Auburn needs a new leader up front. Keldric Faulk already looks like one.
After a solid true freshman campaign, the star of the Tigers' 2023 class wants to be "10 times the player" he was last year.
DE Keldric Faulk (Austin Perryman/Auburn Tigers)
Keldric Faulk is from Highland Home, Ala. — an unincorporated community in south Alabama with an estimated population of a little more than 1,300 people.
When Faulk made his college football debut last September, he stepped into a stadium that could fit his entire hometown nearly 68 times over.
A few weeks later, he played his first SEC game at Texas A&M’s Kyle Field, which has a size of nearly 79 Highland Homes. It was quite the step up from his high school days with the Flying Squadron, who played Class 2A football.
“It was really tough,” Faulk said last week. “I'm glad I was here in the spring, just to get that feel of college. It just felt totally different. … You may face, like, first-round draft picks one week. That's just something that I've never seen before. That's something I had to get used to, week after week.”
By season’s end, Faulk had logged 441 defensive snaps for Auburn. That was the third-most of any player on the Tigers’ defensive front in 2023 — and the most for any true freshman defensive lineman at Auburn since Marlon Davidson in 2016.
Faulk was named to the SEC’s All-Freshman team, becoming the first Auburn defensive lineman to get that honor since Colby Wooden notched it as a redshirt in the COVID-affected 2020 campaign.
Some positions are easier for first-year players to excel at than others, especially in the SEC. Defensive line isn’t one of those spots. Only two freshmen in the SEC recorded at least three sacks last year, which was a drop-off from the four the league had in a stacked 2022 freshman class.
So it shouldn’t have been too much of a surprise when Faulk’s lone sack for the 2023 campaign came all the way at the end — the Music City Bowl loss to Maryland.
Faulk was still a productive player, though. According to Pro Football Focus, he was one of just four Tigers with at least 20 quarterback pressures last season. He also tied for fourth on the team in run stops, and he missed just one tackle in that category.
For a true freshman making a massive jump from small high-school football to the SEC at a tough position, Faulk had a successful debut season. But he has his sights set on a much bigger sophomore surge.
“I want to be 10 times the player that I was last year,” Faulk said. “I had a pretty decent freshman year. I want my sacks to go up tremendously. I want to have eight-plus sacks this year, 30- to 40-plus tackles. I want to put myself in a better position for my future.”
Auburn could definitely use a season like that out of Faulk.