Mailbag 231: What are the keys to an Iron Bowl upset for Auburn?
This week: Auburn's secondary, the offensive changes, Iron Bowl history, player retention, basketball expectations and fixing Players Era
AIRBORNE BETWEEN LAS VEGAS AND ATLANTA — I heard there was Serious Discourse™ this week about sports media working during the holidays.
I’m writing this on Thanksgiving Day on a flight back from Players Era. The Iron Bowl will kick off 48 hours after I land. There are two more Auburn basketball games to cover next week, including a trip back out West, and there’s a coaching search for football that could end this weekend.
Dan and I covered multiple Auburn basketball games in-person this week and previewed the Iron Bowl in the meantime. (That podcast episode is already out this morning.) This isn’t even Dan’s full-time job! He’s doing his bigger one in Vegas the rest of the weekend!
I don’t say all of that for you to tell me how great or hard-working I am. Sports media isn’t some noble profession in the slightest. There are more industries filled with people doing more important things during the holidays. We’re all in this together, even the dorks in sports.
I’m very fortunate to have a wife and family who have been flexible with their Thanksgiving plans while I go all over the place covering Auburn. They make the sacrifices. I just get to write and talk about basketball and football instead of having a real job.
We want to put out the best version of what do at The Observer, and that includes a lot of travel and late nights this time of year. It all balances out, though. Just ask my wife, who gets to hear me play video games in my office on plenty of summer mornings as she actually does work.
This is all a long-winded way of saying thank you for supporting what we do here. Because of that, a time of year that should be overwhelming just isn’t. If it was, we wouldn’t have put out an extra podcast episode, and I wouldn’t have written a mailbag I already said I wasn’t going to do.
I just knew I had time to kill on this flight back home, and if there’s any week of the year to become a volume shooter covering Auburn — it’s this one.
Thanks to everyone who sent in mailbag questions on short notice when you should have been spending time with your family and friends. Degenerate behavior, really.
Let’s go.
Stat-wise, what is Alabama’s points per possession, and is it just as simple as Auburn using ball control to keep Bama’s offense off the field?
Tiger Histalmos
According to Brian Fremeau’s data, Alabama is currently No. 23 in the country at 2.93 points scored per drive. This has been a great offense this season for the most part, but the Crimson Tide’s kicking woes and a couple of low-scoring games have limited those numbers from being elite.
When it comes to maximizing opportunities to put points on the board, Alabama is the fourth-best offense that Auburn will have played this season.
Vanderbilt is No. 2 nationally and looked the part in its shootout win over Auburn a few weeks ago. Georgia is No. 5, and its ability to finish scoring chances was the difference in its own victory over Auburn. Texas A&M, which probably had its sloppiest offensive game of the season against Auburn, is No. 18.
But there’s no doubt that the biggest mismatch on the field, statistically, is Alabama’s passing offense against Auburn’s passing defense. This is a top-10 attack through the air in EPA per dropback, while the Tigers’ defense is toward the bottom nationally in that statistic.