Mailbag: Which Auburn position group sticks out this fall camp?
This week: Launchpad games, the Indiana model, Film Rooms, games to rewatch, basketball roster costs and the KK Mega Basket friendlies
AUBURN — It’s the final mailbag of the summer, y’all. Get fired up.
In a few days, Auburn football will begin fall camp, making us just a month and some change away from the start of the Alex Golesh Era against Baylor in Atlanta. We’ll have a ton of coverage from practices over the next several weeks, gearing up for the seventh (!) season of The Observer.
Yes, The Observer turns six tomorrow. I’m going to enjoy one final weekend away from the Plains before the chaos begins, and I can’t wait to get it rolling. The excitement level for potential resurgence from football and basketball is growing.
Before we dive into this mailbag, I want to be transparent again up front: The subscription price increases start this weekend. All existing subscriptions will be moved up slightly to $7/month or $70/year moving forward.
That process will likely start sometime today, in order to go into effect for the August renewals. So, if you get an email from Substack about it, that’s why. (If you got an email earlier this week about renewing at the old price… sorry, they wouldn’t let me schedule the pricing change.)
If you have any questions at all, please reach out to the1andonlyJF@gmail.com.
In case you missed it, I wrote all about why we’re doing what we’re doing here:
Now that’s out of the way, let’s dive into a very fun mailbag covering a lot of ground for Auburn football and some Auburn basketball on the final day of Year 6.
Which position group do you want to watch first once practice starts?
James
For the umpteenth year in a row, I am heading into an Auburn football season putting a ton of attention on the offensive line.
The offensive line is a fascinating position group, especially in this day and age of college football. Building an elite one takes time, patience and continuity. It’s not one where star-stacking automatically works, and it’s not one where buying a whole new front via the transfer portal is the way to go. But how do you recruit, develop and retain players longterm where there’s always more money and playing time elsewhere?
The good (?) news for Auburn is that you don’t have to worry about that as much in Year 1 of a new era. The Tigers had to patchwork an offensive line that can realistically play in the SEC right now, which gave you one-year rentals like Cole Best, Jo Simmons, Cole Skinner, Jacob Strand and Jack Leyrer. Yet Auburn still did a good job of looking ahead to the future by getting or keeping linemen who could play multiple seasons — Stanton Ramil, Deryc Plazz, Kail Ellis, Tai Buster, Kenneth McManus, etc.