Auburn Can Learn From History; 2nd Half Of Season Not Achilles Heel In 2010

The past two years Auburn has not been the most resilient team we have ever seen. In both years Auburn started the season great. Then fell flat on their face in the second half. Its like the first loss is the shot in achilles. Can Auburn redeem its self this season?

In both seasons there were unforeseen problems. In 2008 there was the hire and fire of Tony Franklin before the seventh game. Then in 2009 we fought through shortage of scholarships and many injuries.

The 2008 season started and Tony Franklin looked like he was going to be the man. Auburn out scored Louisiana Monroe 34-0 in the first game of the year. Not bad we said? Then another decent game against a lower level team Southern Miss. We started having a few questions and was scratching our head, what’s up with this spread offense? Saturday Sep. 3^rd rolls around, Auburn travels to Mississippi State and the infamous 3-2 game started. By the end of this game Auburn was the laughing stock of the SEC. What kind of spread offense is Auburn running? Sport networks loved that 3-2 Saturday, considering we are the red headed step child in Alabama, they tore us up!

Tubby finally gets tired of all the criticism and fires Tony Franklin on the Wednesday before the Arkansas game. Tony Franklin was only seven games into his tenure. Auburn finally pulls the plug on the great spread offense that only scored 3 points against a miserable Mississippi State team. After that Auburn goes on to win only one game the rest of the season and the end of Tuberville’s era.

In 2009 the season started with a new man a campus. The first time we had seen a different coach on the sidelines in almost ten years. It was strange to the Auburn faithful not to see Tubby on the sidelines. With a new coach and ANOTHER spread offensive guru, was Auburn going to be that good? After the 2008 season nobody really got excited about this new guy and his spread offense. How could he make it work and Tony Franklin couldn’t?

IT WORK’S! The spread offense worked like a charm. We started the season 5-0 and went into the Arkansas game with our head up this year. Then the shot to the achilles. We go on a three game losing streak and only win two more games before the end of the season. Did we not try? Why couldn’t we finish a game strong?

In the past two years there have been unforeseen injuries, depth chart issues, and coaches with their heads rolling by the second half on the season. In 2008 if Tubby had left Tony were he was we might have won at least a couple more games. But there was to much struggle with the coaches to understand what Tony was trying to do. Not to make excuses but I would have to think that we shot our on self in the achilles that year. In 2009 Chizik comes in with only 75 scholarship players and a lot of them get hurt. If we would have had the depth on defense last year we could have easily went 10-2. Auburn struggled in the second half of the season in 2009 as well. Is this a trend that carries over into the 2010 season or does Auburn gear up for war and become the most resilient team in the SEC?