Worse times on the Plains

I have to wonder where the bottom is. How much lower can this thing go. Since Franklin's firing, AU has lost two straight....and in embarrasing fashion.

They lost to what I thought was probably the worst team in the SEC - Arkansas. The scary thing was, not only did the offense continue to struggle monumentally, but the defense struggled too, allowing a pitiful Arkansas offense to actually look good.

Then, last night, Auburn blew a 17-3 first half lead, allowing 31 unanswered points to lose to a mediocre West Va. team. WVU had 17 plays of over ten yards. Their running back had 207 yards rushing. Pat White threw three touchdown passes. The defense, which looked so awesome saving victories for the anemic offense earlier in the year, has now totally tanked.

At the start of this year I was excited at the prospect of a high potency offense to go with our strong defense. Immediately I saw that the offense was going to be a drawn out process. Then the offense just became bad. Then the defense began to struggle. Now the defense is just plain bad. Add to this bad punting, bad field goal kicking, and inconsistent kickoffs and what do you have? You have a BAD TEAM. That's right, AU is a bad team. No two ways about it.

There is of course rumbling about firing the coach. That may be what we need, but I do not know for sure. I have never been totally sold on Tubberville. He bought a LOT of patience with me in '04, going 13-0. But, that patience has now worn off. The offense since that time has progressively gotten worse - spiraling down hill so fast as to make you dizzy. Now the rest of the team is following suit. I see only two possible explanations for this. Either AU just does not have the players to compete or they have the players but they are not properly coached. (Ok, a third possibility is they do not have the players AND they are not well coached) Either way, all this falls on Tubby. If they do not have the players, whose fault is that? If they are not well coached, whose fault is that?

I am hesitant to scream for his firing because things like this have happened to great coaches before. In 1969 and 1970, Bama fans were yelling for the end of the Bryant era. He basically went somewhere around 6-5 those years, and lost to AU both years. He was past his prime they said. The game had passed him by, they said. But, he stayed and won 3 National Championships in the 1970s. There is no way Bama could have been that good without him.

In a far more recent occurence, Penn State has struggled for several years. Fans were reluctant to call for Joe Pa's head because he had been there longer than most of them had been alive, but certainly people were assuming the old man was way past his prime. But now look. PSU is undefeated, ranked high, and is in my opinion one of the four or five best teams in the country.

Therefore, it is possible that Tubby's best years are to come. Perhaps this is a slump that he will get out of. Therefore, I am slow to just automatically call for his firing. However, I tend to think that he is just not into it like he should be. He seems almost nonchalant most of the time. To me, he just does not come across like he has the fire (in fact, he never has). I think at least if he stays, he needs to make some major changes.

He has had almost the same staff of coaches since his arrival, except for the revolving door at offensive and defensive coordinator. He keeps firing or otherwise loosing his coordinators, then hiring new ones and forcing them to use the existing staff. On the whole this has worked fairly well on defense (where he has lost at least two coordinators to Texas), but it has caused untold problems on offense as seen by the whole Tony Franklin fiasco. (Franklin wanted to bring his own people in, but Tubs would not let him. Franklin therefore had to teach both the players AND the other coaches his offense and apparently the coaches were not too eager to learn.)

I believe at the very least Tubby needs to evaluate where they are at right now, and make changes during this off season. Every single coach on staff needs to be evaluated. He needs to fire those who are not performing. I know it would be hard, but life is hard.

If he is not willing to do this, or if really deep down his fire is gone, he needs to just resign.

If he is unwilling to do either, then whether or not AU fires him, they need not adjust his contract any at all in a positive way until major improvement is made. I do not believe in firing him and having to pay the multi-million dollar buyout. But I certainly would not give him one minute of an extension or one penny of a raise - at least until something changes.

I wonder if Tubby is still miffed at the 2003 ordeal, though. In '03, AU was suppose to be fairly good, but they lost four games, never looked particularly good - especially on offense. In 2002 their offense was pretty good but they lost then OC Bobby Patrino to Louisville. Rather than hiring a new OC, Tubby made 'joint OCs' out of offensive line coach Hugh Nall and Steve Ensminger. The whole thing was a disaster and the offense looked inept all year. Right before the Iron Bowl, some AU officials, including then AD David Housel went on a private plane to Louiville to coax Patrino to come to AU after they fired TUbby. Word leaked out, the whole thing blew up. AU backed out. Auburn beat Alabama. The next year Tubby hired Al Borges as OC and AU went 13-0 and should have played for the National Title. AU officials looked stupid for doing what they did. But, really, at the time, I was thinking it was the right thing to do - just maybe not the right way to do it.

My how things changed after that. AUs offense has been on a downhill slide since then. After the '07 season Tubby fired Borges (still keeping his good ole boys on the staff) hired Franklin without allowing him to bring his people in and the whole thing looks like I don't know what. In what is more than a bit of irony, Tubby fired Franklin mid season leaving, you guessed it, Nall and Ensminger in charge of the offense again and the first game after that AU lost to a horrible Arkansas team coached by......Bobby Patrino.

All in all, to me Tubby has been an average at best coach who had one outstanding year (in which he had FOUR first round NFL picks on the team including the entire offensive backfield). Beyond this, he has had a couple of pretty good years, a couple of pretty bad years (the present being the worst), and a bunch of mediocre years. He is a mediocre coach, in my opinion. Doug Barfield was fired after five years in which he tried to lead a probation damaged team while the Bear was still coaching across the state. I believe that Barfield would have done at least as good as Tubby in the same situation, and Tubby would have done at least as bad as Barfield in his situation. Yet, we are suppose to love Tubby and Barfield is a forgotten joke of a coach in Auburn history.

I think the biggest problem I have is that Tubby has not taken advantage of his strong situation. Sure, he has beat Bama six in a row, but it has been a highly damaged Bama team and he has not beat them in an impressive fashion the whole time. The average margin has been about 8 points, and the largest margin has only been by 10 points. But, what is more alarming to me is that even during these years of winning consistently against Bama, and even after going 13-0, he has not capitalized with great recruiting classes. AU is a wonderful and beautiful institution with great tradition. Yet even with all that in his favor, Auburn is already way behind Bama and Nick Saban in recruiting. It will only get worse from here.

I really do not know where AU can go from here, but SOMETHING has to change.