DYE-GEST SPRING BALL other tidbits

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Spring Football A Very Important Part of Team Building For Auburn, Others

Pat Dye

5-6 minutes

Coach Pat Dye (Photo: Inside the Auburn Tigers/AUTigers.com, Scout.com)

With Auburn's spring football practice starting on Thursday, in my experience as a high school and college player, plus a college coach for 27 years, I can’t emphasize enough the importance of these sessions. It is my experience that you can tell a lot about your team this time of year.

 

As a coach I watched the players as carefully as I could to see if they were just trying to do enough to get by during a practice or if they were truly going out there with a purpose. This is also a time of year when you want to see who is going to step into leadership roles.

For this Auburn team one of the major points of emphasis is getting a good feel for who is going to step into the starting roles on the offensive line with four seniors to replace. One thing that I think is going to help these offensive linemen improve this spring, and this is big, is that they will be facing a lot of talented players on the defensive front. They will not play against a better defensive line than they will see in practice. The offensive linemen will get a good idea of what it is going to be like playing in games this fall.

For example, we don’t know who the starting center is going to be this season with the guys who played it last year, Austin Golson and Casey Dunn, gone following their senior years. What we do know is if any of those guys can block Derrick Brown and Dontavius Russell, the Tigers will have a good center.

With Russell, Brown, Nick Coe, T.D. Moultry and Andrew Williams returning on the defensive front and from everything I understand the junior college transfer Daquan Newkirk has that same type of talent and work ethic, the entire offensive line will be tested this spring.

The Tigers will also be sorting out the running back pecking order this spring. The defensive line, along with what looks to be a strong linebacker group, should give the coaches a good read about the running back situation, too, because it will be challenging to run against that front seven.

It’s also my experience that guys will step up on both sides of the ball this time of year. A good example of that this past spring is that receiver Ryan Davis went from being a good player to a great football player. It definitely showed in the fall.

Ryan Davis led the Auburn receivers with a breakout performance last season. (Photo: Linda Pond/Inside the Auburn Tigers, Scout.com)

I also believe this is a time of year when a coaching staff needs to have a great plan to make its team better in each one of the 15 practice days. That needs to happen technique-wise and scheme-wise, and then tie it together with effort. This is the right time to do that because you don’t have to worry about playing a game. This is the right time to be totally focused on getting better and teaching the players what it will take to win in the fall.

In Auburn’s case this year the Tigers will face an immediate challenge because they open the season against the Washington Huskies.

Watching the basketball game on Saturday night at Florida the Tigers looked like a tired team. The exception was Mustapha Heron, who missed the previous game with an illness. After having a chance to rest last week he seemed to play at a faster speed than any of his teammates.

I am sure Coach Pearl is doing everything he can from a coaching standpoint and a strategic standpoint to give his team its best chance to win the final two games of the regular season. I think his team is going to have to reach down deep and come up with a special effort to win at Arkansas on Tuesday night. In my opinion the Tigers have a steep mountain to climb at Arkansas, which is the toughest place to play in the SEC outside of Auburn Arena.

A player on this year’s team who really stands out to me is Jared Harper. When he is not performing at his normal level, which was the case against Florida, it affects the entire team. Even in games in which he has a rough stretch, he normally comes back and finishes strong, but he didn’t look like he had his normal energy on Saturday night.

From watching the Tigers going back to the fall I think there is a fatigue factor that set in last week after winning an emotional, high-energy game against Alabama with a seven-player rotation because Heron was out. A physically tired team is a difficult thing for a coach to deal with because it is a lot easier to get a group mentally ready to play than physically ready when roster is missing key personnel and when the guys who are playing are not all 100 percent.

However they do it, I would love to see this team win the SEC title. The Tigers have worked very hard to make that happen and have provided a lot of excitement for Auburn fans this year. Hopefully, there is enough left in the tank for a strong finish.

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The battle the o-line will have with the d-line on a daily basis plus Grimes being back should prove huge dividends.