My Game Observations...

First, Carolina...

I felt pretty discouraged after thursday night. I felt the defense had played good outside of 2 big plays they gave up but Vandy was never able to sustain a drive the entire game. I have no idea what Williams was thinking on the 78 yard td pass that Vandy connected on, but that type thing is correctable. I was impressed with the secondary as a whole. Vandy never even took a shot at Hampton's side of the field and i also thought Legree more than held his own in coverage and looked real good in run support. Very impressive tackler for a cornerback. I also felt that Whammy called a good game.

The offense is a different story and I agree with Vance, Shaw has GOT to stay healthy if this is gonna be another 10 win type season. With that said, after watching the replay, i dont feel quite as bad as i did immediately following the game. The offense fumbled away the ball on the first snap of the game and once the defense bailed them out, they threw a pick on the 3rd offensive snap. Wasnt a bad throw, just didnt have any zip on the pass. Moore ran a good route and actually had his guy beat but the ball kinda floated and allowed the db time to catch back up. Shaw said in post game interview that the ball was wet and he had a hard time gripping it.. Take it for what its worth. The next few drives, the offense looked pretty good. They established the ground game and had some gappin holes for the backs to run thru. One thing i noticed on the replay, on the drive that Shaw went down with the injury, the offense was on the march again and was 4 and 5 yarding Vandy to death. Shaw went down and for some reason we tried to throw the ball once Dylan came in. No clue but that was the case. Oncew shaw returned the offense seemed to click again. One thing people have to understand is that Carolina doesnt run the type of offense to blow people off the field. They run a ball control, time of possesion, keep away type offense. THey try to limit the opportunitys for opponents on offense, so with that said and all things considered, i dont think it was a terrible performance. Was it a good one< hell no, but it wasnt terrible either. We went on the road against a team that was 6-6 (6-7 if you count the bowl loss), took their absolute best shot and found a way to scratch out the win. Thats what good football teams do, but there is definite room for improvement.

Now to Clemson,...

I was impressed with the offensive play calling by the Tigers. I thought Morris called a good game, but i would be concerned about the dropped passes. One thing to consider in this game was that Clemson ran the pistol a lot and that was something Auburn had no way of preparing for, so i think going forward we will find out just how effective it is going to be,  but it looked good on saturday night. Another thing was no Sammy, which will only make the offense that much better so thats a definite plus for them. As far as the o-line is concerned, Auburn was able to get pressure a lot, but Boyd was able to escape a lot of it too. AU d ends seemed to get to far up field and Boyb was able to step and escape or buy time to throw. Another reason i thought the o-line paly was decent for Clemson saturday was the VanGorder only rushed 3 a lot of snaps. Not sure his theory behind this, but thats the same shit i watched him do with my Falcons for the last 3 years.When he decided to bring pressure it was successful, but for some reason every time he was able to get Clemson in a 3rd and medium to long situation, he would rush 3 and drop the rest and Boyd picked it apart. I really feel like if he would have kept bringing , he would have been a lot more sucessful in stopping Clemson. Boyd is a good qb when given time, but he struggles when he feels pressure, or at least he has in the past. Just my 2 cents.

The defense has a lot of question in my opinion, but i thought Venebles did a hell of job in his half time adjustments. He knew that they couldnt just line up man for man and stop the run, so he loaded up the box and brought pressure and was gonna make "Baby Cam"  beat them throwing the ball, which he had shown that the wasn't capable of doing. Hats off to Venebles for seeing that and making that adjustment. Secondary is suspect as AU had recievers open a lot and the d-line alone was able to get much push or penetration. All this stuff is correctable i think and we will see how it goes from here on out.