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A spirit that is not afraid

Lack of explosive plays limiting No. 9 Auburn's offense

<p>Jarrett Stidham (8) prepares for a play during Auburn Football vs. Washington on Saturday, Sept. 1, 2018 in Atlanta, GA.&nbsp;</p>

Jarrett Stidham (8) prepares for a play during Auburn Football vs. Washington on Saturday, Sept. 1, 2018 in Atlanta, GA. 

This season, Auburn’s offense has fallen short of its sky-high expectations set at the beginning of the year. 

The troublesome start can be attributed to a number of things, but the absence of explosive plays is the one that the Tigers know needs to be changed. 

In 2017, the Tigers were one of the top teams not only in the SEC, but the entire country when it came to explosive plays. Auburn finished second in the conference and 12th in the nation with 41 plays of 30 yards or more – 25 through the air, 16 on the ground. 

The loss of Kerryon Johnson to the NFL made it almost certain there would be some drop off in the running game, which put more of the responsibility on the passing attack, which seemed up for the task going into the season.

Auburn’s 2018 recruiting class consisted of three 4-star wide receivers that had high expectations of contributing early; not to mention the fact that Auburn was returning all receivers from last season’s team. Added all up with Jarrett Stidham returning for another year, Auburn looked poised to blow the top off defenses. 

That has not been the case so far. The Tigers have struggled with connecting on explosive plays this season, placing 13th in the SEC and falling from one of the best in the country last season to one of the worst at No. 121. 

So far this season, Auburn has only connected on two plays of 30 yards or more. One came on a 57-yard touchdown pass from Jarrett Stidham to freshman Anthony Schwartz against FCS opponent Alabama State. The second came on a 33-yard wheel route to another freshman Asa Martin against LSU. 

Auburn’s lack of a consistent rushing leader has led the Tigers to using multiple backs throughout the game and none have proven to have that explosive step with only four runs eclipsing the 20-yard mark.

The running game has suffered a good bit this season and that blame cannot be put on the running backs solely because four new starters along the offensive line and the loss of Johnson has made it hard to get an established run game going this season. 

Opposing defensive lines have had success against Auburn’s offensive line by only rushing three or four at a time and that has made it difficult for both the passing and rushing game. 

Rushing three or four means that defenses are dropping seven or eight men into coverage, which makes the windows smaller for Stidham to throw into. 

Against Washington, the Huskies were showing a lot of Cover 3 defense,which made it almost impossible to throw behind the safeties. So the Tigers focused on the intermediate, middle of the field passes that were located underneath the safeties. In the game the Tigers had eight passing plays in the 15 to 25-yard intermediate range but none exceeding a 24-yard pass to Nate Craig-Myers. 

Against Alabama State, there was a good bit of quarter defense and that gave the Tigers an opportunity to utilize the deep ball a little more, but the 57-yard touchdown by Schwartz was the only play that exceeded 30 yards all day. 

When LSU came to The Plains this past weekend, they flashed a single high safety look, which gave Auburn the opportunity to take advantage of the one on one matchups on the outside. The Tigers failed to take advantage with their lone explosive play being the wheel route from Martin that went for 33 yards. Stidham targeted Slayton a few times on the outside but could not connect on a big one and even tossed an interception when looking for a back shoulder throw late in the third quarter. 

"I think any time you can get an explosive play, it kind of ups your tempo, ups your game a little bit,” Stidham said. “I think that's something we really need to focus on, trying to get a little bit more explosive plays.”

Washington and LSU are heralded as having top-tier secondaries. Stidham knows that he can’t afford to take chances against the opportunistic defensive backfields. 

“At the end of the day, we're going to take what the defense gives us,” Stidham said. "You can't try and force too many things. We'll just take a look at it and see what we can do."

The Tigers know that the explosive play was a big part of last year’s team’s success and the goal is to get back to that going into Arkansas and ride that momentum for the rest of the season.

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"When we're at our best, we have more explosive plays," head coach Gus Malzahn said. "That's something that we'll be working hard to do.”


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