Auburn Analysis

Well, it’s that time of year again. Auburn football season almost upon us. Depending on your perspective, it’s either a time for excitement or a time for dread (or maybe some combination of the two). It’s also time for every sports website to do its obligatory season preview post, and this site is no different. Today we’re going to take a look at the Auburn offense; tomorrow we’ll take a look at the defense, followed by a Mercer scouting report on Thursday. Content won’t be this compressed in the future, this is just a product of my own laziness up to this point.

After Auburn was mediocre to downright bad on the offensive side of the ball, Mike Bobo was canned and replaced by Zak Hill Austin Davis Eric Kiesau, who had served as Auburn’s wide receivers coach following the dismissal of Cornelius Williams. The turnover and tumult on that side of the ball and the lack of obvious personnel improvements from last year has filled most Auburn fans (or at least me) with a sense of ennui and relatively little in the way of optimism for this season’s offense, which is probably the correct impression. We’ll take a look at statistics, personnel, and scheme here, which will be the format for future preview/scouting reports as well.

STATISTICAL PROFILE

In 2021, Auburn’s offense was emphatically mediocre statistically, both in terms of raw totals and advanced metrics. Auburn averaged 402.5 yards per game, good for 67th in the country, with 240.1 pass YPG (59th) and 162.4 rush YPG (T-64th). Auburn was better than average in terms of penalties, with 5.7 per game (T-52nd). The only raw offensive statistic in which Auburn’s offense was truly good was turnovers; their average of 0.9 turnovers per game was tied for 13th best in the country.

Most of the advanced metrics are similarly unkind to Auburn, with most of its efficiency ratings on Football Outsiders hovering around the middle of the pack, aside from its OFEI, which was actually 30th in the country. I won’t get too deep into the proprietary/advanced stats stuff here since the number of offseason changes makes comparisons between last year’s offense and this year’s less valuable/predictive than they might normally be.

PERSONNEL

Since I’m not an insider of any sort and have no access to what’s going on in practice, I’m not going to go into too much depth on personnel since all I really have to go on is A-Day and last season. However, I will give some general thoughts on each position group.

Tight Ends (H):

Starter: John Samuel Shenker (Sr.)

Backup: Luke Deal (Jr.)

Others: Tyler Fromm (Jr.), Landen King (So.), Brandon Frazier (Jr.)

The best-known quantity for Auburn’s offense this year is the tight ends, ironically, given the complaints about Gus Malzahn’s non-use of tight ends from people who don’t understand the concept of 20 personnel. John Samuel Shenker is the incumbent and will probably be the safety valve for whoever ends up being the QB this season. Many of the other guys are unproven but have strong potential to contribute in the passing game (particularly the versatile Tyler Fromm and Landen King, as well as the physical freak Brandon Frazier, who can line up out wide or as H-backs/inline TEs). Auburn had at least one tight end on the field on every snap in the A-Day game, and more than one on the field on a third of the snaps, which should give a pretty clear indication of their importance in this year’s offense.

Running Backs:

Starter: Tank Bigsby (Jr.)

Backup: Jarquez Hunter (So.)

Others: Damari Alston (Fr.), Jordon Ingram (So.), Sean Jackson (Fr.)

The TEs are probably the best-known quantity, but I would say the RBs are the closest thing to a clear strength in this years Auburn offense. Auburn has a strong one-two punch at the top of the depth chart in Tank Bigsby and Jarquez Hunter, and Damari Alston has been getting strong reviews during fall camp. There’s also Jordon Ingram, perhaps the only person in the world other than me who has attended both Auburn and Central Michigan, and former walk-on Sean Jackson for some additional depth. We didn’t see much of the RBs in the spring game, which isn’t surprising since there really wasn’t a question mark there. It’s good that Auburn has a strong stable of running backs, but it’s also the least important offensive position; running backs are essentially fungible (if you don’t believe me, look at the NFL’s drafting trends over the last two decades) and your RBs are only going to be as good as your offensive line. Speaking of which…

Offensive Line:

Starters: Kilian Zierer (Sr.), Brandon Council (Sr.), Tate Johnson (Jr.), Keiondre Jones (Jr.)/Cameron Strutts (Sr.), Austin Troxell (Sr.)

Backups: Brendan Coffey (Sr.), Jeremiah Wright (Jr.)/Jalil Irvin (Sr.), Jalil Irvin (Sr.)/Avery Johnson (So.), ?, Alec Jackson (Sr.)

Auburn’s offensive line has been its Achilles’ heel for most of the past decade, failing to produce an explosive run game or consistent pass protection for Auburn’s QBs. Gus’ failures in recruiting offensive linemen and both his and Harsin’s failure to develop them have been discussed ad nauseam and there’s no reason to relitigate those problems here. There’s been some hope that this year might be different, given the amount of returning experience on the offensive line (all of the starters are upperclassmen), although I question whether bringing back a group of players who weren’t that good before is really a positive. Those hopes took a big hit yesterday when starting center Nick Brahms announced his retirement due to injuries. This offensive line group has several guys who never had the opportunity to really reach their potential due to injuries (I’d include Austin Troxell and probably Brandon Council in that category as well), which is obviously unfortunate. However, Brahms’ replacement, Tate Johnson has been receiving strong reviews during camp, so perhaps he can prevent too much of a drop-off from Brahms (who, despite his experience, was inconsistent at best over the last couple of years). Overall, I’m not optimistic about this group just because it’s been almost ten years since Auburn has a legitimately good offensive line and there weren’t enough changes this offseason to expect major improvement. Speaking of changes without improvement…

Quarterbacks:

Starter: TJ Finley (Jr.)

Backup: Robby Ashford (R-Fr.)

Others: Zach Calzada (So.), Holden Geriner (Fr.)

I’m just going to say it up front: running off Bo Nix and replacing him with other teams’ discarded backups was horrendous roster management by Harsin, and there’s a good chance it’ll cost him his job. TJ Finley, announced as the week 1 starter, is a known quantity, and not a good one. Auburn’s winless record down the stretch with Finley as the starter was a testament to his limitations. That last stretch of games without the Bo Nix injury is an interesting counterfactual, but not useful here.

As for the other additions to the QB room, I’d give them an emphatic “meh”. Calzada seemed like the obvious choice to be the starter this year, but has apparently been terrible in camp and is third or fourth on the depth chart. Robby Ashford was the most intriguing addition to me, simply because he brought something new to the table in terms of his running ability. That said, I’m not optimistic that Harsin would really be willing to make adequate use of Ashford’s running ability, given his refusal to play Dematrius Davis over an obviously-injured TJ Finley against Alabama last year. Then there’s Holden Geriner, a genuinely promising prospect, and maybe the best pure passer in the QB room, at least based on what we saw from the A-Day game. He’s definitely more consistent and more accurate than Finley and Ashford, even if his deep balls weren’t totally convincing.

Finley is the week 1 starter, and I can say with confidence that if he’s the week 12 starter, it’ll be Bryan Harsin’s last game in charge at Auburn. He offers less than Ashford as a runner, and, in my opinion, less than Geriner as a passer, so I’m not really sure why he’s there. Harsin’s best prospect for saving his job is probably to channel his inner Harry Redknapp and let Ashford JFRAAB, but I doubt Harsin is willing to be flexible enough to accommodate Ashford’s skill set (as we’ll discuss later).

Wide Receivers:

Starters: X: Shedrick Jackson (Sr.), Y: Tar’varish Dawson (R-Fr.), Z: Malcolm Johnson, Jr. (Jr.)

Backups: X: Camden Brown (Fr.), Y: Ja’Varrius Johnson (Jr.), Z: Koy Moore (So.)

Finally, we come to the biggest question mark on Auburn’s offense, the wide receivers. The receivers were…not good last year, despite two coaching changes at that position. As with the QBs, Harsin ran off his best returning option, Kobe Hudson, who immediately became a starter for Gus down in Orlando. Auburn, meanwhile, is left with a likely starting group of Shedrick Jackson (who, like Finley, is a known quantity, and not a good one), slot receivers Tar’varish Dawson or Ja’Varrius Johnson (both good athletes who are not especially polished as receivers but have potential), and Malcolm Johnson, Jr., who I think has potential to be a legitimately good player. Beyond them, there are a lot of question marks. Guys like Camden Brown and Koy Moore have clear upside but aren’t necessarily going to be reliable options in the short term. Ike Hilliard seems to be a competent position coach, so hopefully these guys will develop better than the receivers have under the past few position coaches.

OFFENSIVE SCHEME

Now for my favorite part of any preview post, the Xs and Os. This is going to be the main focus of this article and this blog in general.

I originally intended to do a post this offseason on the Bryan Harsin/Eric Kiesau offenses at Boise during Kiesau’s tenure as OC (2019-2020) but never got around to it because I frankly found much more interesting film to watch instead. The offense they ran was similar to the Boise offenses that preceded it: an incoherent mish-mash of plays that didn’t contain any consistent organizing principles. Okay, fine, that’s a bit terse, but I really do dislike the Boise offensive philosophy (as Chris Petersen put it, “we don’t run an offense, we run plays”), which likely explains why none of the Boise coaches (aside from Petersen, arguably), has been successful in exporting it to other programs.

Harsin’s offense has generally been described as “multiple” or “pro-style”, which are generic descriptors that don’t really mean anything anymore beyond “not spread”. All those terms really mean is that a team lines up under center sometimes and uses heavier personnel groupings (12, 21, 22) more often than other teams.

I’ll go ahead and clarify my biases up front: I think up-tempo spread offense is the optimal way to play offense, particularly coupled with the use of RPOs and SPOs. This is why I found late-stage Gus so frustrating: his offense was really a good fit for Auburn, he just struggled to implement it successfully, which made no sense. Gus is proof positive that the worst thing that can happen to someone is to be told they’re a genius.

Rather than look back at the film from the Mike Bobo Experience™ last year, I’ve chosen to just focus on the A-Day game, since that’s the only film we have with Kiesau in charge of the offense. I’ll acknowledge up front that the amount of information that can be gleaned from a spring game is relatively minimal, since there’s a ton of rotation of players and the offense on display will inevitably be relatively basic. That said, we’ll take a general look at what Auburn was doing and the trends that were apparent for this season’s offense.

Taking a quick look at the box score (which isn’t especially useful), Auburn ran 62 plays (46 passes and 16 runs) for a total of 395 yards, a mediocre 6.4 yards per play.

Auburn was 32/46 through the air for 342 yards, a not-great 7.4 yards per attempt but a nice completion percentage of 69.6%. I didn’t do the math for average yardage of each target or anything, but all of the QBs were unconvincing on their deep balls and Auburn generated few explosive passing plays.

On the ground, Auburn ran for just 51 yards on 16 carries, a paltry clip of 3.2 YPC. That said, I wouldn’t read too much into those numbers. Tank Bigsby got 5 touches and Jarquez Hunter didn’t play at all, while Auburn was also missing several offensive linemen due to injuries. I’m not optimistic about Auburn’s run game this fall, given the perennial question marks on the offensive line.

In terms of play selection, Auburn threw the ball on 60% of its first downs, which is somewhat encouraging since throwing the ball on first down is almost always optimal. Still too many first down runs for my taste, but improvement from last year. The run game truthers will yell at me, but to quote Jay-Z, women lie, men lie, numbers don’t lie. I’ll probably write more about this at some point down the road, but as a general note, analytics have shown us that it’s better to throw on first down, as well as second and third down and 5+, and fourth down and 2+; run vs. pass is neutral on second and third down and 2-4 yards, while running is optimal on third and fourth down and less than 2. 2nd and 1 is a unique case where passing is optimal (primarily because of the high success rate of play-action in those situations).

I’ll also note that Auburn only ran two QB run plays and a handful of RPOs. The former makes sense, since it was a scrimmage where QBs weren’t being tackled to the ground, although the few glimpses we got illustrated that Ashford’s running ability offers more potential for explosive plays than Auburn’s conventional run game. As I mentioned above, I think RPOs are simply the optimal way for an offense to protect its run game; rather than the traditional run, then play-action when the defense overplays the run, the offense can immediately identify the defensive player with dual run/pass responsibility and make the defense wrong every time. This is part of why I think under center running on standard downs is obsolete, because it limits the use of RPOs, and it’s just wasteful to not have something attached to your run plays (a quick pass, a screen, an option read, etc.). Sorry for the tangent, but I thought I’d clarify my biases up front.

As I alluded to above, Auburn used at least one tight end on every single snap of the A-Day game. It used 11 personnel (1 RB, 1 TE) on 41 (66%) of its plays, which is in line with the rest of college (and pro) football, where 11 personnel has become the dominant grouping due to its flexibility and versatility, which also facilitates tempo because it minimizes the need to substitute. Auburn used 12 personnel on 19 (31%) of its snaps, and 13 personnel on the remaining 2 snaps. It’s clear that TEs are going to play a big role in the Auburn offense this season, which is no surprise to anyone. It’s also worth noting that Auburn used a wide variety of formations within these personnel groupings, as well as a number of different motions and shifts; pre-snap movement (especially with the TEs and RBs) is one of the key features of the “Boise offense”, changing run strength and increasing the number of gaps on one side of the line of scrimmage, which is very annoying for defense (and particularly odd front defenses like Auburns, which lack a natural adjuster). Auburn also used a fair amount of jet motion and orbit motion; these were primarily for misdirection, but Auburn did run a couple of jet sweeps and threw a few swings off of orbit motion, and I think these could be useful ways to get the ball to some of our better athletes, like the Johnsons.

In terms of the actual concepts, the offense was, unsurprisingly, very basic. The large majority of Auburn’s run plays were inside zone variations. These variations included split zone, where the HB/FB kicks out the backside DE to open up a cutback lane; wham, where the HB/FB traps an interior linemen, and (when Ashford was in the game), bluff read, which looks like split zone, but instead of blocking the DE, the HB fakes that block and instead blocks the run support player (the person who would be responsible for tackling the QB if he pulled the ball), which was one of the primary plays for Auburn during the Nick Marshall era. Auburn only ran a couple of gap schemes (power/counter), along with a couple of mid-zone runs and jet sweeps. Notably, I didn’t see Auburn run outside zone at all, which I suspect will change during the season, since Tank Bigsby has already shown that he’s really good at finding the lanes and making the cutbacks on outside zone.

The passing concepts on display were also quite basic, mostly consisting of half-field reads like fade-out and three-man flood. Auburn only ran a few concepts that attacked the middle of the field, including a few slants, shallow cross (once), and a deep cross (once, off play-action). I’m not really going to read too much into this in terms of where the QBs are or what we should expect to see in season, just making a general observation. Auburn’s primary concepts for attacking deep down the field were slot fade (which led to Auburn’s first touchdown), the deep routes on three-man flood, and four verticals (which was the call for the final touchdown). One interesting play that Auburn used a couple of times in the red zone was a mesh concept out of 4×1 empty with a RB aligned in a wing position. Auburn used this a couple of times last year, notably against Penn State and Ole Miss.

I would expect to see at least a somewhat expanded playbook against Mercer, but the key elements of what we can expect from this year’s offense are fairly clear: a zone-based running game with a lot of motion/misdirection and a few gap scheme runs thrown in; a relatively simplistic dropback game focused on two-man and half-field concepts; and a play-action game mainly based on flood/bootleg concepts and traditional play-action shots. Probably relatively little in the way of QB runs unless Ashford takes over the starting job, and probably relatively few RPOs (with those RPOs mostly being simple receiver screens tagged to the backside of zone runs). I’m not sure this offense has a clear identity or direction in terms of its concepts, and it really does seem like it will be “running plays instead of running an offense”, which, as I mentioned above, I dislike precisely because it’s prone to incoherent grab-bagging rather than having built-in answers for the problems it might encounter.

Note: in the future, these breakdowns will likely have gifs and diagrams, but I feel like it’s probably unnecessary in this case, since I’m just basing this off the spring game, which doesn’t make for a very interesting film study. There should be some gifs/diagrams in the Mercer scouting report coming out on Thursday.

CONCLUSIONS

As I noted above, the amount you can learn from studying film of a spring game is relatively limited, but it’s clear that there’s going to be a good bit of schematic carryover from last season into this season. I’m hoping that we’ll be closer to this run-pass ratio (75% pass) since passing is almost always the more efficient way to move the ball (sorry, run game truthers), but I suspect Harsin and Kiesau will revert to a more “traditional” (read: suboptimal) run-pass ratio.

On the whole, I’m not optimistic about this unit going into this season. The loss of Bo Nix was a massive blow, and his replacements are underwhelming at best. The wide receivers are a major question mark, and the relative strength of the offense (RBs) is almost entirely dependent on the improvement of the offensive line. Unless TJ Finley and the offensive line have developed significantly from last year (or Harsin realizes that he has better options at QB), this offense doesn’t look like a serious contender in the SEC West. Hopefully tomorrow’s defensive preview will be a bit more encouraging.

One final note: I realize that much of the Xs and Os discussion above is heavy on jargon and light on explanation of those terms. I plan on putting up a glossary of football terminology at some point soon that I’ll be able to refer back to in future posts, but for now just bear with me and pretend like I know what I’m talking about.