Although Auburn lost 35-21 at LSU Saturday Sept. 21, the defense showed improvements after falling behind early.
Auburn went down 21-0 early in the second quarter after running back Jeremy Hill's third touchdown on the night. Then the defense had to make adjustments in order to outplay LSU in the second half.
"LSU is a very good football team, probably a lot better up front than we anticipated," defensive coordinator Ellis Johnson said. "Our kids deserve a lot of credit for fighting back."
One of the biggest adjustments Johnson had to make was switch the defensive line package since LSU's offensive line was controlling the game.
"We were playing five defensive linemen in our short yardage package trying to get bigger people out there. It looked good all week in practice, but frankly their offensive line out executed us," Johnson said. "We had some issues with it and didn't feel comfortable, so we got out of it in the second half and just went back to some other things we'd been doing in short yardage."
On the rainy night, Auburn's secondary contained one of the top quarterbacks in college football, Zach Mettenberger, to 229 passing yards and Jermaine Whitehead had an interception.
"I thought the corners played extremely well. Each one of them had one bad play that really hurt us. I thought they held up in coverage extremely well for the most part, especially in man," Johnson said.
Although the defense looked solid in the second half, the team must limit the explosive plays that create the long yardage touchdowns.
"You make somebody punt six times, get a fourth-down stop and you get two takeaways, you say that's a pretty good day," Johnson said. "But (LSU) got five touchdowns because of the explosive plays. We still continue to have these five or six plays that are just ugly. Not to take anything away from the opponent, but it's more self-inflicted. We just have to clean it up."
Moving on with SEC play, the defense must limit their missed assignments and mistakes, which really hurt them in the LSU game.
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