Kevin Steele once again showed his experience and savvy last weekend with an unusual — and completely unexpected — defensive adjustment for the LSU game.

The Tigers' defensive coordinator has been shifting between 4- and 3-man fronts throughout the season, which serves to make blocking assignments more difficult to understand for the offense. He's also able to maximize his surplus of quality end/linebacker types (Nick Coe, Big Kat Bryant, Derick Hall) to create mismatches along the perimeter.

His defense for the LSU game was an extension of that.

Auburn unveiled a 3-3 "Stack" paradigm throughout the first half and into the second last weekend. That involved three down linemen with a linebacker behind the nosetackle and a safety rolled down behind the linebacker for full-time box support.

The goal? Extra power to repel inside running and quick throws between the hashes. That worked well for the most part, though LSU eventually adjusted by ditching its "10" personnel sets (four wideouts plus a tailback) and replacing it with "11" personnel (three wideouts, a tailback and a tight end) to augment the play-side edge.

That forced the Tigers to counter-adjust with their standard 4-2-5 paradigm — with particular attention paid to filling inside gaps because, well, that's where LSU's run game has thrived this season. Still, against "11" personnel, things can get dicey along the perimeter in a hurry.

Here's how LSU managed to gash the Tigers outside during its important touchdown drive during the third quarter last week:

This run is aimed outside the play-side tackle, which is going to be a tough ask defensively from this alignment. Auburn has a slant call into the boundary. This means play-side DE Nick Coe is crashing inside against a call that desperately wants him inside.

The pressure here will be on the play-side LB and the Nickel to diagnose this run quickly and fill the alley. Otherwise, no defender will be in position to create or maintain an edge.

Here's how it played out in real time:

Firstly, Coe gets tremendous penetration, which compresses the mesh a bit. The problem is that Coe gets washed down by that play-side TE and the tailback zips beyond his outside hip before he even realizes what's happening.

The play-side LB (10 Owen Pappoe) cannot shed the LT, who extends properly and locks him up. In fact, that block becomes an obstacle that slows back-side pursuit. Pappoe appears to be the only guy charged with managing the play-side C gap. This is a problem.

The Nickel (6 Christian Tutt) drops into coverage against the slot receiver. By the time he realizes what's needed here, he's engaged with his receiver and can't get free to fill the alley. Auburn simply lacks a run-force player here. It's off to the races for LSU.

A couple things:

• Auburn probably needed to shift its line to the field ("slide strong") in order to adequately cover the A, B and C gaps to that side. As it happened, Coe was in a "4-i" alignment (a B-gap defender) with a 1-tech tackle (an A-gap defender) inside of him. There is nobody to fit the C gap in this scenario. Had they slid strong, Coe would have enjoyed better leverage on the TE and, therefore, in better position to help outside — at least potentially.

• TL;DR: Auburn is not in good position to defend this personnel package. It happens.

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