With two game remaining on their regular season schedule, the Tigers have only their pride to play for as injuries have piled up consdierably and undermined Auburn’s attempts to pull off a shocking SEC West title in 2016. The dream is over. We can all wake up now. The loss to Georgia last weekend highlighted two important factors regarding this team to me. The first being how important a healthy Sean White and Kamryn Pettway are to this offense. Having both of those guys limited or in Pettway’s case, completely out of the game, genuinely killed any chance the Tigers had at scoring when they had the football.
The second major take away for me, is the play-calling of this offense – or lack thereof. Obviously, having your two primary sources of offensive production injured is going to limit you on offense, but this coaching staff has to be better at adapting and dealing with setbacks like this. It would not be fair for me to say that they should have scored at least 20 or 30 points against Georgia on the road, but when you consider the fact that this offense was so ineffective in the second half that they completely nullified the kicking game of Daniel Carlson, you start to understand just how poorly they moved the ball. Especially in the second half.
I don’t know if Gus was still just “CEO’ing” for this game or not, but the bottom line is that this entire offensive coaching staff is being paid far too much money to put the kind of product on the field that they did this past Saturday. Auburn’s defense held the Georgia offense to just six points offensively. This should have been a bread and butter game for Auburn. They had their offensive savior in Daniel Carlson ready and waiting to paper cut Georgia to death, but the Tigers could not move the ball well enough to even get into field-goal range with any kind of regularity.
Quite simply, Auburn fans deserve better than that. Losing the SEC’s most productive running-back is a major blow, but it is not an excuse for losing all offensive identity and production. Auburn’s lack of production in Pettway’s absence makes their success with him healthy look more like a fluke than careful planning. As if they genuinely never had much of a clue and were simply going with the ‘hot hand’ at running-back.
The Tigers now find themselves in quite a precarious situation with a slew of injuries as they enter the home stretch of ‘Amen Corner’. Sean White and Kamryn Pettway will not be available to face Alabama A&M tomorrow along with Chandler Cox and Marcus Davis (who is confirmed to be lost for the remainder of the season). Jeremy Johnson has been named the starter at quarterback this weekend after becoming obvious that this coaching staff does not trust John Franklin III to run the offense.
After a rough start that was all but erased from memory as the Tigers gained momentum and rattled off a slew of impressive victories, Auburn again finds itself in a tough spot. Looking ahead to the Iron Bowl would be a grave mistake for them to make this week. Gus Malzahn is back in troubled waters with an offense void of identity and surrounded by question marks.
The important thing now is to take care of business against Alabama A&M tomorrow and hope that key players can return from injury in time to make a stand in Tuscaloosa next weekend.
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