i get to Scott Field once a year. This year, my brother in law offered me the opportunity to sub in for his wife for homecoming. He has seats in the Scoreboard Club in the new end zone. Wow. Every member has a private locker. Most folks just put liquor in theirs, but I suppose you could hide pistols and crime scene evidence in there. There's a lavish tail gate style buffet that never, ever runs low. Student attendants are everywhere. Every seat is a roomy chair back. You rarely have to stand to see. The Famous Maroon Band is just to one side. Deluxe. I also hold New Orleans Saints season tickets. The club level amenities at the Superdome don't compare to what I experienced Saturday.

But it was hot. Sheesh.

I arrived expecting to see the GTech-ish option package we saw against Kentucky. Apparently, that wasn't the game plan. Seems we treated this game like a live scrimmage. It seems the plan was to work on the passing game almost exclusively. Nick threw the deep ball and the "fastball" pretty well. The medium range touch pass, not so much. Perhaps he'll improve. I think so. Nick also scrambled out of trouble more often than he should've had to behind an experienced OLine. We scored 56 points. But, Nick threw two interceptions and by my count we left 21-28 points on the field. Don't even talk to me about kicking. Lord. The ball got spread around. Good. Very good. A lot of guys played, but I don't think Dan expected the first offense to have to put the game away in the 4th quarter. That's because of two turnovers, a critical penalty, aaaand...

Defense. Hoo boy! If you know your secondary stinks, why not take risks and apply pressure when appropriate? We seldom did. I'm not talking about against the uptempo quick outs; I'm talking about 3rd and 5+, like on Samford's first TD. I don't know what the Viper defense (Viper! ooooooh, scary!) is supposed to be, but in person it looks like an ineffectual 3-man rush and one guy standing up, the Viper, who just stands there looking around until an FCS running back gets under his pads and pushes his dumb ass right out of the way. I watched it over, and over, and over. Later that night, I watched Auburn send 5-6 guys after Chad Kelly over, and over, and over. It was the difference in the game.

It took 4 hours and all 56 points to win that game v. Samford. That cannot have been the master plan. Still, I saw a lot to like on offense. Place a higher priority on OLinemen in recruiting and we could be pretty good with Nick at QB running an option offense. Nobody else but Auburn does anything like it, and Mississippi produces the kinds of backs and linemen who could succeed running it. Georgia Tech west!

We've gotta recruit for depth at CB. We look like a BigNot12 team these past two weeks; we're not in the Big 12.

Does Dan meddle too much in defense? Does he shackle his DC? Y'all tell me. It would explain a couple things.

Get yoself to Scott Field.