This News Made Me Sad Regarding Auburn Football

This is the Locked On Podcast Network, celebrating 10 years of your team every day. Hey, sports fans, it's JD, the host of Locked On Cardinals. And did you know with the Discover Cashback card, it's payback time when you earn cash back on everyday purchases. Activate and earn 5% cash back at different categories each quarter on up to $1,500 in purchases. That's 5% cash back at different places each quarter, like grocery stores, on gas, and at restaurants. It pays to Discover. Terms apply. See discover.com/five for details. This news broke yesterday, Darrell. And my reaction to it, it actually just made me even more sad. You are Locked On Auburn, your daily podcast on the Auburn Tigers, part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. Yes, I'm Zac Blackerby. This is Locked On Auburn, and we are joined by the Darrell Dapprich Montgomery Radio Legend. We'll talk about some predictions for Auburn and Georgia coming up, as well as a mentality going into this, which is probably wrong. I think you and I agree on that, Darrell. But yesterday in the College Football World, in the sports world, I mean, it's that big of a thing with news breaking and the sources coming out and saying, hey, the idea of the College Football Playoff expanding the 24 teams, and there's a lot of different opinions on it. But I'm not going to lie to you, Darrell. It made me more sad about the state of where we're at, because some people are saying, oh, well, it makes it too easy. It's just an invitational at this point. And I hear that, and I hear 24 teams, and it's like we're still, with them doubling the size of the College Football Playoff, we're still just nowhere close. We're nowhere close to that. And it's just like, it could be 24 teams, it could be 36 teams, and it's just like, man, it's still like, it just kind of put in perspective how far we still are away from even getting into an argument of being a top 24 team at the end of the year. It made me sad. Yeah, I have a hard time not agreeing with you and sympathizing with you and feeling sad with you, because this is so funny, the timing of this. I jumped into a group chat today when this was announced or proposed, and I said, the naysayers will say, my response was, see, even if Auburn gets in, see, it took them to have 24 teams before poor old little Auburn got in. And I went, boy, I'd take that right now. So, cause right now I feel sad at all. If Auburn were to be the 24th team at the end of the season. Oh my gosh, it would be amazing. Exactly. And the fun little exercise to do is I went back like 25, 30 years one time and said, okay, how many times of Auburn in its history would have got into a 14 playoff? How many times have they got in the 12th team? It's amazing how many times and how many playoff appearances they would have been in, it would have been, it would have been historical. And some of those, they were playing their best football at the end of the year. Um, yeah, it's, it's sad to think that this thing could be expanded to 24. And you're like, man, can you expand it to 50? Cause even that's the only way we could sniff it right now. Yeah, maybe. Right. Yeah. And only let like, only let like SEC and big 10 teams. And no, I mean, it's, um, you know, seeing all these different, you know, national analysts talk about as one thing, but you're seeing all these, like, you know, all the different locked on hosts, chiming in on in group texts and all that. It's like, man, don't get to think about the playoff in mid-October. Like y'all get to think about that. That's where your job is uniquely challenging and painful when it comes to this, because if you're managing other channels, you have to address it. You can't avoid it. You're talking about it. You have to jump on. You have to be a part of it. You can't just block it out and run away from it like the rest of us can. You have to engage. And when you engage, there's six of your cohorts that are right now talking about contenders for being in the playoff. Right. Right. Yeah. If they took the top 24, which just won't go into effect this year, but it's like Kentucky right now could be like, Hmm, God, that is why not. If it wasn't depressing enough the last six years and we've talked about it, it's historically the worst run that Auburn football has had since the fourth. I mean, just if you look at this October and you look at this run like, all right. I'm not ready to mail in October yet. Let's wait and see at the end of October. I'm just saying like, if you're, if you're like, all right, Tennessee, if they take 24 teams, like, oh, that's probably a playoff team. Like most years under Josh Hyple, that's a playoff team. Yeah. And then obviously Georgia. Sure. And then Florida, not Florida anymore. Well, I'm just saying October, like LSU. Yeah. Ole Miss now. Sure. LSU is not LSU has lost two LSU has lost two and they don't look like it. They don't look like it. Even a playoff can't know. I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. 24. It'd be top 24. Missouri. You mentioned Kentucky. And then the and then the normal suspects, the Alabama, Georgia, you know. Yeah. It's just man. But you know, you have a it's a great point. And it's absolutely point. It's it's dead on. And I am with you with your sat. Let me let me tell you another. I'm talking to I'm talking to a host yesterday about this, how to how to handle it for one of their shows. And I'm like, yeah, you know, you could debate the big debate is like, does this make the regular season better or worse? And it's like, it's going to make, you know, what are your big November games? You could talk about it making that. It's like he turned it out. He's like, maybe it's going to make the Iron Bull even better. And I'm like. It could if we get back to that, like. Historically, yes. The regular season will always matter because even with the NFL taking almost half the teams for the playoffs, every game, you can't afford to lose games because you never know what's going to happen at the end of the season. It's, you can't take a chance. You can't count on something. I think it's going to make it. Yeah. It won't, it won't dumb it down at all. I mean, let's go back to LSU for a second. Like I know their schedule stuff and like any game they play with two losses, any game they play in November, it's essentially a playoff game for them. Like in this model. So go for that. I'd go for that feeling right now. It'll go into it. I just want to feel something high. Yeah, I just want to feel something again. That's even somewhat remote to the College Football Playoff. I mean, it's amazing. We were in the first CFP rankings, right? Yep. Wow. We're in there with two Mississippi schools in Auburn. Who was number one? Ohio State, probably. I don't remember. You want to know something really ironic? There were two things that were historical with the College Football Playoff and Auburn is involved in both of them. I mean, it's amazing to think what we're, Auburn is now, they were in the first ever poll. Yeah. And they also were the first team in the top four at the end of the year with two losses. True. So wow. Pioneers. Yeah. And now, thanks for, this is water, but I think I'm going to change it to something a little stronger. As soon as we're done recording, you can change it to whatever you want. Yeah. Yeah. It's just, yeah. Anytime College Football Playoff new, like I almost feel ridiculous having an opinion on it because it's like, it's so far away. That's tough. It's so far away. Yeah. If someone asked me about the baseball playoffs, I'd be like, I don't know. What are you asking me for? I don't know what that feels like. Yeah. Right. Yeah. You're a Pirates fan, right? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So ask me about Lombardi's though, baby. And me and you are experts. Aren't we for what Lombardi trophies? Me and you are experts with our teams. Baby. I know about those for sure. Both of them lose them too, sadly, but that's okay. Um, I just had to beat people to the punch there, but yeah, like our, our me and Dapp alone on that. Let us know in the comments. Um, there's another mindset thing that you and I have picked up on over the course of the week, and I've like kind of actively pushed back on that. Um, Darrell, you and I haven't talked about this yet. I think you'll agree with me and actually shouldn't be assuming that, but that's next right here, Unlocked On Auburn. I think we've all been in this predicament before. You go to make dinner, you open your refrigerator, you look in there for five to 10 minutes, then close the doors and think, I've got nothing to work with. That is where ButcherBox comes to the rescue. And I can attest to this firsthand because I have been a proud ButcherBox customer for years. They deliver in a big, big way. They deliver 100% grass-fed beef, organic chicken, wild-caught seafood and more. All of it's sourced to standards they can actually tell you about. They've already done the research and made the tough sourcing decisions. So all you have to do is decide what's for dinner. For example, you look at this right here, that is a tomahawk ribeye. Think about how incredible that is gonna be when you put it on your grill. 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Thanks so much for making Locked On Auburn your first listen every single day. For your second listen, go check out Locked On Auburn. Hit your twice-a-day five-minute quick hit on your favorite team, the Auburn Tigers, hosted by yours truly both on audio and on video. Please subscribe. There would help me out a ton. Thank you so, so much. There's a mindset that I've caught several of my close friends who are diehard Auburn people as well. And let me know if you've seen this, Darrell. Of if we can just keep it close, it would mean a lot the rest of the way. It seems like you agree. It seems like you've seen that. And based on you shaking your head, no, you feel the same way about. I'm just so tired. I don't care if they're the number ones. I'm tired of like almost beating good teams. Like that just doesn't do anything for me anymore. When a freaking game that matters, please. I have to be very careful as this is not coming off as... No, just let it rip. Easy, Boomer, because I'm not a Boomer, first of all, I'm Gen X. But, yes, I'm not even close to a Boomer, and it bothers me. Gen X is the best, baby. I, generationally, this participation trophy bullcrap is driving me crazy. I'm not trying to offend people. When I see this travel ball stuff and you win a tournament and these big, gaudy rings that six-year-olds have, it's the mindset of, let's just be close, let's play hard, let's give effort and get rewarded. And I think that should just be the bare minimum. That should be the standard. So, in order for people to say it, I think for morale, it would just be so good to have a moral victory, to keep it close. It drives me crazy. Look, I can't come away from a seven-point loss to Georgia, feeling any better if they beat them by 21. And I know people think that's crazy. But for me, an L is an L. And to have that mentality going into it beforehand is, to me, it's just conceding. And I can't do anything in my life conceding. Yeah. I mean, if that's where the chips fall at the end of it, fine. But go in there thinking, I'm not trying to just keep this close. Anything could happen. I want to beat your tail. And then if you lose, you lose with dignity and grace. But don't just, before you even go into it, go, I'll be OK with a close loss. Is that where this program has become, with this fan base has become, with this whole mindset has become, and if it has, it's depressing segment number two back to back. I mean, it's just, I don't want to judge people for feeling that way. I don't. I don't want to come across. Let me say this. Everybody has a right to feel the way they want to feel. I can't tell you how to feel about a football game that's all over. That's hypocritical. That's not fair. That's not right for me to judge you and go, you shouldn't feel good about a close loss. It's not my place to say, but it, but I, but it is my place to say it bothers me ahead of time. That my opinion is don't have that mindset. Yeah. Before you even kick it off. Like Auburn plays really, really well, Zach. And they're clicking on all cylinders and they make some great plays and they have some explosives. And a lot of these things we've talked about get cleaned up and they still get beat. Yes, I will feel better. I will say, okay, well, it looked different. They did get some things cleaned up. That performance right there, that effort will win some games down the stretch against not the number one team in the country. That's that's the only caveat to this. But before they even kick it off to just be, hey, I'll take a close loss. Let's just not get embarrassed. Yeah, I do think there's aspects of it where you could walk away from losing, where you're like, okay, like maybe the bye week did a few things. Like if your offensive line doesn't get cooked on Saturdays, okay, like that's the best D line they're going to face for the rest of the season. I mean, what if you had 450 yards of total offense and you rushed it for 150 and threw it for 300 and Byrum didn't throw a pick and he was like 70% completion percentage. That gives you stuff like, okay, maybe we can beat LSU. Exactly. But then you turn around knowing where this fan base is and how wounded we are and go, yeah, but the defense looked like, you know, crap and gave. I mean, because if that happens and Auburn loses, that means your defense is Swiss cheese, right? Yeah, you couldn't stop the run, which... Like Vanderbilt last year where the offense clicked on all cylinders and then the defense didn't do anything. Yeah, right. No, it's difficult to hear that. And... I don't know, I can't buy into that mindset. But post game, again, a post game is different. If you do a lot of good things and you just come up just short, and George is just a better team and the deeper team like we think they are with a better roster, then you can live with that. But before you even play the game, let's not concede anything. Yeah, and then, you know, I think there's other things that I would like to see too, and I'm not expecting Auburn to win. You aren't either. I don't think most people watching this aren't. But there are some things that I would like to see change, right? Like I'd love to not see so many pre-snap penalties. I'd love to see you take care of the football. I'd love to see play calling that puts guys in situations to win. Now granted, the play calling and putting guys in situations to win from a scheme standpoint is tougher when you face a team like Georgia. I get it. And I will react accordingly because of that. I will not be as critical of play calling if it looks atrocious because I don't know how much he can really do in this scenario. And if he does, if the offense does look good, I will give the flowers in order to that. But yeah, going into it, just conceding like, all right, let's just try to keep it close. Unless you're taking the Auburn plus 20 and a half on FanDuel, I don't think that's the way to approach it. That could be some of it. Look, if our founding fathers would have been okay with the mindset of just keeping it close against the British, this would be tea right now. I would be drinking tea. So there you go. It would probably be kind of hot. It would be kind of hot and there would be a heck of a tax on it. You never know what you're going to get. We'll get you a little history reference, culture, music, pop, right? Yeah. Let's just be glad they didn't concede. Go look, we just keep it close against the red codes and keep half of these states. We're good. Yeah. No, baby. Okay. Let's give you our picks. Final thoughts, what we expect to see next right here on Locked On Auburn. Today's show brought to you by our friends over at FanDuel. FanDuel is America's number one sports book. They want to make this season your most rewarding season ever. Auburn plus 20 and a half on the road against the number one team in college football, the Georgia Bulldogs, the over-under set at 49 and a half. So that's got Auburn what? That's interesting because of my score pick. Wow, is that interesting? Are you all over that? You're all over that? You'll see when I get my pick. I think mine would be over. Yeah, mine's pretty close to that too, actually. So, but yeah, get in on the action over at FanDuel. FanDuel is America's number one sports book. Darrell, going into this game, I think Auburn loses. I have Auburn losing to Georgia. 35 to 17. Wow. I have Auburn losing 31 to 17. Okay. That's the score I've had all week. That's 48. You just gave that number pretty interesting, pretty close. Yeah. 31-17. You're slightly under the over-under according to FanDuel. I'm slightly over. Yeah. I told you after the Tennessee game, it's going to be a while before I pick Auburn again. Now, again, you come out and beat Georgia or upset Georgia, that changes everything or even if Auburn looks good. I'm not talking about close. If Auburn looks better and clean some things up, then I would know the LSU game. If LSU loses, then I may think something different. If you actually look like an offense. What if LSU loses Saturday? Yeah. If LSU loses Saturday, they may break, they may just totally fall apart. That changes things. But yeah, 31-17, Frazier comes back. He's coming back. That was announced yesterday that Frazier's back for Georgia. So that running game gets a little deeper, a little more dangerous. Auburn's had trouble against the run at times. That's not good. I do think some of the run fit stuff though, might be a little better with X not out there. I know what you're saying. He took himself out of the play a ton in those run fits. Correct. So I do, I mean, I think we're going to get physically pushed around, but I do wonder if we see less of the busted runs because of that. Because of less freelancing and stuff, yeah. Yeah, like doing the actual run fit because I do think Diaz will be able to do that just fine. Yeah. But look, I mean, you still got to win up front. A guy that I've talked about a ton on the Auburn hit side of it this week, as far as I'd like to see more of, is Jared Smith. Yeah. You made it and you chose this off season, and we've talked a lot as far as over the bye week about player evaluation and what you chose to do with your roster. And to me, you choosing to not go big game hunting when it comes to edge and just say, hey, Jared Smith, you're our guy. We're going to do everything we can to retain you, which I have no issue with that. I think they should have gotten more than just WOMAC or whatever. And they didn't know that they were going to get Chris Murray back. I think they thought that Jared Smith would be able to make more of an impact than he has up to this point. Looks good against Baylor. Looked good in A-Day. Looked good at Baylor. All signs looked. Since Baylor? I mean, I've been underwhelmed. I think my expectations for Jared Smith, and I said it before, I had questions about the edge room. I had questions about the pass rush. And it's like, can Jared Smith take that next step? And right now, it does not look like he has. You know, ironically, Zac, the two most dominant defensive players against Baylor have been invisible since then. Eric Winters is the other one. Yep. And I think that if those two maintain, I'm not talking about them being superhuman. I'm saying just consistency and some sustainability of a little bit higher level play, that would have been a long, that would have gone a long way in helping this defense. Get some key stuff. Yeah. I mean, past rush has been a major thing, and especially against an offensive line like Georgia's. Auburn's been able to get good pressure, but a big part of it has been blitzing Xavier Atkins. And when you're going up against an offense, it's really good at taking what you give them. And then a quarterback that I think is experienced, and I think one of the more underrated quarterbacks in college football, I am very high on gunner stock that as a player. And I just think if you blitz them a lot, like you got to get there, he's going to eat you alive. And I just I don't like the matchup. I don't like anything about what's going to happen Saturday. Unless we just play out of our minds, and we have one of the biggest upsets in the history of Auburn football. Because goodness gracious, I would love to be wrong about everything. I would love to just come on here and say, my bad, I was wrong. I was wrong, let's go. But we'll see what happens. Not only is it going to have to take a really, really great performance from Auburn, I think there has to be some sort of let down from Georgia too. And then be subpar, then make some mistakes, then be the team that has some self-inflicting wounds, turnovers, that kind of thing. Because it's going to be difficult, helmet on helmet, even if Auburn plays at a high level. If Georgia plays at a high level, doesn't matter. Yeah, I mean, if Georgia plays at 80% of what they're capable of, I don't think there's anything we can do. Nope, I agree. Yeah, you need somebody to step up for sure. We kind of mentioned two guys on defense. The two guys on offense for me, it's like, let's don't overthink this. Byrum Brown has to ball out. And then, I mean, if you're Kirby Smart and you're Georgia, and you're looking at how to attack Auburn, I mean, aren't you just putting so much on the interior offensive line is ridiculous? I was specifically going to say Cole Best. Yeah, but yeah, I mean, McManus has stepped up a little bit and played better. You know, and I don't know if Zier will be the other guard. He's played pretty decent. I don't know why he wouldn't be. I think you really focused right up the middle. I mean, you know, it's the old adage about how strong you are up the middle. Right now, Auburn, not so much. Yeah. So, and I thought they were going to be. I mean, again, I'll wear it at the beginning of the year. I'm like, well, you build your team from the middle, and I like center, and I like quarterback, and we'll build around that. It just hasn't yet, yet come to that, you know, realization. Yeah, maybe the best is yet to come. Is yet to come? Could be, hopefully. Did you get my pun? I did get it. It was a good one. You just didn't care for it? No, I cared for it. I did care for it. I like it. Yeah, I'm laughing on the inside. What did you think of Golishe's response about the, you know, can't replace Cole Best comments? I think it's right up there with, I feel like Byrum Brown was very consistent and played well against Tennessee. That's what I feel like about that comment. I'm all for backing your players. But you can back them. Yeah, and not throw them under the bus without throwing out a fairy tale. I mean, don't say anything negative, but don't exaggerate and flat out create a narrative that's just not true. Yeah, I mean, he was asked the Cole Best question like through the lens of... Why couldn't you just say, I believe in Cole Best. There's always competition. I believe in Cole Best. I don't think we've seen him play to his potential. We've still got a lot of season, but he knows he's got to clean some things up. He's his hardest critic. I think that there's still a lot of good football left in him. And let's see if he gets there. That's how you answer that. Irreplaceable or whatever, I can't even... You can't replace them. You just can't. Wow. Wow. It just reminds me of the Byrum answer. I don't know why that got me. I can't wrap my head around it. I get it. Don't throw your player under the bus. But you can answer that question without creating a false narrative and not throwing your player under the bus is all I'm saying. Yeah. All right. Darrell Dapprich, how could people check out everything you've got going on? Locked On Auburn, right here with you. Wherever you get your podcasts and YouTube. And then Auburn Daily would be kind of fun doing a little watch along Saturday. I'll be with the boys. I'll be with the boys at ObCast. Let's go. All right. Please like the video. Please subscribe. Go check out Locked On Auburn. Hit your twice a day, five minute quick hit on your favorite Auburn Tigers team over there several times a day as well. So we'll see you next time. This has been Locked On Auburn. Whoot. The Locked On Podcast Network is brought to you by FanDuel. 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