OK, getting down to more of the nuts-and-bolts of Saturday’s game …
– I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, but the Dawgs won this game on the defensive line. The Auburn offensive line has given up some QB pressure from time-to-time and struggled opening running lanes from time-to-time, but this is the first time this season they’ve done both of those things for as long as they did against Georgia. Getting Tate shut down was particularly big–even Auburn’s touchdown drives came after strings of 3rd-and-long conversions that even new-and-re-improved Todd wouldn’t be able to keep up for a whole game, or even a whole drive. Todd, Adams, and McCalebb were good enough to get the ball across midfield, but without Tate, there was just too much ground to cover on second and third down to finish things off.
So the answer, I think, to the question of what Auburn did differently on those first two drives they didn’t do the rest of the game is “nothing.” Georgia just got the pass rush going on 3rd-and-long and Todd naturally didn’t have quite as much luck in those situations as he did in the first quarter.
– Boy, not that this is the first time one of my predictions has been “Dewey Defeats Truman”-grade FAIL, but my contention Friday that Auburn would match up well with Georgia’s running game ranks up there with the best/worst of them. Losing the Toro hurt, of course, but the Dawgs were already punching some huge holes in the Auburn line and Washington just couldn’t provide the kind of run support an already-hamstrung linebacking corps needed. I can admit this, too: Ealey was a lot better than I expected him to be.
– Man, I hate to do it, but it’s time to call a spade a spade: Neiko Thorpe just hasn’t been as good as I thought he would be this season. Another questionable-to-poor game from him, and though I don’t want to make any kind of pronouncement about the coaching job here, between Thorpe and the very occasional struggles at the nickel, cornerback might be the one spot on the team where Auburn’s maybe not playing up to their talent level. We’ll see what happens next year, when hopefully there’ll be more than three or four healthy corners on the team.
– I knew Auburn was in trouble when Georgia kept handing them chances to put the stake through their heart in the first half and the Auburn offense just kept declining. The Tigers started five drives spanning the end of the first quarter through the start of the third at the Georgia 44 and their own 39, 42, 39, and 37 … and produced two first downs and zero points. Blecch.
– That kind of field position comes in part from good defense, but it also has a ton to do with special teams, and that’s what’s most frustrating about this defeat: for the first time all season Auburn not only won the special teams battle but won it decisively. Durst was on fire; Todd nailed his pooch punt again; Washington put together the best punt return of the season (and kicked his fumble out of bounds, thank heavens) and then of course housed the kick return that made that last Auburn drive worth watching in the first place. If you’ve told me before the game that Todd would go 20-for-28 for 8.5 an attempt and Auburn would score on a kick return while not allowing Georgia any special-teams-related short fields, I’d have beta substantial amount of money on the Tigers pulling the game out.
– But when you finish -2 in turnover margin and have five possessions that cross midfield without scoring points, those sorts of things happen. The second Todd pick, in particular, was the biggest play of the game by a mile-and-a-half.
– I forget the exact numbers, but Tubby had an unbelievable run in close games from 2001-2006, going something like 17-5 in games decided by a TD or less. I don’t know of a statistically-minded football writer anywhere who’d view that as sustainable, and so I have to wonder if that bill is finally coming due: not counting this year’s Tennessee game (which of course was a four-point game in name only), Auburn has now lost five straight one-possession games. It might also be worth noting that the only other team to reproduce Auburn’s mid-decade success in nailbiters, Wake Forest, has lost five games by a total of 13 points this season.
– Credit to Baccari Rambo and the Georgia secondary: their tackling on Tate was as solid as any team’s that’s faced Auburn this season. Very glad Rambo will be OK. (Do have to note here, however, that if Rambo’s hit guaranteed that Fannin would drop the ball, it was already a drop before the hit occurred. The ball had hit Fannin in the hands and bounced off of them.)
– Gus, you’re great, you’re amazing, don’t ever think I don’t think that, but you’ve got to quit pulling out the wacky stuff on critical third downs. It’s just not working. (And while we’re at it: this is twice in two games huge plays have been brought back not by holds or clips or even illegal procedures, but by illegal shifts, a penalty that’s nothing more than a wide player getting antsy and moving a place he shouldn’t before the snap. More discipline is needed from your charges, thanks.)
– Man, was it nice to have McCalebb back, even a half-strength version.
– Four straight losses to the Dawgs: Sigh.
Photo via.
Wondering if anyone else found it frustrating that we went for the juglar on the 3rd offensive possession, from UGA’s 44- -where we huddle, then hurry up to the line, then run play action bomb down the field. It’s incomplete, we lose yardage on the next 2 plays and punt. If we had just tried to keep running our offense instead of going for the knockout blow- -wonder if things would have been different. I got upset when Borges would do that stuff, and now I’m seein a proclivity for this by Malzahn. I’m with you- -I’m glad about most all things that he’s doing- -just curious on some of those play calls.
I with you WDEwg, but perhaps that this is some way for Gus to try and wring every last drop of production from the talent he has. Maybe the 11th straight game has the boys worn down and more mistake prone (hello Trott and Ziemba). So he thinks he has a better shot at connecting the bomb than stringing 2-3 perfectly executed plays in a row.
Loose analogy: A pro golfer makes his dough on par fives and short par fours because he can reach the green under regulation or have a short approach shot to snuggle up to the pin. I on the other hand, — even if I nail the drive down the middle — do not have the confidence that I can hit the second or (Heaven help me) third shot in a row without ending up in the trees. So I play my best on par three’s. I only have to do it right ONE time – not two or three.
As exciting and productive as this offense is in year one, a lot of that predicated on production is pace and innovation. And, until we have quality depth and blue chip first stringers running it for a few years we may be closer to Alex P than we are to Tiger Woods.
On another note, the major highlight of the night for me was Kodi catching his first career TD as a legit WR.
someday I’m gonna learn to proofread.
Looked to me like we lost this game because Eltoro Freeman got hurt… He was the D in the 1st half..There was a few player where it looked like we where playing a dime D with Eltoro in the box to stop the run by himself… When he got hurt, UGa ran right at Evans and won the game on the ground…If Eltoro cannot go for the IB, the Bammers will do the same thing.
Todd is an average qb at best…those 2 picks killed us…Looks like when he throws a pick, it shakes his confidence
Nieko will get better next year…His speed is his biggest asset…He is a burner and can run people down…But Lolley does need to do some coaching to bring out his potential
I’m going to throw something through my TV the next time we run a tackle eligible, reverse pass, wildcat, or 6 people in motion play on 3rd and 3 in a critical drive. This is becoming a trend. It drives me absolutely nuts. I thought our guys played their guts out and got coached out of a win. I try not to be a total homer and think we should be playing for the national championship ever year, but come on, this was win number 8 complete with complimentary gift wrapping and we smooth pissed it away. Just hate it for guys like Ben Tate that deserved to have beaten Georgia at some point in their careers at Auburn. This was a loss to an inferior team. You can’t go up 14-0 in the first quarter in the SEC, with every chance in the world with that kind of field position to pile it on even more, and still find a way to lose. To me that’s on the coaches. Period.
That’s pretty much a re-hash of a lot of the things that Jerry said, but I guess I’m just not taking this one very well and need to vent. And I’m done with Todd. Thanks for the memories and I wish you all the best going forward. But I’ve seen enough. The receivers have bailed him out on a lot of jump balls this year that coulda/shoulda been picks. The Georgia DB’s could have had 3 more if they could have gotten together on which one of the 3 players with a real chance needed to get the interception. I’m ready to see what a mobile quarterback with a stronger arm can do in this O.
And for the last of my hindsight is 50/50 (thanks Yogi) rant. 3rd and 11 off a 20 minute break to get something drawn up with the game on the line and we decide our best option is Todd on a slow developing deep drop in the pocket????? Was there any reason to believe Georgia wouldn’t be coming with their hair on fire after watching one of their better and most popular players get carted off on a backboard???? Hello screen. Hello draw.
Ugggghh! I can’t believe we’ve lost to Georgia 4 straight years.
End rant.
AU99: Ditto, but I’m going to throw my TV through someone, instead.
Also, UGA was gassed in the 1st and 4th quarters but instead of running the ball at them, GM runs some incomprehensibly hokey, kooky, and goofy play. Geez, I thought the entire point of the fast pace tempo (aggggh, TF flashback) was to wear them down and run through a tired defense. Instead, we’re doing them a favor and repeatedly trying to trick them.
Finally, did I miss something, or did we utterly fail to attack the sides of the field against UGA with the speed option and reverse plays? Those (and the draw) are the only things that keep an aggressive defensive rush honest. Second guessing is for suckers, but I sure would have loved to see that wrap around draw or even a QB draw in the 4th.
Oh well, another year, another UGA choke.
AU99, I can feel some of your pain, but I can’t go as far as “coached out of a win” vs. “an inferior team.” Gus was far from perfect, but there’s only so much he can do when his offensive line is getting manhandled. Take the 3rd-and-11 play: maybe a screen or draw would have been a better call, but maybe what he had in mind works if McCain doesn’t get absolutely torched. And I don’t think Georgia’s an “inferior team” by any stretch of the imagination: they have much more pure talent than Auburn does and they were playing at home. There’s a reason an Auburn win would have been an upset according to Vegas.
As for the deep balls, Malzahn’s always run them and I’m sure he’d tell you they’re a big part of softening up the D for those in routes to Adams that worked so well. Yeah, I’d have maybe preferred to wait until 2nd-and-makeable rather than first down on that particular drive, but it’s easy to say now.
And as for Todd, man, I’m not going to say a bad word about him. The way Auburn’s running game was going (or not), he was just about all Auburn had going for it Saturday. Yes, he’s inconsistent, yes, he throws too many jumpballs, yes, that second pick was a killer. (The first was not his fault, unless you feel like he should have felt the rush and done something other than throw it at all, or something.) I’m also excited to see what Auburn can do in this offense with a quarterback who can both throw and pass. But for this year, what other options were there if Todd decided he wasn’t putting in this last year of effort for a team whose fans booed him last year? Did anyone really think Chris Todd was going to be any better than he has been this year? I wish he was better, but he is what he is, and I’m mostly thankful he’s not what he was last year.
Jerry: You forgot the disdain and scorn for our ESPN Ocho announcers on Saturday, Davies and Jones (?). They certainly earned every bit of it, with my favorite being the absolutely withering eight minute diatribe/mock-Q&A (by the game clock) devoted to coaching salaries (???) while completely ignoring an exciting ball game (tied at the time). Are you kidding me? It’s like announcing limbo. I simply can’t come up with enough ridicule or invective to reflect my contempt for Davies and his cohort (although this is somewhat cathartic). Please, aid me in my recovery, and devote an entire article to the depths of their incompetence.
My kingdom for an announcer that doesn’t use the yankee pronunciation where you accentuate the Burn in Auburn. Can’t they find someone from around here to call SEC games?
JB
Commish, I watched the game in a sports “bar” and didn’t hear much of their “commentary”–usually this would be an issue, but I knew thsi week it would be a blessing. I’ll get my licks in in the recap.
Balderdash Jerry. Vegas Schmegas. Even the Georgia fans thought that line was a crock. Georgia was in disarray from coaches to players, starting a freshman running back, had a QB who has thrown picks from one end of the schedule to the other, and lost their only real star to injury in the 1st half. So take all that and then we go up to Athens in their packed stadium in front of their fans and jump on them 14-0 like we own the joint. Their fans are booing their own team in the 1st quarter. You cannot squander momentum like that. You just can’t. We got flat and thought Georgia was just going to lay down and I felt like that was reflected in the play calling on offense – i.e. coaching. But hopefully that’s just part of Gus learning what can happen in this league. You can’t always be setting the table, sometimes you’ve just got to eat.
Flesh Wounds: Davies and Jones are the worst announcers in the history of college football. “This situation reminds me a lot of something that happened to me back at Notre Dame in 1982……………blah, blah, blah.” Yes, the salary debate during a tied game was just more than I could handle. I try to keep my yelling at 2-D objects that can’t respond to an absolute minimum, but I’m pretty sure this game set the bar for me in that category.
Jerry – Keep up the good work. I was skeptical at first and sad to see the JCCW go, but you guys have put together a great website. Still think you should work in through a moniker such as The JoeCribbsCarWash@WarBlogEagle or something, but that might be a bit wordy.
How did our b-ballers get beat by MO State last night? I listened to the Niagra game and figured that was a pretty good win based on their 5 seniors and RPI finish last year. Don’t know anything about MO State.
Good analysis. Best I’ve seen. I would like to add that I thought Georgia rushed more defenders than we did. One down cried for some sort of blitz, when Georgia was third and 17 (I think this happpened two other times). We rushed four, the linebackers dropped to cover nobody, Cox had all day, and Thorpe got beat. This happened a couple of other times. We did blitz on a run play with bad results. We have to put in some blitz packages if we are to make the Iron Bowl interesting. We are going to get beat anyway, we might as well be aggressive and attack
AU99, eh, we’ll just have to agree to disagree. Do I think the coaching and Gus’s play-calling could have been better? Yeah. Do I think it cost us the game? No, not nearly so much as things like “true freshman linebacker,” “inexplicable late Todd pick,” “Thorpe gets burned crispy again,” “Bynes lets pick go through his fingers for huge conversion” etc. did.
Thanks to both you and everyone for the nice words.
DH, it would be nice to see more pressure, sure, but the secondary’s in such tatters I don’t blame Roof for trying to give Washington, Bates, etc. as much slack as he can give them. Leaving those guys on an island in order to blitz doesn’t seem like a good plan right now, either. It’s really pick your poison for the AU defense, and though I would like to see a little more emphasis on getting to the QB vs. the Tide (I’d trust McElroy and his wideouts to find some zone-holes more often than Cox and his, and the Tide’s line might be a little more vulnerable to failed blitz pickups), hoping Coleman and Carter could get pressure on their own vs. the Dawgs seems to me like as good a plan on paper as any.
[...] of Georgia Bulldogs. Much of what is worth reading statistically is summed up in Jerry’s Assorted Observations over at TWER as well as this brief gem by unheralded numerologist, Jay [...]
[...] War Blog Eagle, as usual, has some great comments on this game: Assorted observations from Georgia 31, Auburn 24 | The War Eagle Reader I found particularly interest this comment from a reader: Alex P in Smyrna G says: November 16, [...]
The play of the game to me:
First play of the 4th Quarter – UGA has the ball on its on 42, it’s 3rd down and 16 to go, and Cox connects to T. King for 47 yards down to the Auburn 11. We are in what appears to be our standard Cover 2 defense, UGA lines up in a one back shotgun with 2wr to the right and 1wr to the left. Thorpe has about a 7 yard cushion in front of King at the snap. There is no play fake, READ straight pass, AU rushes four and drops everyone else into coverage – ZONE. From the TV coverage you cannot see the routes run by all of the WR but they show us King’s on the replay, it’s a stutter step and go, kinda faking the 15 yard square in, then going vertical. Thorpe kinda bites a little on the stutter step and looks into the backfield. BUSTED when Thorpe looks back King runs by him and has him beat. BUT the play still should not have worked – why we are in 2 deep zone. Bates is on that side of the field – his #1 responsibility is not to let anyone get behind him. But where is he? Bates was looking at the QB the whole time, in worse position than Thorpe when the ball was thrown. The announcers said Thorpe got beat, but IMHO this one’s on Bates. The correct defense was called – this play should never have worked. Of course, UGA goes on to score a TD off of this – that’s 7 points. I think a more experienced Safety stops this play cold.
P94, thanks, good stuff, and I think that’s a great example of how badly Roof’s hands are tied sometimes–sometimes freshmen just do things like that.
Agreed Jerrry. Or disagreed. err……. You know what I mean. I certainly don’t hang it all on the coaches. The other things you mentioned are very valid reasons why we lost that game. Just seems to be a re-occuring theme of us maybe making things a bit harder on offense than they need to be. I’m a “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” kind of guy and it drives me nuts when we are rolling along and we start tinkering around and doing low percentage, overcomplicated stuff. Just hate to see us self-destruct and kill our own momentum so often on offense.
About that 2nd Tood pick that you call the Play of the Game…this is what I saw:
Score is 24 all – Auburn defense has just stopped UGA on the possession after the Washington Kickoff Return TD – Auburn’s defense is gassed and the offense needs to at least hold the ball for a while and give them some rest – the possession starts at 10:55 left in the game on Auburn’s 12 yard line – bad field position. Auburn has moved the ball up to the UGA 48 on 5 plays using every part of the playbook, runs, deep throws, short throws, and wildcat and the UGA defense seems a little off balance. It’s 1st and 10, 9:02 left in the game, Auburn lines up in shotgun one back, with Fannin in the short slot to the left, 2WR left and 1WR right, UGA is in a typical 2 deep zone under. Presnap, Fannin motions to the short slot left, but not in the typical alignment for our base run play and opposite Tate in the backfield. This SCREAMS “PASS!!!” to the defense. Sure enough, a half-hearted ball fake to Tate and Todd quickly loads up to throw downfield. Less than 3 seconds and the ball is out. Good thing because Isom’s man totally whipped him and is bearing down on Todd’s grill. The WR to the right side (Adams) has run an 18 yard Post Corner route which starts out at an angle from his alignment outside toward the goal post then he turns to run 90 degrees across the field to the side line at about the 30 yard line. HE IS WIDE OPEN!!!! This should be a HUGE gainer for the Tigers…unfortunately Todd throws the ball to the Skinny Post at 23 yards which means that the WR should start out again going to the goal post then straighten up down the field on the hash marks. And of course Reshad Jones for UGA is right there for the pick. This looked to me like Todd threw the wrong route, I put this one on him. Maybe it was an option route for Adams due to the defense alignment and Todd didn’t make the same read, and it could have been influenced by the amount of pressure on Todd. This was actually a very good play call. Had this play been executed properly Adams would have had the ball on the UGA 30 with room to run and Auburn would have been in great position to take the lead. I think this is one of those plays that in pressure situations one player makes one decision and another makes a different one. If they had run this play 250 times in practice over a 4 year span together they don’t make this mistake (they both make the same decision), but it’s the first year in this system and with these reads, this kind of mistake is going to happen until ALL of the players have the reads and decisions committed, not just to memory, but to instinct. The solution to this is consistency in the offense and more practice by the players.