Film Study: Miss. St. hasn't seen anything like Auburn thus far

The entire state of Mississippi is on a collective cloud nine after seeing both of its major schools vault into the top five of the college football rankings (tied for third to be exact) after wins against Texas A&M and the University of Alabama, respectively.

Both teams must now navigate the rest of a grueling schedule with the Mississippi State Bulldogs facing possibly the best team in the entire nation, the Auburn Tigers, and the University of Mississippi now getting its crack at Texas A&M.

For the Bulldogs, a 48-31 win over the Aggies doesn’t quite indicate just how dominant of a performance it was. State took a top-flight passing attack and pretty much stymied it until the waning moments of the tilt.

Aggie quarterback Kenny Hill had to have thought the Bulldogs were playing with 13 defenders as he looked bewildered by the multiple looks State defensive coordinator Geoff Collins deployed.

Hill, who came into the game having already thrown 17 touchdown opposed to just two interceptions, threw three picks — mostly of the egregious variety — in what was undoubtedly the worst performance of his brief, yet promising, career.

For the State defense, it begins and ends in the trenches and on the second level. With arguably the premier defensive front in all of college football you’d expect to see some NFL-caliber players sprinkled throughout the two-deep.

Wonder no more; this front is loaded with “Sunday players.”

Defensive Front Vs. Auburn’s Vaunted Rushing Attack

It gets no better than the inside/out duo of Chris Jones and Preston Smith. The sophomore Jones, 6’5″, 300 pounds, will undoubtedly hear his name called within the top-15 selections of whatever draft he declares for (at least).

His off-the-snap quickness is on par with some of the better 3-technique tackles in the game. But his frame is large enough to see him dominate as a 5-technique end in an odd-front alignment.

State employs a 4-3-based scheme, that sprinkles in odd-front principles, so we get to see Jones one-gap penetrate as well as hold up blocks.

Here we see Jones lined up at a 2-technique (with an inside shade). Lining him up here allows him to be a backfield disruptor, by way of occupying the A-gap, which forces the opposition to use two blockers against him.

The ability to get quick in-your-face pressure is what distinguishes State from other great defenses. Kaleb Eulls, P.J. Jones, Curtis Virges and the aforementioned Jones comprise one of the deepest, quality interior rotations in the nation.

As it pertains to Auburn, the Tigers do a fantastic job of spreading defenses out only to attack the interior of the line. It can be argued that outside of the University of Arkansas — and Mississippi State, for that matter — the Tigers possess the most smashmouth run game in existence.

But what separates them from State, and puts them on Arkansas’ level, is their ability to get variation out of their offensive blocking scheme.

Whams, Counters, Traps, as well as man- and zone-blocking concepts will come into play from the Tigers’ vaunted rushing attack. They stay in “grown man” personnel (“12” and “22 personnel”) and know how to derive different results from plays that initially start the same.

Here’s an example of the Tigers ability to win at the point of attack. On this read-option play, the Tigers seal both sides of the line with star running back Cameron Artis-Payne turning a defender’s ankle into sawdust when it looked like he was stopped dead to rights.

Watching Auburn try to get its between-the-tackles run game off against State’s interior defense will be worth its weight in gold for fans of hardcore football.

And for a former linebacker like myself, seeing State’s top-notch linebacker corps try to corral Auburn’s perimeter run game will be like an early Christmas gift.

Middle linebacker Benardrick McKinney is a 6’5″, 250-pound sideline-to-sideline blur. Although he’s billed as a throwback, due to his prototypical size, his ability to cover, rush, blitz and is very much on par with today’s hybrid linebackers.

His counterpart, Beniquez Brown, may be just as talented, although he hasn’t quite generated the publicity. Both have great instincts and both bring the thunder upon impact.

Auburn’s perimeter run game is as good as it gets. QB Nick Marshall may be the premier outside runner on a team full of them. His speed, a reported 4.4 in the 40-yard dash, may only be superseded by his short-area agility.

When you mesh his talents with the stylings of the uber-fast Corey Grant, you have a bit of a conundrum on your hands — if you’re the opposition, that is.

“Scraping” and “funnelling” will be a must for the State linebackers.

Here we see Auburn performing a “jet sweep” in last season’s Week 3 tilt with State. A couple of aspects make this particular play difficult to defend: the threat of Marshall keeping the ball and turning it into a QB dive, and the fact that the fastest player on the field receives two lead blockers and a possible three-way go.

State actually played this pretty well — considering it didn’t go for a 50-yard gain — by disallowing Grant to truly hit the edges. The slot corner (who is actually talented hybrid linebacker Matthew Wells) initially played it perfectly by staying on the outside shoulder of the blocker he was engaged with.

But then his discipline failed him and caused him to go back inside. He did force Grant to slow up and bend it back outside which allowed McKinney to make the stop after only a 10-yard gain.

Between Artis-Payne, Grant and Marshall, State has its work cut out in the run game. But if any defense is up to the task of containing such an attack — much like Kansas State did a few games ago (click here to see how) — it would be one that has supreme interior line play and sideline-to-sideline linebackers.

State most certainly fits that description; but Auburn has evolved into more than just a smash-mouth outfit.

Auburn’s Vertical Passing Attack

Overall, Auburn possesses the most talent on offense in the Southeastern Conference. Although it’s known for its rushing attack, it may be the only team in the country with two future first-round picks at the receiver position: juniors Sammie Coates and D’haquille “Duke” Williams.

Both receivers would still thrive in a pass-centric offense where they’d receive extra attention from defensive coordinators. But when you take into account the attention that Auburn’s run game generates it makes it extremely difficult to provide the necessary help it would take to corral these two beasts.

I’ve already opined about the 6’2″ 201-pound Coates (click here to read my breakdown on him); he’s the perfect blend of physicality, speed and tenacity. He’s scheme diverse as he could be the X- or Z-receiver in vertical-stretch offense, and he could certainly be an S-receiver in a rhythm-and-timing scheme.

Williams (6’2″, 216 lbs), the No. 1-ranked JUCO prospect for 2014, has exceeded the hype that preceded his arrival on campus. His propensity of making spectacular catches look rather routine is truly uncanny.

While Marshall may not have quite the arm talent of State’s QB Dak Prescott — who looks to have enough talent to be a top-10 selection in the NFL draft — his game has evolved into being a more efficient passer.

As for the actual scheme, Auburn loves to run a ton of route combination: smash concepts, post/wheel, go/curls etc.

State’s actual pass defense has been a hit-or-miss proposition. Despite having possibly the top overall defensive front, it hasn’t been enough to affect things on the back end.

It’s even more puzzling when you consider the talent in State’s secondary: Jamerson Love (corner), Will Redmond (corner) and Taveze Calhoun (safety) immediately come to mind. Busted coverage and being outworked on 50/50 balls have plagued State’s secondary; Auburn may test it like no other.

The best passer on the team, and possibly in the conference, is backup QB Jeremy Johnson. Auburn wouldn’t lose a beat with him as the starter which makes leaving him on the bench pretty much impossible for Auburn head coach Gus Malzahn.

Here we see the Tigers dive deep into their bag of tricks with a vintage “Wildcat” play.

This particular play was birthed when Malzahn was a co-coordinator for the University of Arkansas (2006-07) when running backs Darren McFadden and Felix Jones help make this formation all the rage in football.

Receiver Quan Bray lined up at QB and ran a jet sweep to Grant who then proceeded to toss the ball to Johnson (who was lined up at receiver); Johnson put the ball in the only place it could be, which in turn allowed Coates to box out the corner for the catch.

As we can see Auburn has a plethora of ways to move the ball. Conversely, State has a ton of ways to stifle offenses.

The difference in the game may be who can create the most turnovers; I struggle with who I think will actually win this game as these teams are very similar in style (on both sides of the ball).

It will certainly be a well-contested tilt between two teams with the personnel and scheme to win it all; I personally can’t wait.

Is it game day, yet?