Auburn football has several problems that the Tigers have to find solutions for as soon as possible.
The Tigers' coaching staff and players were asked about these problems throughout the week. Here is how they responded:
Sacks
Auburn has allowed 13 sacks this season.
Response:
“It’s a combination of a lot. You look at at Saturday night, we gave up seven, right? Like, the fourth quarter, you're playing, like, where these guys can truly just tee off and go. So that's not an excuse. It just is what it is. Like, that's a hard way to live for a quarter of football, for essentially 20 some plays. That's how you're living. It's a hard way to play O-line in that regard, too. There was two of them that schematically, he had to squeeze the ball. There was four of them that were one guy getting beat. And it was a multitude of guys getting truly beat, whether it's bulrush, whether it's up and under, whether it's a technique thing, and then there was one that I thought was on Byrum holding it, and trying to create, to get his last progression beat open. Ultimately, we have to do a good job as coaches of not putting guys that we feel like, man, there's a matchup that's not what we want, not putting them in situations where it's gonna put them in jeopardy. And that's a multitude of different ways. That's slide protections. You can chip, you can nudge, you can keep backs in and you can keep tight ends. And there's a lot of ways to do it, as coaches schematically, they have to be able to do it. We've done it to a point in the fourth quarter of that game. I felt like, man, like we are... It's like, you gotta do what you gotta do to go try to create, and it just, it shook out that way. It's not an excuse again. It's just how it shook out. The sack in the tight zone on the turnover in the first quarter, the one off the turnover, one guy getting beat, and, I mean, you saw it."
Missed Tackles
Missed tackles hurt the Tigers in a major way against Florida.
Response:
“That was a huge part of the game. We say it all of the time, explosive plays are created in two ways. It's by missed assignments and missed tackles, for the most part. You have some plays where somebody makes a great throw and catch on a contested ball. That happens, but for the most part when there’s an explosive play, someone wasn’t where they were supposed to be or there was a tackle missed or several. Both of those things, we harp on those a lot, and they showed up big time in that game.” - Auburn DC DJ Durkin
Giving Up Explosives
The Auburn defense has looked as good as many expected them to look before the season started at times, but explosives have hurt this group several times this season.
Response:
"This has come up more than just last week is simply a sense of urgency getting lined up, sense of urgency, getting a signal, sense of urgency communicating, and sense of urgency getting lined up, and I think a lot of the explosives that we've given up have been self-inflicted in that regard," Golesh said in the SEC Coaches Teleconference. "That's not to take anything away from anybody we've played, but just the ability to get lined up, have our eyes in the right place, and be able to adjust the things. That's been the biggest piece of it." - Auburn HC Alex Golesh
“That was a huge part of the game. We say it all of the time, explosive plays are created in two ways. It's by missed assignments and missed tackles, for the most part. You have some plays where somebody makes a great throw and catch on a contested ball. That happens, but for the most part when there’s an explosive play, someone wasn’t where they were supposed to be or there was a tackle missed or several. Both of those things, we harp on those a lot, and they showed up big time in that game.” - Auburn DC DJ
Run Game
Auburn football's running backs have not been a consistent part of the Tigers' offensive attack.
Response:
"It's been huge. It's always a huge emphasis. We got a lot we need to clean up right there. Haven't gotten these backs open the way that we need to, and as an offensive line, that's on us, so, you know, we just keep going into our detail, into our craft and just keep straining to get better." Auburn C Cole Best
Defensive Miscues
Defensive mistakes put the Tigers in unfavorable positions against the Gators last Saturday.
Response:
“What really was frustrating is we dictated the flow defensively. We take a lot of pride in dictating the flow offensively. It felt like we were on our heels, at least through those first couple of drives, and then after halftime it felt the same way where we could never get truly settled. I want to give you the truth of what it is, we never got settled. We never felt like we were able to get our cleats in the ground, communicate, adjust, and then be perfect in our fits. From a focus standpoint we were off, and by focus I mean truly the ability to play really fast with elite detail where you're showing a picture, they check, you check, or they're showing a picture, and then they motion out of it, and we're just in sync from a communication standpoint. We weren't. I tie it back to a lot of different things, but primarily the ability to just focus one play at a time, play to play to play. We didn't do that Saturday. We didn't do it defensively. We didn't do it early offensively. Again, that's our job to figure out exactly why. Is there too much that we have in? Is it too many checks that we have in? Are we allowing our kids to go play really fast? Because when we do allow our kids to play really fast, we match up well, we fly to the ball, we tackle, all of those things. Explosives are created because of missed tackles and missed assignments. That can't be how you play defense. We have had a lot of conversations about how we allow our kids to play fast because they do play hard, they do run to ball. Now, that's half of it. The other half is you have to execute within the detail and you have to be able to communicate. We didn't do a good enough job Saturday. We weren't remotely in the stratosphere of doing a good enough job on Saturday.” Auburn HC Alex Golesh
“Playing with emotion is good, but you can't get emotional. I think we were amped up in that game a lot, and it led to some basic mistakes from guys who don't normally do that either. Credit to Florida. They do a great job of the personnel groups and shifts and motions and formations, but again with our guys we kept waiting for them to just settle in and play, settle in and play, and it didn't happen that way. We talked about it during halftime, but it just didn't materialize.” - Auburn DC DJ Durkin
