Practice Observations: Auburn's response to adversity? "Good."
It's a third straight game against a top-10 opponent, and the Tigers have no choice but to get excited for the challenge from UGA.
AUBURN — For the first time in a month, Auburn’s defense wore white jerseys on a Tuesday practice.
During the season, the Tigers’ practice uniforms are usually determined by what color the team is going to wear on game day. The offense gets that color, while the defense wears the other one. Through the first five games, Auburn has only worn its home navy jerseys once — it’s played three road trips and went with a White Out in Week 3.
But Auburn’s defense has looked comfortable in those white jerseys, at least in the first two weeks of SEC play. While Auburn went 0-2 in trips to Oklahoma and Texas A&M, the defense only allowed 40 points across those two games. One of the four touchdowns it gave up came on an illegal play in a drive that started in terrible field position because of a special teams turnover.
Auburn is currently No. 15 in the country in defensive SP+. According to CFB-Graphs, the Tigers are No. 10 in defensive EPA. According to Game On Paper, they’re No. 23 in defensive success rate. Auburn’s defense might give up yards, but it’s doing its job.
“Bend, don’t break,” defensive back Champ Anthony said. “We may bend, man, but we ain’t gonna break. You’re gonna have to fight to get that third down. And no matter what’s going on that first play, we don’t care how you got down there. It’s next play mentality for us.
“So it’s next play, it don’t matter what happened the play before this next play. Every play is a new life.”
All that bending kept Auburn in its two losses away from home. Unfortunately, continuing an all-too-common theme for the Tigers in recent years, the Tigers’ offense didn’t take advantage of those opportunities provided by the defense.
Modern defense is all about responding to adversity, though. The sport of football has been tilted more toward the offense year after year, thanks to rule changes and the evolution of play-calling. So, when the Tigers have been put in these tough spots over and over again, they’ve been prepared for it.
“As a defense, we always say, ‘Good,’” defensive tackle Malik Blocton said. “Any situation? Good. We drop two games? Good. We get to see how we are against adversity. That’s just how we think about stuff. That’s why you’ll see us in Tiger Walk, with the black shirts that say ‘Good’ on them.”
After an off week, the next round of adversity is going to come in the form of Georgia. The third straight top-10 opponent Auburn has played isn’t up to its usual standard under Kirby Smart on defense, but its offense is still No. 10 in SP+ and carries a top-20 mark nationally in offensive success rate.
While Hugh Freeze and their teammates on offense try to correct their issues and turn the season around Saturday night in a heated rivalry game, Auburn’s defensive players are coming into this matchup with confidence.
“They are a pretty good team,” edge rusher Keyron Crawford said. “We’re just going to go out and play our ball. We’re just going to line up, play big-boy ball and dominate.”
And it also can’t hurt that, after the first three power-conference matchups of the season were away from home, Auburn’s defense will finally get to play in a big game in front of a famed nighttime crowd at Jordan-Hare Stadium.
“There ain’t nothing like it, making a big play on a Saturday night with the crowd just erupting,” Blocton said. “It’ll make you feel like you’re on top of the world.”
Here’s more of what we saw and heard at the football performance center Tuesday, featuring a full practice notebook and some more insight from several key Tigers.
