Film Room: How Auburn aired it out without showing too much in Week 2
The Tigers wanted to light up the night at JHS vs. Ball State. Mission accomplished for an offense that's still got plenty of room to grow.
AUBURN — In Week 1, Jackson Arnold only attempted 17 passes. In Week 2, he had already beaten that number by halftime.
To beat Baylor in Arnold’s Auburn debut, the Tigers didn’t need to take to the skies too often. The Bears stayed back in a two-high defensive shell and, quite frankly, got outworked and outplayed at the line of scrimmage. It was a green light to run the rock.
To beat Ball State in Arnold’s home debut, the Tigers just needed to show up. The Cardinals are now rated as the single-worst FBS team by SP+, as they needed to be handed several controversial calls just to avoid getting shutout in back-to-back weeks.
There was little doubt that Ball State would use a similar strategy as Baylor in the hopes of not getting completely destroyed. The Cardinals’ base defense is a quarters scheme, where four defensive backs normally stick with their matchups by dropping back in deep zones across the field. The goal is to not get torched on deep shots.
But Auburn didn’t want to have another week of barely throwing the ball. Starting running back Damari Alston was already ruled out with a minor shoulder injury, and there was no shot the Tigers were going to plan on running Arnold nearly as much as he did against Baylor in a paycheck game against an overmatched opponent.
So the Tigers made a clear point to work on their passing game against live competition. Arnold dropped back to throw six times on an eight-play opening drive.
Or, at least it looked that way. Wide receiver Eric Singleton Jr. had a different tune.
“I mean, it wasn't like an emphasis,” Singleton said. “We were just taking what they were giving us.”
The good thing is both can be true: Auburn could get extra reps for Arnold and the passing attack without forcing anything. Even with the quarters coverage that Ball State lived in Saturday night, Auburn had opportunities to throw it around.
And it did. Arnold finished 24-28 passing for 251 yards and three touchdowns. Arnold’s four incompletions were an early high pass to Cam Coleman where the receiver couldn’t keep a foot inbounds, a pressured deep shot into double coverage, a clear misfire on a quick pass and a throw away when no one was open.
Everything else was completed, and it didn’t require Auburn showing its hand for any future opponents who may be watching. It was a similar mindset to the Baylor win, just with a different application against Ball State.
“Drawing from the last game and being patient with the run game and not being able to throw the ball a ton kind of helped us out this week, knowing we can take the little wins,” Arnold said Saturday night. “We can take the 5 and 6-yard hitches and keep moving the chains. I felt like we did a good job of that tonight. Truth be told, you could have probably thrown 10 more hitches out there tonight.
“Keep the chains going. Keep the momentum going. Keep the offense moving.”
In this Week 2 edition of the Film Room at The Observer, we’ll dive deeper into Auburn’s passing game against Ball State when Arnold was in at quarterback. (No disrespect to Deuce Knight’s debut in garbage time.)
Let’s look at how Auburn kept it simple and found plenty of success through the air — and where the Tigers can continue to improve as they push closer to SEC play.
Why the short stuff was open all night
Arnold’s average depth of target (ADOT) against Ball State was an even 7.0 yards. He threw almost as many passes caught behind the line of scrimmage (5) as he did passes more than 10 yards downfield.
Sixteen of Arnold’s 28 pass attempts — that’s 57.1% of them — were past the line of scrimmage but traveled fewer than 10 yards downfield. This has been the strength of Arnold’s passing game at the collegiate level, and Ball State was completely fine with letting him go to that as often as he wanted.
Here’s a clear example of what Auburn was able to do all night against Ball State. Let’s start by looking at the pre-snap setup on both sides of the ball.