Music City Bowl: Auburn 63, Purdue 14

[Hawkinole]

Auburn is a good tough team but they aren't some world beater.  They struggle on offense 

This is why you and I need to learn to lay low in the area of predictions.

[Hawkinole]

Hard to know the right thing to do in that situation, on the Auburn side of things.  What's the least disrespectful thing to do?  What do you owe your backups?  Run your offense with the starters = no.  Run your offense with the backups is okay...unless they're too effective.  Then you just run the ball up the middle every play with your backups, which isn't really respecting anyone, it's barely football.  When you're in FG range, is going for it on 4th down polite?  What if you keep getting the 1st downs?  Then you look like an A-hole.  But FGs put more points on the board.



Basically, in this instance, Auburn mercy-ruled PU and there were no right answers.  Awkward to watch, even envisioning yourself as a PU player/coach or AU player/coach.

I know what the Badgers would have done.

[Cincydawg]

A good something of this is information for Brohm as to how his team matches up against a more talented team in another conference.  He probably knew this going into the game of course, but he can see on film how his lines were getting abused.  The announcer talked about that obviously.  

Skill players aren't enough to go the distance consistently.  It will be interesting how he adds some Wisconsin-esque capabilities, if he can.

[Hoss]

With proper management of your playsheet and personnel you can utilize the situation to get invaluable reps for your lower units without embarrassing the opposing players or exposing anybody to injury unnecessarily injury. 

Back in the day when Nebraska was still good enough to rout people regularly, Osborne would send in the 2nd teamers and call pretty much the full gamut of running plays, with a short pass or two mixed in. In the last 8-10 minutes the freshmen and walkons would go in, and run base concepts as a building block for the future. 

Bill Synder had a different approach; he would send in his backups and run the offense full-bore, just as he'd expect them to play if called upon in crunch time. Eventually the freshmen and walkons would go in, and the offense would stall, but sometimes things got pretty ugly before reaching that point.  

Either works, but personally I am not a fan of asking your kids to run into a pile and risk injury just to burn clock. Even a blowout in a 3rd-tier bowl is an opportunity for experience that cannot be replicated in practice. Put it to use, and give your backups something to play for. 

[847badgerfan]

Play to the end. The kids who get to go in late in the game want to play to their capabilities, and the coach has a responsibility to allow them to play. I also believe that it's insulting to the other team, to back off and run nothing. 

[Cincydawg]

In a blow out, I would run a partial playbook.  I'm not going to run gimmick plays obviously, nor throw bombs, nor screens, I might have the QB 2 throw some slants or to the TE depending.  Late in the game it would be only running plays.

[betarhoalphadelta]

You are clumping the loss to Minnesota in with the loss to EMU?  I didn't realize that the 6-7 Boilermakers should have expected to beat the 7-6 Gophers rather than lose 41-10.

It wasn't just the loss. It was getting blown out by Minnesota that hurt so much. If Purdue had competed in that game, it would have been a much more understandable loss.
And when that comment was posted  both teams were 6-6.

[ELA]

EMU wasn't too bad either to be fair.  And at the time Minnesota had just gotten blown out by the worst team in the Big Ten.  We didn't know that the Gophers were about to turn a corner.

[Brutus Buckeye]

It wasn't just the loss. It was getting blown out by Minnesota that hurt so much. If Purdue had competed in that game, it would have been a much more understandable loss.
And when that comment was posted  both teams were 6-6.

You've had quite the roller coaster season. From sky is the limit preseason aspirations, to declaring that the EMU loss cost you a chance at a Bowl Game, to the OSU upset generating short lived Big Ten Title hopes, to crashing back to Earth in gut wrenching fashion down the stretch, to winning the Old Oaken Bucket on the road and sneaking into a Bowl Game after all, to the whole Louisville thing, then last and least getting pantsed by an SEC team on National TV and wishing that you'd been right about the Emu loss dashing your Bowl hopes. 

[ELA]

Nah, Year 2 in the program the benefit of the bowl practices grossly outweighs the downside to getting run off the field in a mid tier bowl game.

And losing that but keeping Brohm sends better vibes into the postseason than vice versa.

[Brutus Buckeye]

True in theory no doubt, but if you were playing better before the bowl practices than after.... did they really help? 

[ELA]

True in theory no doubt, but if you were playing better before the bowl practices than after.... did they really help?

Yes

[Cincydawg]

Bowl practices help, especially the younger players.  Another week of game prep helps.  Experience in the post season helps.

The seniors probably benefit a lot less than freshmen obviously.

[betarhoalphadelta]

You've had quite the roller coaster season. From sky is the limit preseason aspirations, to declaring that the EMU loss cost you a chance at a Bowl Game, to the OSU upset generating short lived Big Ten Title hopes, to crashing back to Earth in gut wrenching fashion down the stretch, to winning the Old Oaken Bucket on the road and sneaking into a Bowl Game after all, to the whole Louisville thing, then last and least getting pantsed by an SEC team on National TV and wishing that you'd been right about the Emu loss dashing your Bowl hopes.

There were no aspirations preseason  We knew our roster was still mediocre, our surprisingly good 2017 defense graduated everyone, and our schedule was hell.