, which is what USC and LSU did. Others go after more Group of 5 players like we did that are cheaper but might find a diamond in the rough. As far as Justin Wilcox at Cal, I'm not really sure what kinda plan they have but for them to have 58 new players this year, they seem pretty good so far at 3-0 and an SEC win on the road against us.

 

Edited September 16 by TeamZero77

[TigerHorn 1,448]

3 hours ago, TeamZero77 said:

Some rebuilds are faster than others. When Brian Kelly got to LSU, I think they only had like 38 scholarship players on roster because so many players entered the portal when Coach Orgeron was fired. Brian Kelly immediately got Jayden Daniels from the portal out of Arizona State and Mekhi Wingo from Missouri and both popped. He had to flip the roster quick and he did. They went on to beat Alabama and got to the SECCG in his first year. Lincoln Riley had to do the exact same. He signed 20 players from the transfer portal just from 3 schools: Oklahoma, Ohio State and Alabama. He got other transfers in as well but his bulk came from those 3 schools. His first year at USC they finished 11-2.

The Cal team that beat us has 58 new players on the team that weren't on the roster last year. 28 of those players are from the transfer portal. 

There's definitely different approaches to building rosters through the portal (Kiffin, Deion Sanders) or get a big haul from the portal in year 1 but then build through high school recruiting and sprinkle in portal players where need be (Freeze, Brian Kelly, Lincoln Riley). Some schools go after the top portal guys from top programs, which is what USC and LSU did. Others go after more Group of 5 players like we did that are cheaper but might find a diamond in the rough. As far as Justin Wilcox at Cal, I'm not really sure what kinda plan they have but for them to have 58 new players this year, they seem pretty good so far at 3-0 and an SEC win on the road against us.

 

Cal has 11 non-transfer upperclassmen on their two-deep compared to our three (reminder, two of our three play the same position), and another five RS-SO's or SO's compared to our four SO's. I suspect if you look at LSU and USC, you will find that even if they only had 30-40 "on the roster" when Kelly and Riley showed up, they still had a lot more experienced non-transfer players in the two-deep than we have. 

[japantiger 4,148]

Can Auburn get to a bowl game?  If merely 6 wins is the goal; that will still be a stretch.  I don't see a path to 7 right now.  

AL A&M W

CAL - L

LOBOS - W

Arky - L

OK - L

UGA - L

Mizzou - L

KY - tossup

Vandy - tossup

ULM - W

Aggies - tossup

UAT - L

The lack of experienced talent is a factor you just can't overcome.  The #1 indicator of record is returning starters/production.  It just isn't there.  The key will be holding the talent we like thru the portal period and keeping the recruiting effort together.  The average portal loss last year in the SEC was 22 players per team.  Only UGA bucked that trend materially (last I saw, they were under 10 portal losses).  It is accelerating, not decelerating.  So every year you have to replace 1/2 of your roster thru signing a full recruiting class and replacing 1/4 of the team lost thru transfer portal.  It's not an either/or; a HC and staff now HAVE to do both.

In the rather "testy" exchange above related to "staffs teaching fundamentals and anyone that doesn't believe that just doesn't understand football" I will say this.  Yes, staff's generally all teach fundamentals.  I have seen a lot of practices from one specific SEC team over the last 10 years and 3 staffs.  The current staff emphasizes it the most; the staff that got fired about 6 years ago the least.  The staff in between started out being absolute beasts on it and then slackened over time.  So there is a large degree of variability.  But what really matters is what happens when you are teaching fundamentals and the athletes screw it up.  We all know what Saban, Smart, etc., do and preach.   If you can't get the fundamentals right, if you don't do the things required to be elite, the little things (like correct fits, like maximum effort, like training room dedication, etc.) you set on the bench.  And they know how to teach the fundamentals.  They don't care what your star-count is; adhere to the standard or don't play and we'll help you enter your info into the portal.  That is what separates "elite" programs from programs that cycle HC's every 3 years.  I see nothing in HF's coaching rhetoric, or behavior, or on the field yet,  that indicates the Auburn staff approaches it with the same intensity and standard. This is my issue with this regime since arriving. 

The loss to CAL created an issue we shouldn't be talking about.  It was just careless prep and piss poor in game decision making.  In other words, it's more of the same from HF.  The fact that after week 3 there is even a thread on "do we make a bowl game" should tell you all you need to know.        

 

[TigerHorn 1,448]

5 hours ago, TeamZero77 said:

Some rebuilds are faster than others. When Brian Kelly got to LSU, I think they only had like 38 scholarship players on roster because so many players entered the portal when Coach Orgeron was fired. Brian Kelly immediately got Jayden Daniels from the portal out of Arizona State and Mekhi Wingo from Missouri and both popped. He had to flip the roster quick and he did. They went on to beat Alabama and got to the SECCG in his first year. Lincoln Riley had to do the exact same. He signed 20 players from the transfer portal just from 3 schools: Oklahoma, Ohio State and Alabama. He got other transfers in as well but his bulk came from those 3 schools. His first year at USC they finished 11-2.

The Cal team that beat us has 58 new players on the team that weren't on the roster last year. 28 of those players are from the transfer portal. 

There's definitely different approaches to building rosters through the portal (Kiffin, Deion Sanders) or get a big haul from the portal in year 1 but then build through high school recruiting and sprinkle in portal players where need be (Freeze, Brian Kelly, Lincoln Riley). Some schools go after the top portal guys from top programs, which is what USC and LSU did. Others go after more Group of 5 players like we did that are cheaper but might find a diamond in the rough. As far as Justin Wilcox at Cal, I'm not really sure what kinda plan they have but for them to have 58 new players this year, they seem pretty good so far at 3-0 and an SEC win on the road against us.

 

I had some spare time and dug up a LSU Depth chart from Kelly's first year. They had:

12 non-transfer upperclassmen in the two-deep, vs our net of two

12 TF or RS FR in the two-deep, most on D, and most on 2nd team, but five of the starters were true SO's. Their youth on D manifested in defensive collapses to UTK, ATM and UGA. 

Even though LSU had lost a lot to the portal with the departure of Ed O, he had recruited very well and they had some depth and leadership that is totally absent at AU. 

Even with the portal, AU is a three year rebuilding job, and more likely a four year rebuild, after we essentially had no recruiting classes during the potato famine. 

Edited September 16 by TigerHorn

[AUwent 3,845]

9 hours ago, TigerHorn said:

I had some spare time and dug up a LSU Depth chart from Kelly's first year. They had:

12 non-transfer upperclassmen in the two-deep, vs our net of two

12 TF or RS FR in the two-deep, most on D, and most on 2nd team, but five of the starters were true SO's. Their youth on D manifested in defensive collapses to UTK, ATM and UGA. 

Even though LSU had lost a lot to the portal with the departure of Ed O, he had recruited very well and they had some depth and leadership that is totally absent at AU. 

Even with the portal, AU is a three year rebuilding job, and more likely a four year rebuild, after we essentially had no recruiting classes during the potato famine. 

Everyone points to the portal as proof to the contrary, but I fully believe that good HS recruiting leaves a good situation for the next staff. Another example, A&M has been touted as a darkhorse in Elko’s first year. So I’d like to think we’ll be a more desirable job if Freeze ultimately doesn’t work out.

[AUx 3,264]

17 minutes ago, AUwent said:

Everyone points to the portal as proof to the contrary, but I fully believe that good HS recruiting leaves a good situation for the next staff. Another example, A&M has been touted as a darkhorse in Elko’s first year. So I’d like to think we’ll be a more desirable job if Freeze ultimately doesn’t work out.

That's definitely glass half full! Agreed. Hugh keeps recruiting lights-out, at least one major thing is finally going right for Auburn football. We've seen the situation where the entire house is burning to the ground, ... and then the meteor hits.

[aucanucktiger 1,913]

Oklahoma is shaping up to look like an upset victim. That would be outstanding, especially of we lose a shootout to Ark.