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Auburn moving forward


StatTiger

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More Defense Please:

  • Kevin Steele doesn't often blitz with the intent of forcing the opponent to work for every yard. During the 2017 season, the Auburn defense allowed a play of 30-yards or more every 36.8 snaps, 18th best among Auburn defenses from 1992-2017.
     
  • Of the 4477 yards allowed on defense, 24 percent came from plays of 30-yards or more, which was only 2.7 percent of the plays defended.
     
  • The Auburn defense was No. 44 nationally in big-play ratio allowed.
     
  • From 2009-2015, the Auburn defense had a passing grade during 48.9 percent of their games. Under Kevin Steele, the defense has a passing grade in 70.3 percent of their games.
     
  • Auburn finished No. 14 in total defense and No. 11 in scoring defense. The Tigers were 19th in 3rd down defense, 35th in run-defense and 19th in pass-efficiency defense. These are solid numbers, but Auburn was 43rd in red zone TD percentage, 61st in tackles for loss (ratio) and 85th in forced turnovers (ratio). These numbers must improve to become a more dominating defense.


The defense has performed more consistently under the leadership of Kevin Steele, but they have not been dominant, except for a few occasions. Beginning up front, the opposition has rushed for at least 150-yards during 11 of 27 games, with Auburn posting a 4-7 record. The need to become dominant is not a necessity, but it would certainly help to make a championship run. For now, Steele has brought stability to the defense, holding the opposition to 20 points or less during 66.7 percent of their games. From 2013-2015, it happened only 37.5 percent of the time.

 

Impact on Offense:

  • Auburn slightly increased their impact-play production from 2016, averaging 8.1 per game to the 7.7 from last year. Of the 113 plays of 15-yards or more, 67.3 percent came from the pass-offense.
     
  • The Auburn run-offense generated a 15+ play every 17.4 attempts, 18th best among Auburn offenses from 1992-2017. The 2016 Auburn offense generated a 15+ run-play every 11.7 attempts, 6th best since 1992.
     
  • Auburn's 29.6 yards per impact play was the highest average by an Auburn offense from 1992-2017.


Auburn lacked speed when it came to the running game. During the past two seasons, Kamryn Pettway and Kerryon Johnson provided power to the Auburn running game but lacked the speed to make the Auburn running game explosive. The Auburn coaching staff will have to make a strong evaluation of the running back position going into 2018 to decide a "pecking order."  Hopefully there will be a more fluid rotation of the top-two running backs.

 

Big Play Offense:

  • The 2017 Auburn offense generated 41 plays of 30-yards or more this season with one every 25 snaps. The big play ratio was 5th best among Auburn offenses from 1987-2017.
     
  • Auburn was No. 22 nationally in generating run plays of 30-yards or more with one every 40 attempts. Auburn's ratio was good, but 11 of their 16 big run plays came from Malik Willis, Eli Stove, and Kam Martin. Kerryon Johnson had only four runs of 30-yards or more in 2017.
     
  • Though Kerryon Johnson was No. 15 nationally in yards per game, he was No. 81 in producing run plays of 20+ yards among the top-100 rushers this season.


The Auburn pass-offense was good in 2017 but not consistent enough to carry the offense when the running game struggled. Auburn finished No. 13 in pass-efficiency, with Jarrett Stidham having the best season by an Auburn quarterback as a sophomore. The majority of Auburn's 2017 pass-offense was within 5-yards of the line of scrimmage and beyond 20-yards of the line of scrimmage. Only 30.9 percent of Auburn's passing yardage came within the 6-19 yards range. Utilizing big body receivers like Nate Craig-Myers and Marquis McClain in the intermediate range would be valuable. Players like Ryan Davis and Will Hastings could cause havoc on crossing routes.


During the past five seasons, Auburn's receivers have accounted for 79 percent of the receptions, and the running backs have accounted for 18 percent. During the previous five seasons (2008-2012), the wide receivers caught 63 percent of the passes, and the running backs caught 25 percent. The tight ends caught 12 percent from 2008-2012. The Auburn pass-offense has lived off the perimeter passing game with the occasional deep ball. Some want the tight end more involved in the passing game, but the most critical element for improvement is attacking the "entire" field.


The influx of more speed to the 2018 Auburn offense could be huge. Players like Noah Igbinoghene, Asa Martin, Shaun Shivers and Anthony Schwartz could be a significant boost to the overall team speed of the Auburn offense. Five of Auburn's top-6 play makers from 2017 return in 2018. The Tigers should have plenty of valuable skill players, but the offensive line will be a significant question mark going into next season. Despite having four senior starters on the offensive line in 2017, Auburn was way too inconsistent up front. Auburn cannot afford to work through 2-3 games into the season to settle on their best five up front. Herb Hand's offensive line has struggled early on during the past eight seasons. This is a trend that must stop, especially with the Tigers opening up against Washington away from Jordan-Hare.

 

Not So Special Teams:

  • Auburn was 130th in kick-return defense, 109th in punt-return defense and 51st in punt-return offense.
     
  • Auburn was 115th in net-punting and 102nd in punting average.
     
  • Daniel Carlson is perhaps Auburn's best place-kicker, but he finished 63rd in field goal percentage this season.
     
  • From 2009-2016, Auburn's special teams had a passing grade during 81.9 percent of their games. During the 2017 season, special teams had a passing grade in 64.2 percent of their games.


After going 5-1 in games decided by 7-points or less during the 2013 season, Auburn is 8-7 in close games from 2014-2017. Auburn is 2-4 the last two years, which makes special teams even more vital in close games. During Auburn's ten victories, the Tigers generated a short field, 15.4 percent of the time. During the four losses, the Tigers made a short field just 3.9 percent of the time. Defense and special teams create short fields for the offense. Auburn's lack of forcing turnovers and flipping the field with the kicking game has hurt Auburn in the close games. Rather than being 45-22 under Gus Malzahn, Auburn would be 53-14 had they won the games Auburn lost by 7-points or less.

 

War Eagle!

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Stat, thank you very much.  

Concerning D, the tackles for loss was interesting, but overall we were not as dominant as one would have thought based on the high praise.  

Offense - lack of speed was the big issue to me this yr.  Watching Oklahoma was eye opening in how much faster they looked than us.       

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Our ability to disrupt and create turnovers is the difference in being a very good defense and being at the level of Bammer. Some of it is talent level, some of it scheme. We’ll see how/if Steele adjusts.

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Stat - have you noticed that many of the poor performances by the offense have occurred against teams that are reading AU’s “tells”?  It was so obvious this season I had to turn two games off. (Playing for a number of years seems to have dulled my patience)

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2 hours ago, aubaseball said:

For once I would love to see AU get a wide receiver with the skill set of a AJ green or Julio 

Duke was supposed to be that guy, and showed up periodically. Maybe one of our studs can become that next year. 

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51 minutes ago, AUBwins said:

Duke was supposed to be that guy, and showed up periodically. Maybe one of our studs can become that next year. 

Nate Craig Myers could be but we didn't target him very often. I hope we open up the offense next year even more. And for Gods sake let's work on the passing game and just run our offense against weaker opponents. Stop with running the RB into the ground against them. 

WDE!

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We just have to find a way to get the ball to NCM and McClain.  You look at those guys physically and you have to wonder what the heck is going on with them not getting the ball more.  

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13 hours ago, lala said:

Stat, thank you very much.  

Concerning D, the tackles for loss was interesting, but overall we were not as dominant as one would have thought based on the high praise.  

I agree. And please tell me WHY we didn't use a spy on the UCF QB during the bowl game? If it wasn't for his scrambling for yards or scrambling and then finding open WRs, then I think we win this game. I noticed our D has given up a lot of yardage and pts in key games...

Offense - lack of speed was the big issue to me this yr.  Watching Oklahoma was eye opening in how much faster they looked than us.       

That is why I am puzzled by not using Martin or Barrett more for speed on certain run plays. KM did have quite a few long runs, but it key games he only ran on 1 series maybe and a few carries after that just to give KJ a spell. Was this JUST to showcase KJ for NFL or was it GM not being confident in some of his players?

Overall, we have a very good team, but something extra HAS to be planned by these coaches when they play for championships or a bowl game. Gus is getting a very bad record in bowl games if he doesn't turn it around how he uses his players...

 

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I would like to see defensive stats using productive offensive games (Ark, uga1, uat, etc) versus bad offensive games (Clem, lsu, uga2, UCF, etc).  I think there is a direct correlation between defensive production and offensive production.  It could be the on the field time or three and outs. 

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2 hours ago, steeleagle said:

 

The spy comment is exactly what I was screaming about on the 1st half.  Made no sense as he was the only O they had at that point.  

Early in the season I was really hoping for a Kam P and Kam M (Thunder and lightning) backfield with Kerryon as a receiving threat/back-up.  I was wrong about Kerryon but still disappointed with lack of series from Martin.  Maybe that is because of our lack of confidence in the O-line.   

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Stat always gives us the mathematical quantification of what we complain about all year. Because of him, we're the most well informed fans. And when we see his data, we get confirmation that we're not exactly idiots. The things we complain about are real things. 

Thank you StatTiger

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4 hours ago, around4ever said:

I would like to see defensive stats using productive offensive games (Ark, uga1, uat, etc) versus bad offensive games (Clem, lsu, uga2, UCF, etc).  I think there is a direct correlation between defensive production and offensive production.  It could be the on the field time or three and outs. 

I was going to say, I wonder how many of those big plays we gave up in the second half of games where our offense refused to stay on the field and the defense eventually got tired. The SECCG would be the most glaring example.

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22 hours ago, fredst said:

Our ability to disrupt and create turnovers is the difference in being a very good defense and being at the level of Bammer. Some of it is talent level, some of it scheme. We’ll see how/if Steele adjusts.

From what I've read about him, I believe our 10th coach was hired, in part, because of his expertise in this area.

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On 1/6/2018 at 7:20 PM, StatTiger said:

Auburn was 130th in kick-return defense, 109th in punt-return defense and 51st in punt-return offense.

 

·Auburn was 115th in net-punting and 102nd in punting average

I’m being dead serious when I say I had no idea there were 130 FBS teams now. When did that happen? And how many are there now?

To call our 2017 Special Teams “piss poor” would be a compliment!  This MUST improve in 2018!!!!

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12 minutes ago, AUpreacherman22 said:

I’m being dead serious when I say I had no idea there were 130 FBS teams now. When did that happen? And how many are there now?

To call our 2017 Special Teams “piss poor” would be a compliment!  This MUST improve in 2018!!!!

You said it! Well.... We all know they'll improve because you can't much worse than that!!!! :slapfh:

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  • RunInRed featured and pinned this topic

Special Teams won't get any better if we don't actually get a coach for it. We could've been even worse if Carlson didn't send the bulk of his kicks out of the end zone. (Speaking of - any insight on why he started kicking short as the season wore on? Overuse maybe?)

Predictability will continue to hinder us offensively. If we can't attack the middle consistently - you're allowing the defense to cover 66% of the field with 4-5 DBs and the other 6-7 defenders can focus on the run. We've seen defenses completely vacate the middle (our RBs have sat down wide open as safety valves and never once got targeted).

Like many here, I'm hoping this season was a transition season between the Gus offense to the Chip offense and that next season will be much more of a Chip Lindsey offense that utilizes all of our offensive weapons. We can only wait and pray.

Defensively - we've got work to do but when you're only allowing 20 points a game the last 2 seasons while playing in the SEC, you're doing something right at least. I hope that continues but I think we're going to see that number go the wrong way next season with the talent we've lost.

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On 1/7/2018 at 8:33 PM, TeaPotBrownno1fan said:

Bingo.  Memphis the last 2 years have been insane ball hawks!

Who is this tenth coach you speak of?

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Hi Everyone,

 

Long-time lurker from Connecticut here! I don't post much, so I can't create a thread. Sorry if this is off-topic or should go somewhere else, but my wonderful girlfriend got us tickets for the LSU game Sept 15th!! (which is technically moving forward so I am replying in this thread haha)

 

Can anyone suggest where to stay in Auburn? We'd be flying into Atl on Fri the 14th and would like to fly home on Sunday. What is the procedure to book a hotel room on a gameday weekend? There are none available right now. Also, can anyone give me a ballpark price range for rooms per night? My last time in JHS was when I was still a student there -- 2004 UGA. I am so excited to know I'll be back in JHS next season!!

 

WDE

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