By Brant Daughtry
As has become my tradition, I’m going to write about Auburn before I write about their opponent. And I have a lot of thoughts.
Hugh Freeze cut his teeth in high school football. The challenge presented by high school football coaching is that you can’t (legally or totally) recruit your players. You have to play with the hand you’re dealt. The challenge this provides and skill this hones is adaptability. You learn your team, find out what they can and can’t do, and do it as best you can. The next year, you may have to do something completely different. Such is the nature of the game. I watched my dad battle with it for most of my life growing up as he was a high school offensive coordinator and ran about 15 different offenses over his time.
It’s baffling to me then that Hugh Freeze continues to do his best to jam square pegs into round holes. Payton Thorne is a capable but limited quarterback. Yet Freeze has continued to try and turn him into a drop back, full field quarterback. He’s just never going to be that. This brings me to this past week’s game.
Credit where it’s due, I liked the game plan Freeze and his staff came up with. Take away the multiple reads and count in the box. Make the decisions quick and immediate. Yes or no answers for a QB who can make them well when asked. Auburn didn’t try to get Payton Thorne to be anything other than what he was, and by gosh it worked. The offense, for three-and-a-half quarters on Saturday, looked great, played great. They were put in the right spots and had success against a front seven that couldn’t keep up. The run game worked like crazy and Payton Thorne had the best game of his Auburn career against a team that actually wanted to play, maybe the best game of his career. For the first time since Freeze got to Auburn, the offense had sustained success.
So why blow it like that?
One of the things that drives any coach in any sports crazy is the fact that sometimes your players do dumb things. There are uncontrollable aspects to the game because the coaches can’t go out there and do it themselves. However, when your team has just ripped off 30 yards on the ground in two plays, and you have a two-possession lead with a little more than 10 minutes in a game when the other team has not been able to stop the run, you get as close as you can. You call a run. Not an option play. Which, for anyone not familiar with play-calling verbiage, is as simple as removing one extra word from the play call in most cases. Hugh Freeze can’t force Payton Thorne to give on an option play. But he can force there to be no option at all. That’s completely in his power. And somehow, he blew it. Auburn under Freeze finds new and sickening ways to lose games it should win.
Auburn is 2-3, and has lost to every power-conference opponent it has faced so far. What makes it worse is that 5-0 was completely possible. This was the easy part of the schedule, and Auburn has found every way to waste what should have been a great start. Now things actually get difficult.
You know Georgia. They’re one of THE standards of college football. And following last week’s loss to Alabama, which might be in the top-20 of best college football games ever played, they’re probably not very happy coming into this game. Kirby Smart is a program builder, a culture guy. He gets incredibly talented players, fits them to his mold, and gets his guys to make your guys give up.
Kirby is a defensive guy, and he coaches like it. His defensive line is massive and athletic, his linebackers can fly and are meaner that your guys, and his secondary is full of freak athletes. I don’t need to name names about that defense, we’ve all watched them for the past couple of years. They’re the standard.
Offensively, they’re not quite as impressive, but they’re more than capable. Mike Bobo is back in his third stint with Georgia, and while he’s much maligned at times, he’s perfectly capable as a play-caller. They run a pro-style offense, having the ability to run multiple concepts out of multiple formations. They’ll line up with a fullback in the I-formation and run it down your throat, but as they showed in that comeback against Alabama, they’re ready and willing to go spread as well. Add that to the talent they have at the skill positions, and a really good quarterback in Carson Beck, and they’re dangerous. They expect to be in the playoff again this year, and they have some frustrations to take out.
Player to Watch For:
Running Back Trevor Etienne, #1- The former Florida back has made up for lost time after missing game one. He’s one of the best backs in college football and has already amassed over 200 yards averaging 12 carries a game. Behind the offensive lines that Georgia brings out, any running back can look decent, and Etienne is taking full advantage. Auburn’s been decent against the run so far, but this a different animal.
Linebacker Smael Mondon, #2- Mondon was my defensive player to watch last year, and he’s one of several I could pick this year again. But, Mondon is still the heart of this defense, so I’m going with it. He’s dead in the center of this 4-2-5 defense. They shift a lot of personnel, moving secondary players and defensive lineman all over the field, but Mondon is one of their constants. He’s smart, mean, and incredibly athletic.
I think one of the traps fans could fall into with this game is the hangover game. Georgia is coming off a loss in an incredibly emotional showing against Alabama, and getting back up after that can sometimes lead to a worse follow-up performance. I think Kirby is better than that. I think he’ll have Georgia angry. They didn’t play very well against Alabama, especially on the edges, and that’s not the kind of thing that he lets slide. They’ll be out to prove they can still play to their standards, and against an Auburn offense that’s been hit-or-miss this year, I think Georgia has their chance to take out some frustrations. Hugh Freeze has shown in the past he can beat anyone. But I’m not sure a game plan exists that can get this Auburn team past a Georgia team with something to prove.
