Mailbag 217: What are Auburn football's biggest concerns?
This week: Defensive advantages in the preseason, keys for Baylor, season-long tips for fans, Eric Singleton Jr. and QB rankings
AUBURN — We are so back.
Auburn football is now exactly one week away from the start of an incredibly pivotal season for Hugh Freeze and the program. Take a step forward, and it could be the beginning of Auburn getting back to where it belongs. Continue the same struggles, and there could be major, pressing questions about what’s next.
The fact that that type of season opens with a road game against a power-conference contender, followed by three of your four toughest-looking SEC games before the halfway point of the schedule, only adds to the drama.
There should be stakes. There should be unknowns. This is Auburn football, in the good times and the bad.
And we’re back to talk about a lot of it in our weekly mailbag. For the many of you who have joined us during preseason camp, we try to run a mailbag every Friday morning during football season and continuing into basketball season. As always, feel free to shoot me questions on social media or by emailing them to the1andonlyJF@gmail.com throughout the week. The more, the merrier.
While I have already decided to move any Film Rooms this season to Tuesday mornings instead of Monday mornings — it’s just an increasingly tough turnaround to get them ready for Monday, especially with the traveling we’ve got this season — we’re pretty committed to Friday mailbags here at The Observer. It’s tradition.
Thanks for reading. It’s hard to believe this is about to be Season Six here.
Let’s go.
Please rank the top three things Auburn fans should be worried about heading into the season.
For me : 1) run game effectiveness in red zone and short yardage
2) passing game explosiveness without turnovers
3) run defense - loss of experience at linebacker - reading / fit
John
Finishing scoring opportunities on offense with touchdowns. Last season, Auburn ranked 122nd nationally in red-zone touchdown percentage. This was an offense that ranked ninth in yards per play. Moving the ball between the 20s hasn’t been a problem under this coaching staff. Actually making all that yardage mean something is the issue. This sport is about finishing drives. Auburn was ineffective on the ground in the situations that John laid out, and it was mediocre at best at throwing the ball in the red zone. If that doesn’t change, it doesn’t matter how much more talent Auburn has added to its roster. And, given the red-zone struggles during preseason camp, it’s fair to wonder how much better the Tigers might actually be in this all-important department.
Pass protection. This isn’t an overreaction to Freeze’s comments from earlier in this week, either. Auburn was a bottom-half team both nationally and in the SEC in sacks allowed last season, and the pressure rate allowed fell inside those ranges as well. Auburn might have a stellar pass rush on the other side of the ball this fall, but it’s clear the coaching staff wanted to see better here from an offensive line that has more experience, depth and talent than it’s had in several years. The Tigers have invested so much in the passing game, and that includes buying near the top of the market at offensive tackle. Having all of those shiny weapons at wide receiver, or even a better fit at quarterback, can be undercut severely if the pass protection isn’t up to par. Auburn has to be better here than it has been during the streak of losing seasons. Skepticism from fans here is valid.
Stopping the run with a new-look defensive front. Did you know that Auburn also ranked ninth nationally last season in rushing yards allowed per carry? It was the foundation of a defense that looked to be ahead of schedule when it came to the amount of young players having to log heavy snaps. However, the Tigers still lost a lot of experience at inside linebacker and defensive tackle. This has the potential to be a faster and a deeper “spine” on defense, given everything we saw and heard during preseason camp. But Auburn’s defenders have to actually put that into practice against someone other than their teammates. While you probably shouldn’t expect Auburn to be a top-10 unit in this category again, the Tigers can’t really afford to take a big step back here. If you can’t slow down the run, you’re absolutely cooked as a defense. Time to make all the hype matter.
There are other areas of concern — finding a consistent rushing attack without Jarquez Hunter, forcing more turnovers on defense, actually improving after a bad special teams year, etc. But every team can find plenty of those in the preseason, because it’s a lot of speculation until the games start for real.
Those three that I laid out, though, feel like the biggest ones for Auburn. Those are going to be the difference-makers between a true step-forward type of a season or yet another disappointing campaign that could end with more losses than wins again.
The Tigers definitely have the talent and the potential to be good-to-great in all three of those areas. On paper, this is the best roster Auburn has had since it was last being talked about as a potential SEC contender. That’s far from a guarantee, though, especially after what we’ve all seen over the last few years here.
We always hear that the defense is always ahead of the offense in the early practices. Do you think one of the reasons is the defense can identify what the offense is trying to do (tendencies) from the numerous reps they get going against the offense? Something a different team (Baylor) will not have the benefit from?
Dan