AUBURN | Auburn’s lost two SEC games this season and in both the Tigers were held to under 100 yards rushing.
In fact, Auburn has rushed for over 200 yards in just three games — Akron (123rd rushing defense in FBS), Alabama State (72nd in FCS) and Ole Miss (108th in FBS). Of AU’s 1,652 rushing yards this season, more than half came against those three opponents.
That puts a lot of pressure on Bo Nix and his receivers to lead this offense. Sometimes it works as it did at LSU and Arkansas, and other times it doesn’t as happened at Texas A&M Saturday.
Nix wasn’t as sharp against the Aggies and the officials were allowing a lot of contact in the secondary — for both teams — which was too much for a below average group of AU wideouts to overcome.
It won’t get much easier over the final three games. Alabama (6th) and Mississippi State (11th) are two of the best rushing defenses in the country. South Carolina is 79th but held Florida to 82 rushing yards in a 40-17 thrashing Saturday.
Execution and taking advantage of opportunities will be at a premium down the stretch. Auburn can’t afford to miss out on big-play chances as it did with Nix’s overthrow of Ja’Varrius Johnson on what looked like a sure touchdown against TAMU.
AU is not good enough to overcome momentum-changing plays like the scoop and score it gave up to the Aggies.
It’s a shame, really, that a team with talented tailbacks like Tank Bigsby and Jarquez Hunter can’t establish the running game, but that’s the reality of this year’s Auburn team.
And it’s a reality that has to change immediately in the offseason.
Bryan Harsin and Auburn’s coaching staff have to be ultra-aggressive with the transfer portal to bring help to this offense for next season.
They need to bring in some people-movers upfront, at least a couple of offensive linemen that can drive defenders off the ball and open gaps to give Bigsby and Hunter the opportunity to showcase their considerable skills.
Just as important is bringing in some legit threats at wide receiver, players that can win 1-on-1 matchups, possess good ball skills and get those all-important yards after the catch.
This Auburn offense lacks those two characteristics more than anything and it would be a failure to go into a second consecutive season with the same issues.
***
As far as quarterbacks go, I don’t have a problem with Harsin sticking with Nix for the entire game against Texas A&M, but I would have made a different call if it was up to me. I would have brought in T.J. Finley after that scoop and score and given him an opportunity to try and rally the troops.
I don’t think it would have changed the outcome, but I would still have given Finley a shot.
I’ve just seen enough of Nix to know when he doesn’t have it, it’s not going to change. Finley’s already come in and rescued Auburn once this season. The team responded well to him, and they responded well when Nix was the starter for the next game.
In many ways, that series of decisions kicked off the most productive stretch of Nix’s college career.
The biggest decision with Nix, Finley and the rest of Auburn’s quarterbacks, however, comes in the offseason. Can one or more of them play at a championship level given a better running game, more consistent protection and a more talented and productive group of receivers?
If the answer is yes, then just keep recruiting quality high school quarterbacks and build this offense around Nix, Finley or Dematrius Davis for next season.
If not, then it’s time to make some tough decisions and hit that portal even harder.
***
In today’s musical journey, we go back 36 years to the day a T.V. show theme song became a No. 1 hit. On Nov. 9, 1985, Jan Hammer’s Miami Vice Theme rose to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, the last instrumental song to reach those heights. Miami Vice premiered on Sept. 16, 1984 and quickly became appointment television. It focused on the war on drugs right at the time it was a major part of U.S. policy. The show helped define the fashion of the era including the t-shirt underneath an Armani jacket, Ray-Ban Wayfarers, loafers with no socks and the 5 o’clock shadow. Instead of using cheaper made-for-TV music, Miami Vice would feature different popular artists each week, many of which would appear as guest-stars in the show. That list included Phil Collins, Miles Davis, Glenn Frey, Willie Nelson, Ted Nugent, Sheena Easton, Gloria Estefan and Gene Simmons. One of the most iconic scenes of the series includes Sonny Crockett, played by Don Johnson, and Rico Tubbs, played by Phillip Michael Thomas, riding through Miami in a Ferrari Daytona Spyder to Phil Collins’ In the Air Tonight.
Hammer, who started playing piano at age four, was probably best known for being one of the original members of the Mahavishnu Orchestra, performing 530 shows from 1971-73, before he was hired to score the Miami Vice series. But Hammer, a native of Prague, Czech Republic, worked with a number of top artists in the 1970s and 80s including making two albums with Journey guitarist Neal Schon, playing with Jeff Beck in a series of benefit concerts and winning a 1985 Grammy for Escape, an instrumental song on Beck’s album, Flash. For Miami Vice, Hammer composed the score and was put in charge of the music used on the show for the first 90 episodes. A soundtrack is released in late 1985 that includes the Miami Vice Theme, Frey’s Smuggler’s Blues, Collins’ In the Air Tonight and Tina Turner’s Better Bo Good to Me. The album also hit No. 1 and was certified quadruple-platinum with more than 4 million copies sold. The Miami Vice Theme won two Grammys in 1986 for Best Pop Instrumental Performance and Best Instrumental Composition. Hammer remains active today scoring music for T.V. and movies.