Auburn V Arkansas What Was Learned In Defeat

This is a follow up for the first half summary. There is nothing positive to grasp or to mention about the Auburn effort in the first half of this game. The team as a whole as well as the coaching staff performed as poorly as a team can. Now for an assessment of the second half.

Gene Chizik and staff did a good job of firing up the Auburn team at half time. They returned to the field ready to play. The defense and offense did execute some and did not look completely out of sync. The defense did stop the Arkansas offense enough to give Auburn a chance. The offense killed their chance with turn overs. A fumble by quarterback Cris Todd deep in Auburn territory resulted in points for Arkansas that put a nail in Auburn's coffin. A fumble on the five yard line hampered the effort as well. Even with these miscues, Auburn outplayed Arkansas in the second half. They did not further embarrass themselves and played the game out to the best of their ability. This is a distinct difference this year from the previous three. In those years when Auburn was down little fight was put up. Auburn would just give up and start looking to the next game. 

While there is no doubt that this game should have been a win for Auburn. I was pleased with the way they came out the second half and played for their pride. The next thing to look for is how this team rebounds from a loss. We will find out next week against Kentucky. Our new coaching staff failed to put our team on the field this week ready and believing they could and would win. The results were they lost.

The Coaching Staff recovered nicely at half time and the team did much better in the second half. One half of football will not win in the  SEC. Our football has to come in for the first play with the confidence and swagger that they will win. This must be the case every game. There were discipline problems on the team this week. A player had to be disciplined. This is the kind of thing that effects a teams performance. I hope out staff learned this and will not allow a repeat performance of today. This was a confidence crushing loss.

The offensive line was bad all day today. This is by far the worst performance of this group since last season. Our pass rush was non existent today. This was largely due to poor performance by Auburn's linebackers. Our backfield was plagued with penalties today. Our defensive line was overpowered and lost the line of scrimmage battle. This was a bad, off day for Auburn. Now they must recover, pick up the pieces and move to the next game. Hopefully lessons were learned.