Opening the play book against the cupcakes is not a very good idea. 500 yards of offense is great until you show the teams that count how to prepare for you. Wonder how different things would have turned out for them if they had played it a little closer to the vest to start the season....dunno
As I said in another thread, you can't play coy against the lessers and then suddenly expect to blow-up against the better teams. You have to get your players the reps they need to be comfortable executing your true offense against your best opponents.
I'm not sure I agree with you. For one thing, Malzahn's offense is mostly an open book to anyone that has watched him run it at Arky and at Tulsa. So, while I agree with you that it helps an opposing defense to review recent film, it's not like Chavis hasn't seen Malzahn's scheme before. It's more likely that Malzahn has eliminated portions of his Tulsa playbook due to personnel limitations he has inherited at Auburn. Nor did I hear anyone associated with the Auburn program even thinking that Malzahn's offense was suddenly going to "blow up against LSU." Auburn's challenge - and Malzahn's too - is the quantity of players. We're currently down to 70 scholarship players ..... 15 players missing from the NCAA allowed number. We have walk-ons playing as starters. The reasons don't matter for the purpose of this discussion. Bottom line ..... Auburn is a gritty but completely worn-out team right now on both sides of the ball. Malzahn's OL has played a lot more snaps than most teams in D-1 .... a lot more. This game was as exactly as I predicted, although I expected LSU to have more rushing yardage than they achieved. JMO, .... but I believe the only thing that "last night's game proved" is that LSU is a deeper and more talented football team, particularly given Auburn's mid-season condition as a severely depleted SEC program.
