re: College Football Week 1/Futures Bet Thread

quote:

---

I agree with your basic premise that in order for Auburn to remain competitive in this game, their offense needs to dominate time-of-possession (TOP) thereby keeping Watson on the sidelines. This is something that I have preached about on nearly an annual basis when Clemson and South Carolina meet in the Battle of the Palmetto State.

I challenge anyone to look up the game stats during South Carolina's 5-game winning streak over Clemson. I'm challenging you to do it, because I'm too lazy to do so. Nevertheless, during Spurrier's 5-game winning streak over Dabo, look at one stat, and one stat only: TOP. Spurrier's game plan versus Clemson was super simple; play ugly SEC grind-it-out-in-the-trenches, ball control offense, and keep Clemson’s high-flying offense on the sideline. What you will find is that in all five of those games, South Carolina utterly dominated the TOP by an average of something like 38 to 22. Alabama did the same thing to Clemson in the 2008 season opener (just as I predicted they would).

Clemson now has a 2-game winning streak in the South Carolina series, and won the TOP battle in both of those games. And the reason they did so because Dabo recognized that for his team to reach the next level, he would need to be SEC good in the trenches, and recruited accordingly.

It should be noted that Alabama tried to play ball control and assert their dominance in the trenches against Clemson in the national title game, and failed miserably. In fact, I would argue Clemson’s defensive front 7 won the battle at the point of attack.

So that brings us full-circle back to the Clemson/Auburn matchup. If you believe Auburn can successfully execute the Steve Spurrier ball-control game plan against Clemson, which is their only chance to remain competitive, then you should probably take the points. I, however, think there is virtually zero shot that will happen.

For starters, playing a slow, ball control brand of football is completely antithetical to the Gus Malzahn offensive philosophy. Malzahn wants his offense to run fast . . . very fast. At this point, because Auburn's other QB prospects are so inept; it appears that pro-style QB Sean White will win the job by default. Why Malzahn even recruited a pro-style QB, and why a pro-style QB would commit to Malzahn is bizarre to say the least, but here we are. We know from last season that White cannot execute the offense Malzahn wants to run. Basically, Auburn’s offense has zero leadership, has zero experience at running back, and virtually no experience on the outside – not that last season’s wide outs were anything to brag about. Auburn’s offense is basically a rudderless ship at sea, and it’s taking on water.

I have submitted on this forum that Auburn's offense is a complete basket case that is wholly incapable of taking advantage of any shortcomings Clemson's defense may have, and that was before yesterday's scrimmage. In speaking to two observers who were there, after watching how dismal and dysfunctional Auburn's offense was, they are now inclined to agree with my assessment that the offense is bad, and that it will be a very long season for Auburn backers.

I don't have the time or space to address Clemson's offense right now except to say it will be even better than it was last season.

The bottom line is that if you're betting on the ability of Auburn's offense to adopt the Spurrier strategy to shorten the game by dominating TOP, or taking advantage of any of Clemson’s defensive vulnerabilities, I think it’s a very ill-conceived bet. There is pretty much no shot that will happen.

Once again, lay the points!

---