Auburn came just short of getting a massive upset over Georgia on Saturday, and one of the weakest areas of the game for the Tigers was their 3rd down execution.
Auburn was just 2-for-12 on 3rd downs, with several of those failures coming late in the game. They also only converted on 1 fourth down conversion out of 3 attempts.
Moving forward, converting 3rd downs is going to be a point of emphasis for the Tigers.
“We’ve got to have a better 3rd down plan,” Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze said at the Monday Morning Quarterback Club. “Some of the time, you give credit to the defense, they won. They’re national champions 2 years in a row and they beat you in a 1-on-1. But I think our plan could’ve been better. I’m always the hardest critic on myself and the staff if I think we could’ve done more things, and I think we had better options on those critical 3rd downs and we’ve got to make sure the ball is touching our best players’ hands. And they have to execute it obviously, the 1 4th down, we had a really high snap that our back never got on track, and those things happen sometimes too, but I do think our plan needs to be better.”
In SEC football, everything counts, and Auburn will need a better 3rd down plan moving forward.
Luckily, the Tigers will get a chance to regroup during the bye week, but they’ll have a tough matchup against LSU waiting for them on the other side.
