The Auburn 3-2-1 Report

Good morning, friends.

This feature is presented by KRYSTAL, our haven for delicious, pint-sized burgers that go down so satisfyingly from lunch to dawn. We here at AuburnSports.com love eating and we’re stoked to partner with KRYSTAL to present this 3-2-1 column for your enjoyment.

The basic premise here is that we present to you three (3) observations regarding the ball club, two (2) questions about the ball club and one (1) fearless prediction.

Off we go.

THREE OBSERVATIONS

1. That was a fun game. Auburn certainly dealt with its fair share of foibles, but the game was dramatic and had the gravity you associate with a primetime ABC event.

With that said, it fell short of my expectations insofar as the Tigers didn’t perform quite the way I expected. I expected more from Bo NIx. I expected more pass rush. I expected the wideouts to catch the balls just as their head coach requested at halftime last week.

I didn’t see much improvement in those areas.

It’s easy to get caught in this rabbit hole of bemoaning what didn’t work and forget to appreciate what actually happened in Happy Valley Saturday night. A team transitioning to a new, better mental approach to football fought like mad to win a tough game on the road against a motivated opponent. Is Penn State a great team? I don’t think so, but it played with Super Bowl intensity. That was a big challenge.

Look, the Tigers played with passion and appear rehabilitated from the weird, half-long mental funks that typified the final years of Gus Malzahn tenure. Moral victories? I don’t believe in them. I don’t put credit into the concept. I merely consider the passion and the more mature approach to be evidence of what I sense is happening — Auburn is getting tougher and sharper and more determined.

Watching Auburn (gradually) regain those traits is enjoyable. With a little creative projection, you can see a team that causes real problems in the Western Division later this fall.

2. I was sure that Bo Nix was going to be great Saturday. He’s now a junior and he’s now armed with a thoughtful offensive plan developed (tweaked) with him in mind. I keep forecasting him to become that Unquestioned Leader.

He wasn’t that guy at Penn State.

Nix wasn’t terrible; he was so-so. He made some good throws, but he was less accurate than expected in pressure situations. Even the long completion to Kobe Hudson was an under-thrown deep route redeemed by a receiver that was so quick to adjust that you’d think he’d seen it happen before many times.

It felt like Nix was just part of the scenery. The Tigers’ offensive fortunes rested on the shoulders of Tank Bigsby and Jarquez Hunter, who were up to the challenge and have been up to the challenge all along. It’s increasingly apparent that Nix’s ceiling, at least for now, is to be a competent, complementary piece of the offensive puzzle. If that blueprint works during the SEC season, great. Still, is that all Auburn is going to get out of Nix?

And while we’re here, let’s also ponder offensive coordinator Mike Bobo’s ceiling. The reverse pass to open the second half was a curious (and disastrous) call. The ill-fated, 4th-and-Goal pass to Kobe Hudson late in the game was a curious (and disastrous) call as well.

It’s fair to question Nix at this juncture, but Bobo also deserves some critical review.

3. Derek Mason has work to do as well. Penn State quarterback Sean Clifford finished the game 28-of-32 for 280 yards and two touchdowns. According to PFF, Clifford was pressured on just nine of his 35 drop-backs.

That’s simply not enough.

Mason clearly aims to be sound at all times and his defense is quite conservative as a result. He generally eschews blitzes in favor of deep safeties and underneath zone defenders to limit big-play risk. That approach has yielded some dividends — only three Bowl Subdivision teams have conceded fewer plays of 30-plus yards than Auburn.

There is a flaw here. Mason’s defensive line isn’t creating much pass rush, which means opposing quarterbacks are given too much time (and serenity) in the pocket. That’s how someone like Clifford, with a career completion percentage of 61, completes 89 percent in a game with such significant implications.

Something must change. What happened at Penn State was a systemic failure from a pass-rush perspective. This must be the first thing on Mason’s to-do list ahead of the trip to LSU.

TWO QUESTIONS

1. So how can Mason fix this pass-rush problem? The best solution involves this coaching staff seeking out, recruiting and signing defensive linemen who are more adept at creating pressure.

Mason, of course, cannot augment his roster before season’s end. He can engineer some new methods of making offensive lines uncomfortable. If he remains hesitant to allocate extra players toward the Tigers’ pass rush, Mason can alter alignments more often — or even just occasionally.

Forcing opponents to diagnose alignments and adjust to those alignments creates the potential for mental errors, which are helpful to the Tigers’ aim. Changing fronts also can make the few blitzes Mason calls more impactful by forcing opponents to guess where the pressure will originate.

Mason may not feel comfortable making these kinds of changes, but the team’s season may depend on it.

Auburn is last among the 130 FBS teams in opponent completion percentage. It’s currently 78.7 percent.

2. College football needs to re-consider how it penalizes targeting. Linebacker Zakoby McClain was ejected from the game Saturday after colliding with wideout Parker Washington at the 2-yard line.

The hit saved a touchdown; McClain aimed for Washington’s shoulder, but the linebacker’s helmet instead collided with his opponent’s helmet as he lunged for the goal line. The hit drew a flag for targeting. And by the definition of the rule, the flag was justified.

The problem is that McClain’s ejection, at least from my perspective, isn’t in line with the spirit of the targeting rule. The goal there is to limit (or even eliminate) serious danger associated with lining up skull-crushing blows to the head.

Concussions are bad. Avoiding those seems like a terrific idea.

We all know there’s a difference between flagrant headshots and the head-to-head contact that occurs through the course of what I’d call “normal defensive play.” Can we at least consider instituting two discrete levels of infraction? Can we delineate between a violent act and a common hit?

Basketball recently introduced Flagrant 1 and Flagrant 2 fouls with the latter, which must include “excessive contact,” resulting in an automatic ejection. Football should consider a similar approach toward targeting.

The sooner the better. The current system is terminally flawed.

ONE FEARLESS PREDICTION

Derek Mason will fix his group’s biggest problem within the next two weeks. He’s a sharp coach with the kind of experience, depth and talent to field a Top-20 defense.

The Tigers’ lack of pass-rush specialists isn’t Mason’s fault per se — he had a small percentage of one recruiting cycle to find new players — but his ultra-conservative play-calling has turned a weakness into a catastrophe from a pass-rush perspective.

Mason knows what must happen. Sure, he’ll continue training ends Romello Height, T.D. Moultry and Colby Wooden to get off blocks and reduce/shorten their paths to the quarterback. The most important thing is that Mason will install some tweaks to the Tigers’ pre-snap positioning and a few new blitzes aimed at making the team less predictable overall.

I forecast three sacks at LSU.