Post-Game review: Auburn 30 - FAU 14

First of all, a win is a win.

And judging by the next 4 games on our schedule, we'll take all of 'em we can. When all of the pundits who viewed Auburn as a team that was too young and had too difficult of a schedule to do anything meaningful this season, this is the stretch they pointed to. At South Carolina, at Arkansas, Florida at home, then at LSU to wrap up. What the hell? Ridiculous!

So, like I said, we'll take 'em where we can.

Offensively,
this is about as disappointing of a game as I've watched under Gus Malzahn's incredible run here. I understand that we have to get the ball to our playmakers at WR quickly, but even I was able to call out "WR screen to Reed" every other play and be correct. The screen game is effective only if the running game and/or deep passing game is effective. Neither of those were being executed effectively by Auburn. To me, it appears that Trotter is hesitant to make the deep throws to anyone other than Emory Blake (who has been incredible so far). I'm not sure whether he doesn't trust what he sees or if he's just scared to throw picks, but there were several times that there were receivers running open in the first half and he checked down to the easy short throw to the RB or H-Back for a short gain or loss. I understand that Trotter is not Cam Newton, but Trotter did win this job as Auburn's starting QB for a reason. He has the ability to stretch the field. We saw this much was true in the A-Day game this spring. I know, don't take too much from that, but we saw he can put throws on the money deep. This has to be done over the next 4 weeks for us to have any chance to give Dyer room to run the ball. Some people will wonder why we didn't run Dyer 30 times against them, not me. He needs to be healthy and fresh for these next 4 weeks, because I envision him carrying the ball probably close to or over 100 times this next month. On the other side, this should give Auburn's WRs a little more room to make plays if they bring an extra safety into the box, but Trotter has to trust what he sees and make accurate throws.

Grade: C-

Now for Defense:
As I mentioned in one of my articles last week, I like the idea of simplifying the defense to allow the young athletes we do have to play faster. It looked like we were playing faster out there. I'd rather have 11 guys on the same page on an okay defensive call than 10 guys on the same page on a great call (which is what we'd been seeing weeks 1-3). I feel like we really did make progress this week. We actually made a few plays, which will help the confidence of this young team. And, I was very, very impressed with the play of young DBs, Jermaine Whitehead and Robenson Therezie. Whitehead's interception was the type of play that Auburn fans have been clamoring for, and haven't gotten since probably the 2010 Outback Bowl when McFadden returned the pick for a TD 100+ yards. He read the route, broke on the ball, and made a 1 on 1 "I'm better than you" play on the ball. This is something I hope to see more of.

Unfortunately, even though I love T'Sharvan Bell, I don't know if we will because Bell is consistently out of position and probably gets out of his breaks slower than any of the other DBs on the team. The problem is, he's smart and is one of the few vocal leaders we have on defense. I'd like to see more out of him and see him take the next step from how he played at the end of last year, but he appears to have gone a little backwards......and so has our defense overall.

Another alarming problem I noticed was that we weren't able to get any push at all across the DL against FAU. That's sad, and quite frankly, pathetic. I don't care anymore if these kids are young, they've had 3, now 4, games to figure out what to expect in D1 football on the DL. FAU was able to consistently gash our defense for decent chunks of yardage on the ground, and rarely were we ever able to get any pressure on the QB. Once again, pathetic. We have vastly superior athletes to what FAU can offer up, so I expected the DL to be able to pad some stats and get 3-4 sacks at least. Corey Lemonier was pretty much the only guy that was able to do so. With Dee Ford out, I really expected LaDarius Owens to be able to put up a great performance out there as well, but he seemed to get swallowed up anytime an OL got his hands on him. This is an area that has to improve, or else Garcia, Wilson, Brantley, and Lee will eat us alive in October.

Grade: B

Finally we take a look at Special Teams.
Cody Parkey, you're the MVP of the Auburn football team so far this year. He is, single-handedly, able to eliminate any threat of a ST play by the opposition turning the game around after an Auburn score. He has an absolutely huge leg, and has been exceptional on FGs. We can only hope that he performs the same way on the road this coming month in big, loud atmospheres. Steven Clark has done a very, very good job as well. Overall I'm happy with him too.

The one issue that we're having so far with special teams, is punt returns. Trovon Reed has eliminated that good ole' feeling of "oh God please just catch the ball". Okay, so that's done. Now we need to actually give him a little room to do his magic. He's absolutely electric and can make you miss in a phone booth, but he can only make 3-4 guys miss (rolls eyes) before the help will eventually wrap him up. He can't make any moves upfield because of how quickly guys are in his face. This isn't too bad of an issue though, all thing considered.

Grade: A

Overall
not a horrible game, just kind of "meh" to be honest. Defensively, I feel we progressed. We were good on ST. Offensively, I was horribly disappointed. Playcalling has to be better there. We also got out without any major injuries.

Grade: B

I'm very happy that we're the CBS game next week, hopefully that kind of stage is something that will bring out the players on our team. One thing is for sure, we certainly have a scary schedule for the month that brings Halloween!

WDE!