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
16 comments:
PWD, your headline photo on this post has an error in it...
+1 Anon 5:11
Tub did the right thing in firing TF but tub should be fired for firing borges. They need to get back to auburn smash mouth football.
Man, I wish I could say this upsets me, but I'm laughing too hard to even try to pull that off.
Yeah go back to Hugh Nall. No he couldn't produce any points in his days as the OC. Patrick Nix's name comes up on their boards but Tech ran him out of town becasue he sucked haha. Ah I remember the days when Al Borges was a "genius"....
The thing I don't understand is if you could get the team to do so well with a few weeks of practice before the bowl game last year, why can't you run it after having all spring and fall to build on that?
Hopefully, they won't get their act together by the time we play them.
This a great post. This kind of writing and dead on interpretation is why I get all my georgia football news here first...I can always count on getting the good stuff here.
Thanks PWD.
Coach Tuberville, I knew Gerry Faust. Gerry Faust was a friend of mine. Tony Franklin, Tubs, is no Gerry Faust.
this is what happens when you hire a guy based on his system's performance in a loss. I think Tony's offense has lived up to that level so far. He said it was designed to get the ball in the hands of Auburn's playmakers. Who knew their only playmaker appears to be their punter?
Donavan Baldwin and Walter Hill have been dismissed from the team.
Is Fulmer the next SEC coach to bite the dust? Discuss.
Ellerbe is out for the UT game, damn it all!!!
I wonder if the arrogant Tubberville will talk his shit now about "fear the thumb"? The streak to Bama is over, not that I like Bama, but Tubs talk is not going to be forgotten by the Tide people.
The beatdown that AU will suffer this year against AL is going to be horrendous.
I think they should roll Toomer's Corner as a sign of victory.
jasonc....
that doing so well in the bowl game was scoring 17 points against an average Clemson defense in regulation.
It was hardly reminiscent of the Montana led 49ers.
Franklin was the most overhyped do nothing in history.
The real question here is how, if any, Franklin's dismissal will impact the Auburn-UGA game. Does it help us, hurt us, or neither? My guess is neither, since they're keeping the same offensive scheme, per Tubs. Hopefully, ineptitude will still be the order of the day on the Plains when we play them.
Is there any question that Bobby Lowder's fingerprints are all over this?
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