Per Tommy Tuberville, Tony Franklin has been fired. Franklin served as Auburn's offensive coordinator through the team's 4-2 start. Per Tuberville
"After evaluating where we are at this point of the season offensively, I felt it was in the best interest of the Auburn football program to make this change," Tuberville said. "I'm not satisfied with where we are and I am personally going to take a larger role with the offense the remainder of the season. We are going to work harder than ever to make sure we consistently improve as we move forward."Tuberville hasn't decided who will call plays in Saturday's game against Arkansas.
Honestly, what did Tuberville really expect when he hired Franklin? Tony Franklin grew up under Hal Mumme. To me, the system he developed looked like Mumme ball with the addition of the zone read option play.
The compelling thing on Franklin's resume last year was the 34 point / 488 yard performance against Georgia in a losing effort while at Troy. The "Franklin System" that he showed against UGA consisted primarily of about 30 bubble screens, a half dozen QB draws and another dozen or so zone reads. An unmotivated Georgia dealing with a sandwich game between the Cocktail Party win and the Blackout slept through the game, and still won.
His other big games at Troy were a 41 point performance against an Oklahoma State team in turmoil, and 31 second half points against the Florida Gator second team defense.
Auburn is smash mouth football.
Auburn is power running.
Auburn is not a finesse bubble screen driven horizontal passing game executed by two QBs with extraordinarily limited passing skills. In fact, Chris Todd was described by Desmond Howard as being a "vicinity thrower." In other words, he can't hit a target. Ouch.
In my opinion, the problem at Auburn wasn't Al Borges' offense. The problem was the inability of Tuberville and Borges to recruit a top flight quarterback. Brandon Cox was an anchor weighing down the Auburn offense, and the Tigers had no alternative when things got tough.
I think Tuberville felt pressured to recruit a higher caliber offensive athlete in order to compete with Nick Saban. He overreached and bought an Award Winning High School offense. Now, Auburn is scrambling to figure out who they are in the middle of the season.
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-- Johnsoned!! - DawgGoneBlog (salty language)
PWD
