The AP did a quick hitter over the weekend talking about AU's Franklin keeping their new offense under wraps. I have to tell you that the new Auburn offense doesn't really scare me.
I know that Franklin's offense at Troy put up some big numbers on us, but as Blutarsky said...much of that was with a heavy dose of subbing among our second teamers. Auburn scares me when they decide they want to get into a test of "how big a boy are ya." When they bow their necks and bust you in the mouth.
A loss on The Plains wouldn't shock me this year because of where the game falls at the end of a BRUTAL stretch of games. But overall, I'm not "additionally" nervous about Auburn due to anything this new offensive coordinator is planning.
See Also:
-- Lots of big plays at Auburn's Closed Scrimmage - B'Ham News
-- Offense beats defense at Auburn Scrimmage - Mobile Press Register
PWD
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10 comments:
Kodi Burns does not worry me. He's no Tim Tebow and will not last an entire season without injury.
Tubs has always been good at getting great assistants to join him.
Franklin, however, is dead set on running the spread in the SEC but he doesn't have the athletes to do it. Auburn has "house of cards" written all over it.
Their version of the spread offense may be very good.It had better be.
Franklin may not have the athletes now, but what about next year or the year after?
I seem to recall a lot of talk about how the spread will not work in the SEC. I guess we will not be hearing that ever again.
If Franklin is banking on the defense being tired late in the 2nd and 4th quarters he may want to do some depth chart analysis of some of the SEC defenses he will be going against.
Skidawg,
The spread hasn't worked in the SEC to date. Florida won it's SEC and MNC on the back of it's defense not it's spread offense.
Dean - The Tebow Spread averaged 43 points per game last year. The 2nd highest SEC point total since 2002 was only 34 points per game.
Florida's problem was the defense.
That said...it'll be interesting to see what happens as teams adjust to the scheme better.
Paul,
True. But UF still lost 3 conference games. Plus look at the schools or defenses they put the big numbers up against. UT and So.Car. were not the best rushing defenses in the conference. Plus Myer never passed up an opportunity to run up the score. I'm just not buying what the spread is selling at this point in time.
I agree with Dean. The spread will not work in this league. It will put up its fair share of points against the lower half of the league but as far as winning championships in this league, I don't see it. This may be way off-base but Tebow will not do better than 3 losses this year or next. This system is a fad and will wear off at some point. Know how to beat the spread ? Hit somebody in the mouth. That finesse garbage slows down really quickly then.
the spread works best when your talent is the same or a little worse than the other guy's talent. To use an extreme example, you cant run App St's spread against a top D1 team and expect to win (well, other than Michigan). Your scheme doesnt mean much when you are severely outnumbered by superior talent.
Obviously, the spread is great at rolling up numbers against inferior talent. So was the wishbone. The true test is going to be how long your QB can get hit 25-30 times a game by big time D1 defenses before he breaks down. You saw what happened to West Virginia when Pat White went down. Where will Florida be if Tebow misses 2 or 3 games, or even 1 big game?
PWD ... I disagree with the UF's spread working against the SEC. It made strides last year, but in UF's 4 losses last year the offense scored 17, 24, 23 & 35 points- well below their average except for the bowl game. The defense in those losses gave up 20, 28, 42, & 41. Their scoring defense gave up 25.5 pts per game. So in their losses the offense scored well below their per game average and the defense really only got killed twice.
Personally, I think those stats really show how badly we killed them at the WLOCP.
Finally, in three years UF's spread has averaged just 17 pts against our defense. Hopefully the trend will continue in 2008.
The issue is certainly the wear & tear on the QB, and how long will SEC coaches put up with that reality when they learn their QBs are getting beat to death. And their is a way to beat it -- speed and recruiting.
We have speed on defense for one reason, we know it can stop the spread. Moreover, top flight QB's want to make it to the NFL. That's their main goal. The NFL ain't looking for Tim Tebow, they're looking for Matt Ryan/Manning/Brady. What will happen to spread offenses when top-flight QBs stop wanting to go to those schools because of the wear & tear and lack of success of spread QBs in the NFL.
Finally, the defense on spread teams is affected by their offense. Right now, our defense is practicing against our smash mouth, run first, deep ball offense. Florida's is practicing against reverses and counter plays. Finesse offenses breed finesse defenses.
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