Auburn Analysis

Now that we’ve taken a look at Auburn’s offensive and defensive situations going into the season, it’s time to turn our attention to the first opponent of the season, the Mercer Bears. Of course, most people are looking at this as a typical body bag game, but Auburn’s surreal experience with Mercer in 2017 ought to dissuade people from that opinion.

PREVIOUS MEETINGS

Auburn 12-0-0

Mercer and Auburn have played one another a surprising number of times considering that the two teams are in different divisions, with 12 all-time meetings between the schools. Of course, the vast majority of those previous meetings took place over a century ago; Auburn and Mercer met 11 times between 1896 and 1922, with Auburn winning all 11 meetings by at least 22 points, including a gruesome 92-0 bludgeoning administered by Iron Mike Donahue’s Tigers in 1916. Auburn and Mercer have only met once since Mercer restarted its football program in 2013, the aforementioned debacle in which Auburn lost an incredible five fumbles on its way to an uncomfortable 24-10 win, by far the closest margin in the series’ history; Mercer’s 10 points in that game were more than it had scored in its previous 11 matchups against Auburn combined.

MERCER TEAM PROFILE

While I don’t expect that type of truly ludicrous outcome on Saturday, this Mercer team is certainly quite capable. They’re currently ranked #23 in Division I-AA FCS and thrashed Morehead State 63-13 in Macon last weekend. Obviously it’s impossible to know who’s good and who isn’t at this time of year, but Morehead State had a winning record last season (7-4, 6-2 Pioneer), so they’re probably not totally inept.

Third-year head coach Drew Cronic, a former wide receiver at Georgia, has built a solid program that’s one of the better teams in the Southern Conference. They went 7-3 last year (6-2 in conference, 2nd place) with two of their three losses being to Alabama and a narrow 38-35 road loss to eventual SoCon champion East Tennessee State. Their third loss was pretty bizarre, as they got smoked at home (45-7) by a mediocre VMI team that finished 6-5 and well out of contention in the SoCon. Not sure what happened there but props to the Keydets.

STATISTICAL PROFILE

It’s hard to put together a statistical profile of an opponent in week 1, even when they played in week 0, so this section will rely partially on last year’s data. The Bears averaged 31.7 PPG on offense, while allowing 22.7 PPG on defense last year, respectable numbers for a team whose schedule included a body bag game against Alabama.

Last week, Mercer put up 625 yards on just 58 plays against Morehead State, averaging and impressive 10.8 YPP. They were 13/20 through the air for 266 yards (13.3 YPA) and 5 TDs, and ran the ball 38 times for 359 yards (9.4 YPC) and 3 TDs. The only real negative in their performance were the three fumbles, two of which they lost.

The Bears also put up a strong showing on defense, allowing 278 yards on 78 plays (3.6 YPP). Morehead was 24/36 passing for 161 yards (4.5 YPA), with 1 TD and 1 INT, and ran the ball 42 times for just 117 yards (2.8 YPC) and 1 TD. The Bears managed two takeaways, recovering one of Morehead State’s two fumbles, as well as snatching a pick six to blow the game wide open in the first half.

PERSONNEL

On the offensive side of the ball, Mercer’s triggerman is Fred Payton, the senior QB in his second year with the Bears after transferring from Coastal Carolina in 2021. He was an efficient 11/17 in week 0, throwing for 248 yards (almost 15 YPA) and 4 TDs. This is a big improvement over last season, when Payton completed less than 58% of his passes at 8.7 YPA with a mediocre 12-10 TD-INT ratio. He only had 4 carries for 5 yards with a long of 6 (college football still counts sacks as negative rushing attempts by the QB for some reason).

Mercer has a solid one-two punch in the backfield with sophomore RBs Austin Douglas and Al Wooten II, who have moved into bigger roles this season after being lower on the depth chart last year. They combined for 236 yards on just 18 attempts against Morehead State, including a 65-yard touchdown run by Douglas. As we’ve discussed before, RBs are essentially fungible, but Mercer does have some talent there. Mercer doesn’t have great size on the OL, but, like Auburn, they do have a lot of experience returning there.

The Bears’ go-to receiver is sophomore Ty James, who exceeded 500 yards in each of the past two seasons, and scored 3 TDs on just 5 receptions against Morehead State, including a 90-yard catch-and-run. No other receiver caught more than two passes, but Mercer only completed 13 passes against Morehead, so that’s not necessarily a negative indicator for them. Senior Devron Harper is probably their next-best receiver and is also a dangerous weapon in the return game, managing a 93-yard runback against Morehead.

On the defensive side of the ball, Mercer doesn’t necessarily have a ton of true standouts, but they do have a lot of experienced upperclassmen and a good distribution of talent across the defense. It’s worth noting that eight different Bears had five or more tackles against Morehead, showing the balance that they have on that side of the ball.

SCHEME

Let me start the scheme breakdown with a caveat: I didn’t have the film of the full game available to chart, so I had to rely on an extended highlights package rather than the full game, but I think most of my conclusions here will hold up.

Mercer’s offense, led by third-year offensive coordinator Bob Bodine, actually bears some resemblance to Auburn’s. It could be described as “multiple”, in that the Bears used a variety of formations, both from the shotgun and under center. Another similarity to Auburn’s offense was the frequent use of snug receiver alignments, wing alignments, and pre-snap shifts and motions, presenting the defense with a lot of window dressing and attempting to gain advantages in leverage.

Mercer is really a run-first offense, as demonstrated by their 38-20 run-to-pass ratio. They spent the vast majority of the game in 11 personnel, only occasionally venturing into 12 personnel. Most of their run game is zone based, mainly inside zone and mid-zone, with a few gap schemes (notably buck sweep and GH counter) mixed in. They frequently used jet sweep motion to freeze the LBs and constrain perimeter defenders to facilitate their inside zone runs, and ran a fair number of RPOs on their zone runs from the guns (mostly basic RPO concepts like tagging a glance route or key screen on the backside of their runs). They made fairly extensive use of the receiver screen game, including both key screens and tunnel screens, which they were pretty adept at springing for big plays.

One note is that I really didn’t see any QB runs from them, so the RPO and screen game really is vital to their ability to keep the perimeter constrained on their run plays. The whole purpose of a read option (1st level conflict read) or RPO (2nd/3rd level conflict read) is to eliminate a defender from the box by reading him, equalizing the numbers so that the offense has a blocker for every defender. If the read option isn’t available because the QB isn’t much of a runner, the RPO becomes even more essential for maintaining their ability to run from the gun because they don’t have the constraint of the read option. This is harder to do from under center (one of the reasons I think the traditional under center run game on standard downs is mostly obsolete), and as a result, the use of motion, fakes, and other types of misdirection becomes more important.

Mercer’s passing game, aside from their RPO concepts, was relatively simple and straightforward, mostly consisting of two-man half-field concepts like slant-shoot and quick concepts like spacing/all-curl. Their play-action concepts were harder to discern due to the perpetual issue of TV camera angles, but they did show the willingness to take the occasional downfield shot off of play-action. The conventional wisdom is that this is an obvious strategy for a run-first offense, but modern analytics have shown that play-action success is more closely correlated with passing success than running success; i.e. teams are good at throwing play-action because they’re good at throwing the ball in general, not because of their run game, meaning that the idea of “establishing the run” or “running to set up the pass” is a myth. The run game truthers are going to pull out the torches and pitchforks, but numbers don’t lie.

That tangent aside, let’s move to the defensive side of the ball. There’s not as much to say here, both because Mercer’s defense is pretty straightforward structurally and because Morehead State spent most of their game in 10 personnel, which Auburn didn’t use once during the spring game (although there were some four- and five-wide sets using 11 personnel). Third-year DC Joel Taylor has built his defense around a base 4-2-5 look, which they seemed willing to stay in even against a true 10 personnel four-wide look, so it’s safe to say he’ll be comfortable doing the same against Auburn’s heavier personnel groupings. They seemed to mainly use one-high coverages (man free and cover 3) with some quarters mixed in. Another feature I noticed was the frequent use of “sim” (short for “simulated”) pressures, where they would show six or seven defenders at the line of scrimmage, threatening an all-out blitz, only to drop three or four of them into coverage after the snap. They didn’t use a ton of true blitz man, but their primary blitz schemes seemed to be fire (OLB blitzing C gap) and cross dog (both ILBs blitzing the opposite A gaps). They also used some stunts up front on the defensive line, but I didn’t catalog the frequency of those.

KEYS TO THE GAME

It’s hard to really talk about “keys” to winning a body bag game, since the answer is almost always going to come down to “win because you have much better players than your opponent”. However, Mercer is a pretty good team for their level with a reasonable amount of talent to work with, and I don’t think they’re going to be a pushover.

Auburn’s defensive front, and especially the inside LBs, are going to have to be disciplined against the run game and make their fits consistently without getting distracted by the eye candy. If Auburn can get stops against the run on early downs, Mercer might not have the weapons to move the ball consistently in the passing game (most of their pass yards against Morehead State came on explosive plays from play-action or RPOs). I think Auburn can be relatively aggressive here and use press man coverage to counteract Mercer’s RPO and receiver screen game, which is going to make it very hard for Mercer to constrain the perimeter defenders and get favorable boxes to run against, and if they can’t gain those numbers advantages, they’re going to struggle due to the talent differential.

It’s a bit harder to judge the other side of the ball, because I don’t think Mercer is likely to play as much man coverage against Auburn as they did against Morehead State for obvious reasons. If they stick to their base one-high looks, I think Auburn can make use of the flood concepts and two-man quick game they demonstrated in the spring game; three-man flood concepts (the most common type of bootleg concept) are highly effective against cover 3 because there are three receivers at different levels versus only two zone defenders (the deep zone defender and the hook-to-flat defender), and it’s also relatively easy to run two-man games off of that hook to flat defender because you can isolate him by formation and pick on him. Another option is to make use of Auburn’s favorite quick concept, spacing/all curl, which distributes five receivers across the field at shallow depth, flooding the four underneath zone defenders in a basic cover 3 look. I think it’s likely that Mercer will devote a lot of their resources to stopping the run (keeping a six-man box against spread looks and a seven- or eight-man box against tighter formations), which means Auburn will have to be willing to test them deep at some point, whether through play-action shots or concepts like four verticals.

I expect Auburn to keep things relatively close to the vest and focus on the run game, counting on the talent and depth disparity to carry them through. However, I’m not convinced that that’s going to be viable because I’m still highly skeptical of Auburn’s offensive line and their ability to consistently run the ball against anyone. Auburn might be able to bully inferior opponents, but I’ll believe it when I see it. Mercer is certainly capable of keeping this game close, even if it’s unlikely to pull a Jacksonville State on us. I’m not as comfortable as I should be for a body bag game, and this could be a rude awakening for Auburn fans who have expectations for this season.