Earlier this week, Auburn assistant coach Will Muschamp answered any and all questions pertaining to his defense’s unimpressive start on the Plains, highlighted by last weekend’s anemic effort against LSU.

Considered one of the college football’s best defensive minds, Muschamp said that he had never seen one of his defenses struggle as much as it has in the early going. One of this season’s goals in his first year with the Tigers was bringing back the team’s focus on becoming more physical.

Auburn’s been anything but in September.

Here’s some of the highlights from Muschamp’s meeting with the media via AL.com:

On defensive struggles through three games and if he’s seen anything like it:

“We were very young in the secondary last year at Florida and we struggled in some early games and played well as the year went on, but not in our whole defense, no. We played well (last) year in our front seven. As a total group no. I’ve never been in this situation, but again, I’m very excited about the group we have and the future. I’m in this for the long haul.”

On LSU game:

“A lot of it is want to. You’ve got to want to stick your face in the fan and tackle. That team out-physicaled us on Saturday. Frustrating, disappointing, embarrassing, whatever you want to call it. It starts with me. We were extremely disappointed with the performance starting with the first play, but more than anything, not responding. That was probably the most frustrating thing.”

On personnel changes:

“You’ll see Saturday night. Whenever you play as dismal as we did, you’ve got to make some changes. You can’t continue to make the same results.

On communication defensively:

“There are communication issues that we’ve had for the entire fall at linebacker and at safety. We don’t talk enough. We’ve tried to reduce our package week to week to week. And it’s frustrating. This comes back on me. I haven’t done a good enough job of getting players prepared.”

On Tray Matthews’ failed tackle:

“He’s trying to tackle the guy. It didn’t obviously come out the way he wanted it to. Tray’s a really good football player, a very physical player. It’s extremely easy to be critical sitting in the stands and watching Leonard Fournette running down your throat. That’s a different point of view.”

On Dak Prescott:

“Dan does a great job designing quarterback runs for the quarterback runs and developing those schemes. It makes it very difficult to defend.”

On linebacker, safety struggles:

“It’s always been an issue. It’s just a matter of communicating in front of 90,000 people and making the calls and making the adjustments in the game. If somebody does something a little different, you have to be able to adjust to it. It falls on my shoulders, nobody else.”

On what challenges Mississippi State poses offensively:

“I think they’ve recruited very well. (De’Runnya) Wilson is a very difficult matchup. (Fred) Ross is a very difficult matchup. They’re just well tied together in the run-pass game. They create what I call run-pass conflicts. They’re a hard-nosed football team. They’re going to come toe to toe with you and you got to go stick your face in the fan.”