It’s been decades since Tulane beat a ranked team and this week may be one of, hopefully, 3-4 chances this year.
Auburn is a very good team, ranked #16 prior to beating #11 Oregon and moving up to #10 themselves in the latest AP poll. But, they were outplayed by Oregon for three quarters and don’t appear to be as good as the Oklahoma and Ohio State teams that routed Tulane in each of the last two years. At the same time, I think Tulane is much better this year than in the previous two years. That doesn’t guarantee a win, of course, but it suggests a much closer differential in talent than we saw against Oklahoma or Ohio State.
To the best of my knowledge, Tulane came out of the FIU game in good shape health wise-- a plus. Also, we have nine days to prepare for Auburn while they only have seven to get ready for us. This gives our coaches an extra two days to game plan. Almost all of our offensive starters only played, at most, three quarters against FIU and, thanks to a lot of substitutions, few of our defenders played much more than half of our defensive snaps. Auburn, of course, had to play their starters the entire game. For these reasons, we should be the “fresher” team, for whatever that is worth.
Still, we will need to play a near perfect game to win. That means we will need to cut back on the penalties that stalled a couple of our drives and extended theirs. Against Auburn we can’t afford another disastrous snap over the QB’s head. And we need to eliminate turnovers and force at least two from them.
Last Thursday, our offensive line may have had their best game in the past two decades but against what level of competition? Auburn’s defense will test that; they are big and very fast. And, though he had a great game throwing the ball, McMillan threw at least two very dangerous passes to the sidelines that, though incomplete, could have resulted in “pick sixes” against faster covers. He needs to protect the ball against a speedier group of defenders.
Getting Amari Jones and Tyrick James involved in the offense was important against FIU and we’ll need to continue that this weekend and for the rest of the year. But, we also need to get McCleskey involved. That we gained about 550 yards with him catching only one ball for 5 yards is amazing, but probably won’t ever happen again. He’s one of our true “game breakers” and needs touches.
While we pressured the FIU QB quite a bit, we blitzed a great deal to get that pressure and got, for the most part, excellent coverage from our defensive backfield. Still, we only had two sacks and probably need three or more against Auburn to stall their offense. We also can’t allow them to convert on 3rd and 19 like FIU did once this past game; that led to their second TD.
Anyway, we’re close to a three TD underdogs at Auburn and no-one except the Wave faithful expect us play them close, let alone win. But I think we’ve got a fighting chance to pull this off. It won’t be easy and playing Auburn close might impress some people but I don’t think Willy Fritz or this team is going to Auburn to play a close game. They’re going with every expectation of winning. We fans should expect nothing less.
Roll Wave!!!
Auburn is a very good team, ranked #16 prior to beating #11 Oregon and moving up to #10 themselves in the latest AP poll. But, they were outplayed by Oregon for three quarters and don’t appear to be as good as the Oklahoma and Ohio State teams that routed Tulane in each of the last two years. At the same time, I think Tulane is much better this year than in the previous two years. That doesn’t guarantee a win, of course, but it suggests a much closer differential in talent than we saw against Oklahoma or Ohio State.
To the best of my knowledge, Tulane came out of the FIU game in good shape health wise-- a plus. Also, we have nine days to prepare for Auburn while they only have seven to get ready for us. This gives our coaches an extra two days to game plan. Almost all of our offensive starters only played, at most, three quarters against FIU and, thanks to a lot of substitutions, few of our defenders played much more than half of our defensive snaps. Auburn, of course, had to play their starters the entire game. For these reasons, we should be the “fresher” team, for whatever that is worth.
Still, we will need to play a near perfect game to win. That means we will need to cut back on the penalties that stalled a couple of our drives and extended theirs. Against Auburn we can’t afford another disastrous snap over the QB’s head. And we need to eliminate turnovers and force at least two from them.
Last Thursday, our offensive line may have had their best game in the past two decades but against what level of competition? Auburn’s defense will test that; they are big and very fast. And, though he had a great game throwing the ball, McMillan threw at least two very dangerous passes to the sidelines that, though incomplete, could have resulted in “pick sixes” against faster covers. He needs to protect the ball against a speedier group of defenders.
Getting Amari Jones and Tyrick James involved in the offense was important against FIU and we’ll need to continue that this weekend and for the rest of the year. But, we also need to get McCleskey involved. That we gained about 550 yards with him catching only one ball for 5 yards is amazing, but probably won’t ever happen again. He’s one of our true “game breakers” and needs touches.
While we pressured the FIU QB quite a bit, we blitzed a great deal to get that pressure and got, for the most part, excellent coverage from our defensive backfield. Still, we only had two sacks and probably need three or more against Auburn to stall their offense. We also can’t allow them to convert on 3rd and 19 like FIU did once this past game; that led to their second TD.
Anyway, we’re close to a three TD underdogs at Auburn and no-one except the Wave faithful expect us play them close, let alone win. But I think we’ve got a fighting chance to pull this off. It won’t be easy and playing Auburn close might impress some people but I don’t think Willy Fritz or this team is going to Auburn to play a close game. They’re going with every expectation of winning. We fans should expect nothing less.
Roll Wave!!!
