Auburn Ready to Shock the World Again

[AUChizad]

http://espn.go.com/blog/sec/post/_/id/25446/auburn-ready-to-shock-the-world-again

Auburn opens preseason camp Wednesday with a rather large chip attached to its shoulder and a lingering question that probably needs to be answered sooner rather than later.

The defending national champion Tigers have been picked as low as fifth in the Western Division. They’re an afterthought in the preseason SEC championship chatter, and some have suggested that merely making it to a bowl game would be a decent season given everybody they lost from last season’s 14-0 team.


AP Photo/Todd J. Van Emst
If he can win the starting quarterback job, Barrett Trotter has some big shoes to fill.
Keep in mind that no defending national champion has ever won fewer than eight games since the origin of the BCS in 1998, so forgive the Tigers if they feel slapped in the face any time they get wind of such modest expectations.

“It’s nothing new to us. How many people had us winning the national championship last year?” said Auburn sophomore defensive end Nosa Eguae, one of only six players returning who started in the BCS National Championship Game last season.

“We lost a lot of good players, but we have a lot of good players back who would have been starting for a lot of teams last year. We know what people are saying about us. It’s the reason our coaches tell us all the time that all of our good players are gone. We’ve heard it all spring and all summer.

“We’re ready to go out there and shock some people … again.”

It would be a shock if the Tigers didn’t make it a point to settle on a starting quarterback in the first week or two of practice.

Nobody separated himself in the spring, and now junior Barrett Trotter and sophomore Clint Moseley have true freshman Kiehl Frazier battling with them for the job during preseason camp.

Trotter is the only one of the three who’s ever thrown a pass in a college game, but he’s never been in there with the game on the line, either.

Plus, there’s the added pressure of following in the footsteps of Cam Newton, who had one of the greatest seasons for a quarterback in SEC history last year.

Trotter, who earned his undergraduate degree in communications on Tuesday, looks at it more as an opportunity he’s been working toward and waiting on than he does in trying to live up to any standards Newton might have set.

“I’m the oldest guy we’ve got and been around the longest,” Trotter said. “Those things aren’t the deciding factor, but they do help.”

[Snaggletiger]

From the outside looking in, you can't realistically rank this team any higher then 4th or 5th in the West.  The loss of 24 seniors, just about all of whom were major contributors in one way or another, plus arguably the two best players in the nation and some other early defections...notably Darvin Adams...is more than enough to make even the most rational Auburn fan believe this is going to be a rough road.  Yep, throw in the schedule and the road games this year....wow.

But, the glass half full in me says people forget how many guys were actually in the rotation last year, who made huge contributions...on the biggest stages in college football.  Guys like Corey Lemonier, Craig Sanders, Jeffrey Whitaker, Chris Davis, Dax De...damn.  There's a ton of talent on this team after the recruiting this staff has done.  It's just young and inexperienced.  While I think this team will have it's struggles with this schedule, I do think "shocking" some teams is a very real possibility.