When the clock wound down to three or so minutes remaining in the third quarter Saturday, Gene Chizik evaluated where his team was at, told the starters to be ready for Sunday’s practice and cleared the benches.
At that point, with his team holding a comfortable margin and time working against Ball State, nothing on the Jordan-Hare Stadium scoreboard mattered to Chizik.
“I’ve got to get my guys to the next game,” Chizik said. “When it’s a four-touchdown lead, we’re not worried about stats. We’re worried about next week.”
Next week, of course, is now, as the Tigers hit the road for the first time this season Saturday against Tennessee. Kickoff is set for 6:45 p.m. and the game can be seen on ESPN (Channel 31 in Lee County).
The final numbers of Saturday’s 54-30, not-as-close-as-it-appeared final mimicked the line of thought Chizik has carried throughout his first four games as Auburn’s head coach.
It wasn’t as good as 54 points might lead you to believe, it wasn’t as bad as allowing 30 points to an 0-4 Mid-American Conference team and the Tigers will certainly have to play better if they want to win against one of the stingiest defenses in college football this weekend.
“Those games are tough, because you can only win those games one way and everybody be happy,” Chizik said. “Really, I’m really happy we won the game, but I think a lot of things could have been much cleaner.”
Chizik’s disappointment stemmed from a number of areas that have plagued Auburn throughout its perfect 4-0 start but have not been too much to overcome.
Yet.
After two consecutive games of just five penalties apiece, the Tigers set a new season high with nine Saturday. Chizik singled out just one — a pass interference call — that might have fallen under the “try-hard” category — a term Chizik coined following the Tigers’ eight-penalty performance against Louisiana Tech.
“I just felt like it was a sloppy game,” Chizik said.
Poor execution in the first quarter also had the Tigers fighting an unnecessarily uphill battle.
The Tigers trailed the Cardinals longer than anybody besides West Virginia, falling behind less than three minutes into the game and not getting on the board until 2:53 remained in the first quarter.
That 10 minutes of uncertainty and ever-growing silence at Jordan-Hare Stadium was a problem, Chizik said, especially when the defense had created two turnovers and nothing is happening to reward its efforts.
The Tigers were stuffed on third-and-2 and fourth-and-1 on their first offensive possession and couldn’t convert a third-and-1 on the following one.
“I think that’s just kind of a symptom of the whole uneasiness of the way we played,” Chizik said. “Fourth-and-1 when you’re at Auburn, you have to make a first down. That’s what you have to do. If you turn the ball over right now and it’s in the red zone, we’ve got to stop them.”
The thing is, Auburn didn’t get stopped much on offense, especially when it got rolling with the first-team group. The same could be said with the first-team defense, excluding Ball State’s scoring drive early in the third quarter.
The Cardinals had just 79 yards of offense on 39 plays, scoring all 10 of their first half points thanks to prime field position set up by special teams mishaps.
The seven-play, 70-yard drive in the third quarter, though, was all on Auburn’s first-teamers, defensive coordinator Ted Roof said.
“I was disappointed in that,” Roof said. “And then we started wholesale substituting and the execution wasn’t what we wanted it to be.”
That’s what this week, Auburn’s biggest game-week of 2009 to date, will be all about: patching up the shortcomings from last week that might not fly so well against the Volunteers.
And probably the week after that, and the week after that…
“That’s just what you have to do,” Chizik said. “I go back and say that I’m very glad to be 4-0. Am I satisfied with the way we played last night? No, I’m not.”
agribble@oanow.com | 334-737-2561
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