there are several players on both teams on both sides of the ball that wouldn’t have fumbled the ball on the first cough up. RBs take hits like that on nearly every run play up the gut. Nothing special happened to knock the ball loose. It wasn’t a massive helmet blow directly to the football that shook it free. It isn’t like these were the first two times Garcia has given the ball to the other team, either. It’s a continuing problem.

Should SOS have inserted Shaw when he did? That’s debatable. Regardless, to say Garcia “wouldn’t have [made the throws]” Shaw got picked on is an impossible assumption.

Also, by saying the playcalling became one dimensional, are you proposing we should have continued to try and run the ball even though we had virtually no success doing so? Was our line all of a sudden going to blow Auburn’s DL off the ball? I don’t think so. We had good success passing and very little running. You have to go with what was moving the ball, and that certainly wasn’t happening on the ground.

Defensively, there’s no doubt we laid an egg. I can’t blame EJ entirely for Gilmore not picking up the TE on his touchdown, or for the fact that our guys couldn’t get to Newton or bring him down. Matthews looks slow (added weight?), and we’ve yet to discover a true pass rush threat this year. Hopefully, Clowney will be suiting up for us next year, and someone else will step up in 2010.

The hit that led to Garcia’s first fumble was a direct result of Garcia lowering his shoulder to take on a defensive player in a situation where one extra yard did not matter at all. The second one came because he either did not trust his WR to break open on the out pattern, or did not see it. Either way, he turned to run back towards the D rather than throw the ball away. All three of those mistakes are things the coaches have explicitly worked with him on, and he has obviously failed to learn.

Garcia probably would not have thrown the first INT. That was a misread by an inexperienced FR - the sort of FR mistake that Garcia has learned to avoid; unlike the FR mistakes Garcia has not learned to avoid in his fourth year in the program.

The second INT hit our, and arguably the nation’s, best WR in the hands in the end zone. The Auburn DB made a play to knock it loose, and another was able to dive for the pick. There were less than 30 seconds left in the game. You have to take that chance, and Shaw put it where his guy could make the play. Unfortunately, their guy made the play instead.

Garcia would likely not make that INT because he is demonstrably incapable of the three plays it took to put us in that position. The first was the rollout to the left where Shaw hit Barnes on the sideline. The second was the rollout under pressure to the right where he hit Jeffrey on the sideline. The third was the quick decision to tuck it and run for eight yards before going out on the right sideline.

All of those are the exact conditions (pocket collapsing, forced to make a decision on the move and/or under pressure) where Garcia has repeatedly made poor decisions, including his second fumble in this very game. For Garcia to replicate Shaw’s performance in that sequence requires one to believe he would act completely counter to his demonstrated history and put together the best three play sequence under pressure of his Carolina career. I am understandably dubious of the likelihood of such an event.