Nobody's Talking About Auburn

Check the college football front pages of ESPN, SI, or Fox Sports MSN. You won’t find a single solitary article on Auburn’s 41-30 victory over West Virginia. And frankly, I couldn’t be happier.

While the sports media fawns over Washington’s 16-13 upset over USC (deservedly so) and Florida’s non-blowout of Tennessee, Auburn continues to fly under the radar, able to focus on getting a little bit better each game without the expectations and scrutiny of the national media setting us up for a letdown. This is where we traditionally operate best: Low or no expectations for greatness.

But the performance under low expectations is where the “traditionally” caveat ends with this Auburn team, as very little else about the 2009 Tigers falls into the typical AU behavior of the last decade or so. Sure, we still run the ball better than most, but who can remember the last time that our offense was last man standing in a shootout, much less coming from behind to do so?

I’m going to air my single gripe about the defense now, and then move on to everything else the Tigers did well (sandwich criticism be damned). The defensive front missed tackles like they were court ordered paternity tests. I realize that the horrific weather played a part in this, but it appeared to even the most objective of observers that West Virginia QB Jarrett Brown and RB Noel Devine had their uniforms coated in a secret mixture of baby oil and Teflon. On Devine’s second touchdown run, he was touched once before the line of scrimmage and three times afterwards. No one came even close to taking him down.

The only reason that the defense gets somewhat of a pass on the terrible tackling is the six turnovers that they caused. I just had a huge grin spread over my face while typing that. As difficult as it was to watch Brown break contain time and time again and slice through the defensive front, seeing the look on his face when he threw his final interception of the game made me happier than the little kid who was crying when Slowhio State was getting drummed in the 07 National Championship game. Brown seems to be a solid player with a lot of talent, so I hope that his injury towards the end of the game isn’t serious.

Auburn’s offense, despite having a familiar roster, looks like they are from an entirely different team this year. Gene Chizik’s coaching philosophy seems to be resonating with the players, and Gus Malzahn’s offense is proving to be adaptable enough to deal with anything opposing defenses have put up so far. I realize that we “only played West Virginia”, but the Mountaineers are no slouches and have a very troublesome offense (despite having an absolute imbecile for a coach. Yes, I’m talking about you, Bill Stewart. Can someone please put that message into crayon pictures so he can understand what I’m saying?).

If Auburn continues to build on the successes that we’ve had so far, and works out the defensive kinks that were very evident on Saturday night, we have the chance to surprise a lot of people. I was asked this morning if I was disappointed that we weren’t ranked in the top 25 on the AP or Coaches Poll, and my answer was an emphatic “No”. The hardest team that we’ve beaten is West Virginia, and we don’t actually know how good they are. We have control over one thing regarding rankings, and that is whether or not we win. If we continue to win games, and with a beleaguered Ball State coming up next week at least one more win is likely, then we control our destiny in the SEC West, and possibly beyond. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to start praying in advance that Eric Berry gets the swine flu sometime around October 3rd.