What are Auburn's offensive coaches saying after one week of camp?
Here's what stood out to us after talking to all five of the Tigers' assistants on an offense that must improve in 2024.
(Austin Perryman/Auburn Tigers)
Auburn football opened its 2024 fall camp with three straight practices in the early August heat. After a break on Sunday, the Tigers went right back to it with three straight practices from Monday to Wednesday.
On Thursday, Auburn started its second week of fall camp with another break from the practice fields. After some team meetings, the Tigers started to go their separate ways from the Football Performance Center.
As the players grabbed Chick-fil-A boxes from the kitchen in the meeting room at the front of the building, there was a lot of excited chatter and laughter — so much so that the noise cut into some media interviews with Auburn’s offensive assistant coaches.
“As you can hear, our guys are excited to have an off day,” tight ends coach Ben Aigamaua said. “We just had our meetings, and they are ready to get out of here.”
Auburn will get right back to work Friday morning at the Performance Center before heading to Jordan-Hare Stadium for practice and then Fan Day at the former indoor facility on Saturday.
With a week of fall camp officially in the books, Thursday was an ideal time to catch up with the Tigers’ five assistants on the offensive side of the ball and get their thoughts on what they’ve seen so far from a unit that needs to improve in 2024.
Here are the five most interesting notes we learned from each of them, starting with the man in charge of the most important position on the field.
(Austin Perryman/Auburn Tigers)
QB Coach Kent Austin
A lot has been made of the improvements that coaches and players have seen from returning starter Payton Thorne in fall camp. Austin talked extensively about how much Thorne has excelled at getting Auburn’s offense in the right position before the snap. In a scheme that will call a large number of RPOs, being able to identify where to go with the ball as soon as possible is crucial — along with setting the right protections up front. “(Thorne) set our protections last year, but we’re going to put more on his plate in the overall control of the offense. Checking things in the run game, getting us out of a pass concept to a better pass concept. … Payton will flourish in that environment.”