WEEK 2: Auburn Squeaks by Cal, Other Teams Get First Test

"A win is a win."

How much truth does this statement really hold? In my opinion, being satisfied with an ugly victory is somewhat of a loser's mentality. Don't get me wrong, an ugly win is definitely better than an ugly loss, but to say I am satisfied with the way the Auburn performed last night is far from the truth. It's hard to even say that we won... we just didn't lose. Cal had every opportunity to win that ballgame, but they simply refused to take advantage of those opportunities.

Whew. Now that I've gotten that off my chest, let's take a step back and look at last night's game from a more positive perspective. We went across the country, started a game at 9:30 P.M. central time, and beat a power five team that put up an impressive performance last week against North Texas. Auburn football is 2-0, and we will hopefully handle business against Samford next week and go into SEC play undefeated.

As I plan on doing every week, let's look at some positives and negatives from the game.

How about we start with the positives. Rivaldo. Fairweather. I said last week that I hoped he would get more involved this week, and he finally made some noise late in the game last night. He had two unbelievable catches on the game-winning touchdown drive, including the touchdown catch itself on a fade route to the corner of the endzone. His most impressive catch came on a third-down and long, when he went down low and hauled in a huge first-down catch to keep the drive alive. His success on that drive left me wondering -- why did he not get more targets early? Our passing game was seemingly nonexistent until we got Fairweather involved. Why did we wait so long to get him in on the action? Better late than never, I guess. He led the team in receiving yards with 39, with the majority of those coming on that final drive. Now, I want to give a shoutout to the MVP of last night's game, our defensive unit. Eugene Asante led the way defensively, and the unit as a whole was very impressive. They did a fantastic job standing their ground and coming up with some huge stops in Auburn territory, where it seemed like Cal spent most of their time on offense. Marcus Harris plugged the middle very well, Donovan Kaufman made some game-changing plays, and our secondary did a great job holding it down when Auburn loaded the box and sent pressure. I was happy to see that when Cal ran it, we had guys swarming the ball carrier. After having a huge week running the ball against North Texas, Cal rushed for only 113 yards against Auburn. I expected an offensive shootout, and I will admit that I was way off. Props to the defense for stepping up.

Now, let's move on to the potential areas of improvement. We still have not figured out how to smoothly transition between quarterbacks. There was one particular instance where we subbed in Robby, and when he got to the huddle, he looked back to the sideline and paused, waiting for a play call. The play call came in too late, and we had to spend a valuable timeout. Why are we subbing in Robby if we don't even know what play we are going to run? When we did get plays off after subbing Robby in, very few were successful. In my opinion, which is often incorrect, I think we would be better off moving forward with just one quarterback per drive. Trying to switch between Thorne and Robby seems to be messing with the flow of the offense. We have one more week to try and figure out how to smoothly rotate quarterbacks. If we can't figure it out before SEC play, we need to ditch the multi-QB attack. While we are on the topic of gameplans and schemes, let's discuss the play calling. There were times during last night's game that I thought the play calling was a bit too predictable. Run, run, pass. Three-and-out. Run, run, pass. Three-and-out. Why not throw in some play-action on first and second down? Is it because Hugh and Montgomery don't trust the passing game yet? When our offense was so stagnant last night, I was disappointed that we didn't try something different offensively. I believe I saw that Auburn didn't attempt a single pass in the third quarter. How does that happen? Teams are going to continue loading the box and clogging up running lanes if we don't start throwing the ball down the field some on early downs. I was also disappointed in the running game. The offensive line didn't perform very well, and our running backs struggled to hold on to the ball. We finished the game with three fumbles lost, and they all seemed to be momentum-shifters. This was especially disappointing because I expect our running game to be the strongpoint of this offense. If we cannot open up lanes and hold on to the ball, it could be a long year.

All of that being said, we are still 2-0. It is important for coaches to address the faults from each game, but it's just as important to avoid dwelling on subpar performances. Use today to talk about mistakes made at Cal, then move on to Samford.

There were some other exciting games around the country yesterday, headlined by Texas and Alabama. Texas picked up a huge win in Tuscaloosa, and they looked really solid while doing so. Quinn Ewers is the real deal. Texas is notorious for prematurely claiming "we are back," but this team could be the real deal. Colorado picked up another big win against Nebraska yesterday, proving that their win over TCU was certainly not a fluke. Miami pulled away from Texas A&M in the fourth, grabbing a nice win over Auburn's week four opponent. I am starting to feel more confident about that matchup, but as of right now, I am still leaning towards Texas A&M over Auburn in the SEC opener.

I am enjoying some NFL football on this beautiful Sunday. Football season is officially in full swing, and I could not be more excited for what's to come.