A week after Auburn earned their first SEC win of the season against Arkansas (on the road nonetheless) they returned home to welcome in Kentucky on Saturday night.
Some midweek comments from Kentucky quarterback Zach Calzada (who transferred out of Auburn after an injury riddled season a couple of years ago) notwithstanding, Kentucky instead turned to quarterback Cutter Boley as their starter against Auburn in Jordan-Hare on Saturday night.
Neither offense was prolific or even efficient in this one, however Kentucky’s defense (led by 7 sacks) played well enough to outlast Auburn at the end of the day, ultimately coming away with a 10-3 victory on the Plains.
Auburn faced some quarterback drama of their own, ultimately deciding to hand the offensive keys to off-season transfer addition Ashton Daniels, who made his first start in an Auburn uniform on Saturday.
By the time you read this, the news of Auburn moving on from Head Coach Hugh Freeze will have already hit the wire, however we won’t analyze that here, or speculate on potential replacements. We’ll focus on the game at hand.
Kentucky came into the game winless in the SEC, however picked up their first SEC victory of the season on the road after a frisky performance under Head Coach Mark Stoops.
Auburn lost the football game, so we’ll start with the bad…
1. Pass Protection:
It feels as though a common theme in the “bad” category this season has been the pass protection. Really the offensive line as a whole, but for this segment we’ll highlight their struggles with pass blocking.
Among many factors, Auburn’s paltry pass protection (although not always necessarily an offensive line issue) has been an Achilles heel this season and has led to Auburn’s disappointing win/loss success.
Auburn gave up 7 sacks on Saturday night, and although it has been mentioned that sacks allowed are a nuanced stat that can’t always be blamed solely on the offensive line, both the Auburn quarterbacks that took snaps in this one (Ashton Daniels and Jackson Arnold) were constantly harassed, not given enough time to progress through their reads and make accurate throws. The structure of Auburn’s offense was far out of sorts, and any sort of rhythm was nonexistent due to the lackluster pass blocking.
2. Third Down Defence:
The third down defensive woes came to fruition again on Saturday night. The defense was good for the most part all night, only giving up a total of 10 points despite a lackluster offensive performance that did not give the defense much run support or rest on the sidelines. The margin of error was minimal, nearly zero.
Kentucky finished 6 of 13 on third down, not overly efficient numbers, but a good chunk of them were long down and distance third down attempts, which turned into conversions.
Kendrick Law made an 18 yard catch on 3rd and 10 early in the first quarter, Kentucky Quarterback Cutter Boley then completed a 13 yard pass on 3rd and 11 in the third quarter, then threw a 30 yard pass completion later in the drive on another 3rd and 11.
Allowing conversions on third and long is overly frustrating. It means your defense was fantastic for the first two downs, only to have a breakdown on third down and allow the drive to continue. This keeps your offense on the sidelines, and prolongs the time on the field for your defense, leading to fatigue.
3. Running game:
Fans had been clamouring for an increased devotion to running the football for weeks, and unfortunately the rushing attack felt stagnant on Saturday. It has been eluded to that the Auburn running back stable isn’t necessarily deep since Damari Alston’s dismissal from the team, leading to Jeremiah Cobb earning the bulk of the carries.
Cobb had looked good in much of Auburn’s recent games, showing the ability to carry the workload, however he and the rest of the running game were stagnant in this one.
Auburn finished with 118 yards on the ground, with Cobb gaining 70 of those yards on 20 carries. It has been presumed that run blocking is a strength of Auburn’s offensive line, but that did not prove to be true in this one.
Backup Quarterback Ashton Daniels added 48 yards on 15 carries, meaning that besides QB runs and non-designed scrambles on broken plays, the true Auburn handoff game was poor.
The running game was less than explosive, and failed to take the pressure off of a Quarterback making his first start in an Auburn uniform (Ashton Daniels) and an offensive line that has been inconsistent in the pass blocking game.
Now for the good…
1. Defensive takeaway:
Despite the many 3rd and long conversions by Kentucky, the Auburn defense did their part in this one to win the game. It was apparent early that it was going to be a difficult night offensively, so the defense took the game into their hands, intercepting a pass late in the first half to set up an Auburn field goal (which unfortunately would be the only points that Auburn would score in this one).
The interception was forced by true freshman linebacker Elijah Melendez, great to see from a young player that will hopefully be roaming the Plains for years to come. The interception will hopefully give Melendez confidence in his young career.
2. Penalties:
Saturday turned out to be a pretty clean game in the penalties department, as Auburn generally finds themselves in the double-digit flag category, however in this one they only committed 4.
Pre-snap penalties and personal fouls had been often committed penalties on the Auburn side, but they were much more disciplined in this one. Whether that is due to coaching, or the players on the field taking a stand and cleaning up their discipline, the penalty number being so low is certainly encouraging.
3. No offensive turnovers:
Even though they only scored 3 points, the Auburn offense did not turn the ball over. With a Quarterback (albeit somewhat experienced) starting his first game in an Auburn uniform in the SEC, not throwing an interception is certainly commendable.
The offense took care of the football, not putting the ball on the ground and allowing Kentucky free yardage.
Promising performance in that category.
Heading into their Saturday night clash with fellow SEC foe Kentucky, Auburn decided to make a Quarterback change, turning to Stanford transfer Ashton Daniels.
Unfortunately, with his parents in attendance, Daniels was unable to create the spark that Hugh Freeze was hoping to see in this one, as the offense lacked explosiveness, cohesiveness, and looked even more stagnant than in recent games, ultimately only mustering 3 total points.
Despite the aforementioned third down conversions allowed, the Auburn defense was quite stingy, creating a turnover and only allowing 10 total points.
The strong defensive effort was unfortunately not enough, and Auburn fell at home to Kentucky by a final score of 10-3.
Brutal offensive performance, and even worse when the Head Coach is deemed as an “offensive guy”. Unfortunately it hasn’t worked for Freeze at Auburn, which seems like a blanket and generic statement but the close losses keep piling up, and the wins against conference opponents are few and far between.
Credit to Kentucky, they came into Jordan-Hare amid Head Coaching rumors of their own and did enough to win the game.
Another date with Diego Pavia looms next week, as Auburn travels to Nashville to play the surprising Vanderbilt Commodores, who are ranked 15th in the nation with a 7-2 record.
Pavia has been a thorn is Auburn’s side for seemingly his whole career, besting them in Jordan-Hare as New Mexico State’s starting quarterback, and then getting the better of them a second time after he transferred to Vanderbilt.
Time for Auburn to ignore the distractions and outside noise, and focus on what matters, their play on the grass in between the white lines. See you in Nashville this upcoming Saturday.
As always… War Eagle!!
