Published Sep 16, 2020
Auburn defense not taking familiarity for granted
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Nathan King  •  AuburnSports
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Kevin Steele enlisted the help of his most talented staff members. He and the Tigers looked long and hard. But in the end, Auburn's defense came up short in reaching a big offseason goal.

"We looked and we studied, but we couldn’t find a way to [tackle] on Zoom," Steele joked last week.

With no spring practices and with a large chunk of the offseason spent socially distant, Auburn's defensive coordinator knows he's presenting his players with more challenges than they've been used to in the past. They're facing strange circumstances — "even today, we’re still not all in one room when we meet; it’s by Zoom" — and being asked to comply with bizarre requests and adhere to a tight leash.

But every time the his defense has been challenged this preseason, Steele said, they've yet to flinch.

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"Their attitude has been great. They have been resilient," Steele said. "... It (practice) is on fast forward. They have been very good and had a good attitude about it. We’re pleased with the attitude, the work ethic, the resiliency, the ability to adjust and stay focused in that adjustment. Our guys have been really, really good about that.”

With their season opener against Kentucky just 10 days away, the Tigers feel good about where their defense stands. They're replacing six starters, sure, but the players filling in have ample first-team experience.

Most importantly, the returning Tigers understand Steele's system — the vocabulary used by coaches, the playbook, and the expectations that come with being a modern, defensive player at Auburn.

Steele is welcoming in more than 15 new pieces on his defense this preseason, a blend of high school and transfer talent. And they're not lagging behind by any means. Players like JUCO cornerback Marco Domio and true freshman defensive tackle Jay Hardy are just samples of newcomers who will vie for heavily involved roles this season. But for Steele, nothing compares to the familiarity his key returning members have with the system — and with each other, especially after no spring practices.

That's where Auburn's success as a defense will start in 2020.

"It’s pretty obvious when you go out there and you put our first group out there, and you’ve got Smoke (Monday) and (Jamien) Sherwood and KJ Britt and (Zakoby) McClain and Owen Pappoe," Steele said. "Those guys — which, they’re the ones that have a lot of moving parts. There’s a lot of things going out there formation-wise, motion-wise, shifts-wise, which will get people."

Veteran groups like the five players mentioned by Steele are being relied on by Auburn's staff to help the newcomers along. The way Steele sees it, his defense can have all the talent in the world, but "you can’t play if you don’t get your cleats in the ground."

Auburn has put players through defensive installation seven times since April, if Steele's memory serves. Plenty of teaching was done over Zoom about the Tigers' scheme.

Putting it into practice and executing to Auburn's standards is a different beast, however. It's in that regard that Steele is thankful to have players like Britt, Sherwood and the others, who have multiple seasons under their belts spent absorbing information and succeeding within Steele's system.

"We have really, really smart guys," Steele said of his returning leaders on defense. "They’re just smart guys. The other thing is that they’ve been in the system for a long time. They’ve had a lot of snaps with the same verbiage, the same terminology, and they understand the system."

The Tigers forced 23 turnovers last season, good for a top-20 clip in the nation. They created more than seven negative plays per game on average, also a top-20 mark. They were the No. 8 third-down defense in college football; their red-zone defense was eighth-best, too. Auburn finished 2019 with the No. 5 most effective defense in the country, according to SP+.

All those statistics are great — some outstanding, even. But Steele knows with an abbreviated offseason, consistent success might prove more difficult to replicate or improve on.

Again, he'll turn to his veterans to set the bar in practice — to help hit home Auburn's standards on tackling, assignments, communication and effort.

"Our older guys, they've been through it," Steele said. "It's time. It's kind of like a golf swing. Once you got a good golf swing, you can hit a golf ball, you've kind of got it. It doesn't take much to pick up the club and go do it."

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