Taming the Tigers: Auburn's challenge on defense different this year than last year vs. Watson and Co.
Last year’s Auburn-Clemson matchup served as a coming out party for Kevin Steele’s War Eagle defense. They held the eventual national champion Tigers to a season-low in points and 399 total yards in a narrow 19-13 defeat.
After a year of working under Will Muschamp, the Auburn defense was well prepared for Steele’s similar yet even simpler defensive concepts. That allowed the physically talented Auburn D to began to play sound, effective football against even the most lethal modern offenses.
Saturday’s rematch at No. 3 Clemson should be simpler, on paper at least, with the ACC Tigers looking at a pretty considerable overhaul on offense. However Clemson’s 56-3 opening week victory over Kent State made clear that Dabo Swinney and his staff have made adjustments to keep their offense fresh and vibrant for the coming year. Here’s a glimpse into what Auburn is facing in this contest.
A reworked philosophy on offense
Clemson was nominally a spread-option offense last year that mixed in QB runs for Deshaun Watson both to help out RB Wayne Gallman and to feature Watson’s own incredible athleticism in their run game. But when push came to shove, they were a pro-style passing team as revealed in the Pittsburgh game when Watson threw 70 passes and in the championship game when he threw 56 while taking down Alabama.
Their best feature on offense was their ability to flex out TE Jordan Leggett (736 receiving yards) with slot WR Hunter Renfrow (495 receiving yards) while playing WRs Mike Williams (1361 yards) and Deon Cain (724 yards) on the outside. It was much too much receiving talent for even the Alabama secondary to keep up with and Watson was brilliant delivering the ball from the pocket.
Watson, Leggett and Williams were the most dangerous components to that system and now they are all gone, leaving replacements who don’t have the same skills or proficiency for executing a pro-style attack. However, the Clemson staff has already made several adjustments to retool the offense as a more effective spread-option team that doesn’t need the pro-style passing game as a trump card.
They slid in mauling OL Tremayne Anchrum at RT, displacing last year’s tackle Jake Fruhmorgen, who was better in protection; that led him to transfer to Baylor. At TE they’re now rolling with Milan Richard, who’s less threatening as a route runner than Leggett but also more imposing in the box as a blocker. They’re also making increased use of their H-back position, staffed by explosive players like flex RB Ray-Ray McCloud.
The biggest concern in stopping new-look Clemson is making sure it doesn’t burn you on the perimeter with a quick toss or sweep to a player like McCloud or Amari Rodgers while still getting enough numbers to stop the explosive two-headed run game of QB Kelly Bryant and RB C.J. Fuller.
You can see how all those threats can over-stress a defense on this 3rd-and-3 that Clemson converts with a QB counter run for Bryant.
H-back Amari Rodgers is stationed at the bottom of the screen as a potential target on a screen with two lead blockers, including the TE. Meanwhile Clemson is really running a counter play for Bryant with the RB serving as a lead blocker for him. The free safety is left to try and make the tackle before the marker, an assignment with a dubious success rate.
The War Eagle’s perch
Auburn had to deal with all of this a year ago as well against Clemson, though perhaps against a less intimidating collection of blockers. Their solution then was a 4-2-5 nickel defense that relied on nickel safety Rudy Ford to get involved in the run game.
This time they might treat it differently, if their defense of Georgia Southern’s spread-option attack in Week 1 was any guide.
They used a few different looks to handle Georgia Southern, but this is a press-quarters scheme that matches the opposing wideouts with press-man coverage while using the safeties to rob routes over the middle of the field against the pass and be unaccounted-for extras in the run game.
Against Clemson’s QB counter scheme that might look like this:
The key is the play of the nickel and the corners. They’re all playing man coverage with some safety help on the more dangerous inside routes like posts and digs but with a lot of onus for handling those receivers on their own. Because of their press alignments and man assignments, they thus free up the safeties to aggressively insert themselves in the run game and eliminate the numbers advantage that Clemson can get from using option concepts and QB run game.
To punish this style, Bryant will have to prove he can beat good man coverage with his arm, which is still very much in question (22 of his 40 career attempts came last week in his first start). Otherwise Auburn will be able to keep the ACC Tigers in front of them and force long, efficient drives.
Additionally, even with this aggressive style of safety play, the War Eagle DL needs to win the day against Clemson’s new-look OL. That hard charging safety support can clean up or capitalize on sound play up front, but if the Clemson OL is clearing out big creases with their blocks, then those safeties are will be racing downhill only to get juked and have to watch from a perch face down on the turf as Fuller or Bryant head untouched to the end zone.
