Etheridge, Rocker & Williams take tremendous pride coaching at Auburn

[Paladin 3,305]

Etheridge, Rocker, Williams take 'tremendous pride' coaching at Auburn

By NATHAN KING 81 minutes ago

AUBURN, Alabama — Bryan Harsin is still learning as he goes. He admittedly doesn’t know an extensive amount about the pageantry and history of the program he now leads. So he’s glad to have a few alums in the building.

Harsin hired three former Auburn football players to his inaugural on-field staff with the Tigers — running backs coach Cadillac Williams, who is the lone retention from the team’s 2020 assistant staff, defensive line coach Tracy Rocker, who returns to the Plains for his second stint in the same role he had from 2009-10, and cornerbacks coach Zac Etheridge, a team captain on Auburn’s 2010 national championship team who was plucked from Houston’s staff.

Auburn’s new head coach knows how the three assistant coaches are feeling and the passion that they’re prepared to bring to the job. That’s not to say the other seven coaches aren’t fired up to get started, but Harsin knows there’s just something special about returning to the place — the stadium, the practice field, the campus — that shaped their lives as college students.

It’s the same way Harsin felt when he joined Boise State’s staff just a few years after finishing his playing career with the Broncos as a quarterback in 1999.

“Let me say this: I can feel it in the conversations I had with Cadillac, with Coach Etheridge, with Coach Rocker,” Harsin said Thursday on a Zoom press conference with reporters. “You feel that. I know that as a Boise State, I know the pride of playing at Boise State, I know the pride as a coach, and being part of that program. I understand that, I appreciate that, I embrace that.”

Harsin has leaned on those three coaches, and will continue to do so now that his staff is complete and the chaos of coaching searches and interviews has settled down. It’s as simple for Harsin sometimes as asking the best way to get to a building, or a good place to eat. After all, Williams, Etheridge and Rocker know the town and campus better than all the new faces now in the Auburn athletics complex.

He hopes future players lean on them, as well. There’s something to be said, Harsin thinks, for having some coaches on staff who can open up about their personal experience on a campus, with a football program from their playing days.

The other coaches will recruit the Auburn experience to prospects as well, but there’s no replacing an anecdote or an emotion that could only come from suiting up in an Auburn jersey and taking the field.

“When you get around the guys and are able to ask questions and maybe talk about some of the guys like Cadillac who played here and know the history and know some of the things he did, it creates a great conversation, certainly in recruiting,” Harsin said. “It's not just that, hey, here's this building, here's campus, here's the stadium. They've actually been in it, they've experienced it, they bleed orange and blue, they understand what it takes. They know what it feels like to lead this program, as champions, with a degree from Auburn University.

“So they can share that with families and players; it's not something that's scripted, it's genuine, their pride in being back here. I think a lot of coaches that get a chance to come back to their alma mater, a place like this, and coach, they take tremendous pride in that.”

Each of the three Auburn alums — who will be putting on headsets instead of pads this fall — experienced high levels of success during their playing careers with the Tigers.

Etheridge and Rocker obviously have national championship rings to show for their contributions in 2010 — Etheridge as a senior team captain and second-leading tackler for Ted Roof’s defense, and Rocker as the defensive line coach, mentoring players like Nick Fairley, who won the Lombardi Award and was the AP Defensive Player of the Year in 2010.

As a player, Rocker was the first in SEC history to win both the Outland Trophy (best interior lineman) and Lombardi Award (top lineman or linebacker) in the same year. He was a two-time All-American at Auburn and was named SEC Player of the Year in 1988.

Williams, now entering his second season coaching Auburn running backs, is one of the most productive tailbacks in program history, with the most rushing touchdowns by an Auburn player (45) and the second-most rushing yards (3,831, behind only Bo Jackson). He was a key piece of Auburn’s 13-0, Sugar Bowl-winning season in 2004.

Last Sunday, Harsin organized new coach introductions with players over Zoom, where nine of 10 assistants (outside linebackers coach and special teams coordinator Bert Watts was hired just this week) shared their backstories and outlined their visions for how their position group will help Auburn be successful in the future.

In that meeting, Harsin again saw how important the connection is between a past and present player at a program.

“Those three (Williams, Rocker, Etheridge) in particular, with how they've been around our guys, there's no question about the pride that they have for Auburn football,” Harsin said. “There's no question that these guys are going to make an impact with our current players now on what it means to be a Tiger, no doubt about it.”

[dyehardfanAU 2,117]

I think Etheridge is the only one we don't know much about recruiting prowess.  I think we will see a lot of team effort in recruiting for some positions but we have some solid recruiters to do that. 

Hopefully the money tree is in full bloom as well.