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football Edit

Confidence builder

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AUBURN, Ala. | Will Muschamp saw improvement out of his defense Saturday night.
After giving up 411 rushing yards at LSU a week earlier, Auburn held Mississippi State to just 56 in a 17-9 loss at Jordan-Hare Stadium.
"Overall, I thought we played hard," Muschamp said. "I thought we tackled much better. I think we had six missed tackles for the game, so that was an improvement from the week before. We didn't do enough to win the game. We did a much better job on third downs in the second half. We were very poor in the first half."
MSU quarterback Dak Prescott made up the difference with his passing, throwing for 270 yards and two touchdowns. But the Tigers held him to 14 rushing yards on six carries.
"The last three years he's beat us with his legs and other teams he beat them with his legs, so our whole gameplan was centered around keeping him from being able to run the football," senior linebacker Justin Garrett said. "He was going to have to beat us throwing the football or somebody else running the football."
Muschamp said the gameplan to slow down Prescott and the MSU rushing game depended on "unselfish" play from his defensive line.
"I thought we did a good job of constricting the rush lanes and the running game, especially on third down," he said. "Most of the run game, they tried us perimeter run game, I thought we did a good job playing the power read and some of the things that they did in the game."
Garrett said the play of the defense against the Bulldogs is a boost to the player's confidence and something they can build on in weeks to come.
"Coach pretty much told us we were going to simplify things and play fast and play physical," Garrett said. "When he told us that, that's all we got to do and that's all, he just wanted to see us just give effort, play fast and play physical. It made it a lot easier for the guys on defense just to go out there and execute the plan."
MORE FROM MUSCHAMP
On the status of linebacker Tre Williams...
"He's going to be fine. He did not practice tonight, but we expect him back Tuesday. I think he'll be fine. We fully expect him back this week."
On if he's pleased with personnel changes on defense...
"Yes. I don't know about keeping them, but I thought, for the most part, we had better production."
On the play of the linebackers...
"I thought better. I thought we were better positioned, I thought we aligned better, the eye control was better, I thought we played blocks in the core better. I thought we did some better things, nothing that was outstanding. There was much in the run game. I thought we fit pretty well."
On MSU's first touchdown pass...
"I'm disappointed with the touchdown pass, busted coverage obviously. Two guys that should have re-routed the vertical route and neither one touched the guy and we don't have a middle field safety. Extremely disappointed with the first drive. We needed to start fast in our home stadium. Our fans were there, they were great and we needed to start faster in that situation, especially with our offense taking seven minutes off the clock to start the game. So I was frustrated with that."
On the pass rush...
"We've got a lot to work on and we'll continue to do so. We need to get more pressure on the quarterback, struggled rushing four guys. A lot of their early downs situations were seven-man protections so it's going to be hard getting four there, but somebody has got to win in the rush for us. That's something we struggled with in our first four games. Continue to work through that."
On the play of freshman Buck Jeffery Holland...
"He continues to do some good things. Jeff has to continue to play within the scheme and system of what we're trying to do. That's a little bit of an issue right now but his effort is there and he's a talented guy. We've played a lot of young guys and he's certainly a guy he's excited about."
On keeping players focused after two straight SEC losses...
"You have to rely on the guys within the football team that you know you can rely on, that you know they're all in to what you're trying to do, and what you're trying to do with the program. We have those guys on this football team. You rely on those guys in the locker room. As a coach you can't be around them all the time. We want to stay upbeat, we want to stay positive and continue to improve the team. That's the message from Coach Malzahn all the way down to everybody in the organization. It's about improvement. We did make improvement from last game to this game, but did not get the results. That's the bottom line.
"You go back and look at it… what can I do better? That's always my question for the players, and I pose the same question for myself. What can I do better this week, because, obviously, what I did last week wasn't good enough. You pose it to yourself as a coach first of all, then you go back to your players and you get them to ask themselves. A lot of the guys in the meetings we had today I thought were very good."
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