Film Room: Auburn made sure that everybody ate on offense vs. UMass
The Tigers played 13 linemen and had nine players targeted in a new-look passing game in Week 1, setting the tone for a new era.
WR Jay Fair (Jamie Holt/Auburn Athletics)
Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze raised some eyebrows last Monday when he was asked about the receiver order on the Tigers’ recently released depth chart.
Freeze didn't hold back in his response.
“I'm going to be totally candid with you: I don't even have a depth chart, so I don't know where that came from,” Freeze said. “I guess that's from the SID (sports information director) world. I don't do depth charts. It's really nonsense.”
Traditionally, most college football communication staffs release a two-deep depth chart in their game notes at the start of the season. Sometimes, those depth charts come directly from the head coaches themselves. That didn’t seem to be the case with Auburn under Freeze.
Freeze went on to say that Auburn would play four to five outside receivers and two to three inside receivers in the new system coordinated by Philip Montgomery.
“I don't care who runs out there with the first group or the second group,” Freeze said. “They freely rotate, so I don't make much of those depth charts. … in no way said that one of them was first team and one of them was second team. That don't fly with me. It doesn't work.”
Freeze’s blunt message was clear: Auburn didn’t split up its receivers between starters and backups. Yes, someone was going to have to be the first one on the field when the Tigers played UMass on Saturday, but the coaching staff didn’t want to communicate that there was a clear hierarchy.
Auburn was going to need them all. Everybody eats, as the saying goes.
That was obvious in Auburn’s long-awaited season opener, a 59-14 win over an overmatched UMass. On offense alone, Auburn played three quarterbacks, five running backs, nine wide receivers, seven tight ends and — perhaps most surprisingly — 13 linemen.
According to Pro Football Focus, Auburn had 30 players record double-digit offensive snaps against UMass. The Tigers’ higher rate of rotation on the defensive side of the ball was expected. But it’s worth noting that, in a 42-16 win over Mercer in Week 1 last year, Auburn only had 20 offensive players get double-digit snaps.
With more newcomers than returners on the scholarship roster and the first starting lineup, it’s easy to see why the Tigers got pretty much everyone involved against UMass. (Running back Jarquez Hunter and wide receivers Koy Moore and Nick Mardner were the notable exceptions.)
Freeze and Montgomery, along with the rest of the offensive staff, are going to have to learn their personnel as they go. They didn’t see a ton of separation at wide receiver, have really deep rooms at running back and tight end and still were experimenting with different offensive lines at the end of fall camp.
On top of that, Freeze was adamant that 2022 starter Robby Ashford would have packages at quarterback behind new 2023 starter Payton Thorne. Ashford then stole the show in the second quarter with three rushing touchdowns, helping break the game wide-open for the home team.
“We’ve got five running backs that can go, we’ve got two quarterbacks that can go — really, three, when you add Holden (Geriner),” Ashford said. “You got three quarterbacks who can go. We got about 10, 11 receivers that can go. Five, six tight ends. We got depth. I feel like that’s going to play to our advantage with how we want to play.”
In this week’s Film Room, we rewatched and charted all of Auburn’s offensive plays from the blowout win over UMass, keeping track of who played where and when.
After a lot of deserved talk in the Observations on Sunday about Ashford and a really balanced running game, this Film Room will focus on two other key areas: What were the best offensive line groupings Saturday? And what did we learn about Thorne, Ashford and a passing game that is very much a work-in-progress?
OL Kam Stutts (Austin Perryman/Auburn Athletics)