The gap between Alabama and Auburn was on full display Saturday but not just on the scoreboard. Alabama’s true freshman quarterback outperformed Auburn’s senior stand in, Jeremy Johnson. This gap wasn’t an outlier but the continuation of an alarming trend. Consequently there are a lot of numbers being thrown around about Gus Malzahn and the state and direction of Auburn’s program.
Yes, Auburn is 2–6 against rivals Georgia and Alabama for the past four years, and both of those wins have special names assigned to them. Alabama has now beaten Auburn three straight times for the first time since 1990–1992. Misconceptions about Nick Saban being unable to beat ranked Auburn teams or back-to-back Iron Bowls in Bryant-Denny have been put to rest.
The Vegas oddsmakers made Auburn an 18-point underdog, and most fans of both teams scoffed at the idea of a rivalry game with such a spread. Alabama calmly and methodically covered the spread, beating Auburn by 18 points, and Auburn joined all but two Alabama opponents this season to be shellacked by 18 or more. While Saban and the Tide may pay lip service to the rivalry, truth is, this game has become just another outing for Alabama, and that is because of the gap between the programs.
Simply put, Alabama has conquered every conceivable Iron Bowl hurdle, real or imagined, and the gap between Auburn and Alabama showed, first and foremost, at the quarterback position. On one side, a true freshman quarterback destined to head to New York starred for an undefeated team not known for offense, while a team known for its offense couldn’t muster first downs yet again.
There is a gap between Sean White and the Alabama quarterback, but there’s also one between him and the five or six other players that took snaps there for Auburn. Sean White is a good QB, make no mistake, but is his absence the difference between one of the best offenses in the country and one of the worst?
While the six-game winning streak was impressive, put things in perspective: those wins were against teams that are a combined 30–29, and only LSU has a winning conference record. Without a healthy White, the games against Vanderbilt and Georgia were statistically two of the worst performances of Gus Malzahn’s career. Throwing in the Clemson game, you have three of Gus Malzahn’s worst games of his career coming in year four, the year where recruiting and development is supposed to show up.
Development is the crux of the matter, and this looms large over Malzahn. It isn’t just about the current gap between White and other SEC QB’s or the other quarterbacks on the Auburn roster. It extends past the Jeremy Johnson failure in 2015. Auburn has never won a rivalry game with a QB that Malzahn recruited and coached for more than a year. More telling is that with the QB’s he either recruited or developed, the Tigers have scored a grand total of 66 points in the six rivalry games. The vaunted Hurry Up No Huddle Offense is averaging 11 points per contest with Malzahn-developed QB’s, and that is discounting the 2012 season where Auburn scored zero points against its rivals with Scott Loeffler coaching Malzahn’s recruits.
What’s more telling is that Auburn has scored a grand total of three touchdowns in its rivalry games in the last two years, and only one against Alabama, which came on a tipped pass to Jason Smith in the 2015 Iron Bowl. Despite improving defensive play in each of the past three Iron Bowls, Alabama’s margin of victory has grown each year. In other words, for a coach that should be enjoying the fruits of top recruiting classes and the stability that comes in year four, the gap is widening instead of closing.
Many have said that the loss of White and the poor offensive performances should have been expected, and no team should expect a composed offense after losing a starter. That isn’t the case for offensive gurus to whom Gus Malzahn has been compared. Ex-Baylor head coach Art Briles has lost as many as two starting quarterbacks who were among the top in college football in a single year and still won ten or more games. Texas Tech’s Kliff Kingsbury has done the same, as has Washington State’s Mike Leach.
This article isn’t to say that Gus Malzahn or offensive coordinator Rhett Lashlee should be fired. Despite the circus that has surrounded the Auburn program about who calls the plays, the fact is that the HUNH offense can and does work, especially with the right quarterback. But, does the right one have to be someone else’s finished product, or can Malzahn and Lashlee close the gap between their ability to recruit and develop and that of everyone else, most notably the program across the state? Something has to change at Auburn, otherwise the widening of the gap that began in 2009 will continue. Admitting a problem is the first step to fixing it, but the story from Malzahn so far remains the same: it’s a young team and the future is bright.
The post The Quarterback Gap at Auburn appeared first on Track 'Em Tigers, Auburn's oldest and most read independent blog.
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