Auburn secondary emphasizing turnovers for second half of season
Kevin Steele’s Auburn defense is ranked in the upper half of the nation in most statistical categories, including a quartet of top-20 appearances for scoring defense (18th nationally), rushing defense (No. 20), third-down conversion defense (No. 17) and red-zone scoring percentage (No. 12).
There is one category in which the Tigers scrape the bottom of the barrel, however: interceptions.
Auburn joins Tulsa, UAB and New Mexico as the only teams in the nation with just one interception through six games played, and the Tigers and Blazers are the only two squads in college football with no interception return yardage.
Auburn’s lone pick of the season came Week 2 against Tulane, when safety Jeremiah Dinson dove for an errant pass along the sideline. The Tigers believe they should have been on the receiving end of a handful more this year.
“Yeah, we’ve dropped a few,” junior corner Noah Igbinoghene said.
Igbinoghene explained that Auburn deploys press-man coverage often, which sometimes sacrifices interceptions in favor of better keeping with a receiver stride-for-stride.
“With that, it’s hard, because you can be so into it it’s hard to look for the ball at times,” Igbinoghene said. “But I’m pretty sure we’ve been working at it in practice these last couple weeks, so I think we’re going to get better at it and see more picks from us, fumbles, stuff like that. We’re going to be good, though.”
Auburn had 14 picks in 13 games last season, which tied for the second-best mark in the conference.
The lack of interceptions has paired with the Tigers’ season-long fumble issues on offense (six fumbles lost this season) and recent turnover problems at the quarterback position (Bo Nix threw three interceptions in the loss to Florida) to equal a minus-2 overall turnover margin for the season.
Auburn hasn’t particularly needed its secondary to rack up interceptions this year, however. The defense wasn’t much cause for concern in the five victories, and in the loss, the Tigers still forced four turnovers by way of strip-sacks and recovered fumbles.
In all, the interception deficiency hasn’t mattered much. But that doesn’t mean Igbinoghene and the defensive backs wouldn’t like to start sending drives back the other way with some takeaways.
That could start this weekend at Arkansas. The Razorbacks still haven’t settled on a full-time starter between Texas A&M transfer Nick Starkel and SMU transfer Ben Hicks, but Starkel has one of the worst TD-interception ratios in the nation with seven scores and seven picks on 150 pass attempts this year.
Past that matchup, Auburn will face pass-happy offenses in LSU with Joe Burrow and Alabama with Tua Tagovailoa, which tout the No. 2 and No. 3 passing offenses in college football, respectively.
“This is what we worked for,” Igbinoghene said of playing talented passing offenses and quarterbacks this season. “If you came here to play DB, to throw the ball — you don’t want them to run the ball too much, so that’s why you came here to play DB. So we’re up for the challenge."