There’s a lot of change taking place on the Plains of Auburn this spring. With new coordinator Will Muschamp in town, the Tigers are expected to look quite a bit different — and better — on defense.

With the excitement around Muschamp’s hiring and the possibility of pairing an elite defense with Gus Malzahn’s offensive juggernaut, it’s easy to overlook a major plot hole in what many think could be another storybook season for the Tigers: the offense is going through a major overhaul as well.

Last year’s offense was a veteran bunch, led by senior quarterback Nick Marshall. He was flanked by two senior running backs, SEC rushing leader Cameron Artis-Payne and Corey Grant. Marshall took snaps from senior center and Rimington Award winner Reese Dismukes, and could rely on senior H-back C.J. Uzomah as both a blocker and a receiver and had senior receiver Quan Bray as a versatile threat.

Sensing something here? Auburn’s offense is losing a lot of seniors from the 2014 team. In all, seven senior starters are on their way out, as is Sammie Coates, who left a year early for the NFL Draft.

Fortunately, Auburn won’t be turning to totally inexperienced players to fill those voids. Jeremy Johnson has been the heir apparent at quarterback for two years now, and he got into seven games last year while backing up Marshall. At running back, the Tigers have two options to plug in: sophomore Roc Thomas, a former five-star signee, and Jovon Robinson, the top JUCO player in the country last year.

They also get D’haquille Williams back for his senior season — a bit of a surprise, as many expected he’d spend just one year at Auburn before jumping to the NFL after coming to the Tigers from junior college. He’ll have Ricardo Louis playing alongside him, another senior with plenty of experience.

While the Tigers lose a big group of veterans, it’s still not as bad as the last time they saw this kind of exodus of talent, following the 2010 championship season. After that year — when eight offensive starters departed, including Cam Newton — the Tigers dropped from having one of the best offenses in the country (seventh in both scoring and total offense) to a very mediocre one, ranking 70th and 100th in those two categories, respectively.

The difference, hopefully for Malzahn and offensive coordinator Rhett Lashlee, is the quarterback. In 2011, Auburn shuffled through Barrett Trotter and Clint Moseley as starters, with Kiehl Frazier making an appearance in all 13 games as a freshman. Despite talk of competition at quarterback, it’s likely just for the backup spot.

Johnson has all the tools to run a top-flight SEC offense, and he’ll almost certainly be the guy once the season starts. Even as Malzahn declines to name even a favorite, the Tigers are more stable at quarterback than they were when Newton left school for the NFL.

The 2011 team’s offense was the worst Malzahn has coached at the SEC level, albeit he was the OC then and not the head coach. Despite the huge turnover, he and Lashlee have the players in place to make sure there’s no steep drop off like there was in four years ago.