By Brant Daughtry

Yeah I’m getting a little cute with this, sue me.

That said, the bye week is a time for self reflection. You take a few days and while the team gets back to practicing the fundamentals of the game, the coaches go and self-scout. Acting as though they’re the opponents, coaches watch their team’s film and try to identify patterns, tendencies, ways to beat their own team. It allows coaches to go back to the drawing board, create new ways to break their own tendencies, find new ways to change things up.

There’s been a lot of discussion about Auburn’s offense lately, and with good reason. On one hand, the team chews up yards and can create explosiveness out of thin air. Auburn is averaging 6.2 yards per play, good for 29th in the country. That’s not elite, but it’s definitely good enough for what Auburn was expected to be. Especially coming off a game against Georgia, where the team was able to make it past midfield a normal amount of times and didn’t turn the ball over, unless you count a failed 4th down attempt. You can make the argument the offense is definitely headed in the right direction.

However, you don’t get points for picking up yards. Explosive plays are fantastic, and the great offenses have them. But the sport is about finishing your drives, and Auburn isn’t doing that. The team is averaging 21.3 points per game, good for 93rd in the country. Take away the two paycheck games Auburn has played, and that number drops to 15.5. Yards are great, but the scoring hasn’t come with it. Auburn can move the ball well, but in the red zone and when it needs short hard yards, that production hasn’t come.

So that’s what the bye week is for. Auburn has to first and foremost figure out how to move the ball in short field scenarios. The quick answer is “give the ball to Jarquez” but of course it’s never that simple. Becoming predictable is the quickest way to die on offense. If you immediately go to inside zone on every 3rd or 4th-and-one, you’ll never get that yard. So it’s up to Freeze to figure out the best way to get the ball in the right hands. Nine times out of ten, those hands with be Jarquez Hunter’s. But it has to be done in the right way.

Defensively, I’ve been impressed with DJ Durkin’s ability to adjust. While I still don’t love his defensive philosophy of the 3-3, especially in obvious passing situations, he’s found ways to change up looks and create pressure when he needs to. Now, far too often, he still continues to rush three. As a general rule, I’m just not a fan, especially with all three rushers being hand-in-the-dirt big guys. Quarterbacks are just too mobile in today’s game to get away with that consistently, even with a revelation like Keldric Faulk at defensive end.

The biggest thing that has to change though, is the relationship between the head coach and quarterback. Coaches and players getting into heated discussions isn’t new. Yelling at each other is not a sign of a broken relationship. The game is emotional, and guys get emotional around it. Competitiveness is a good thing. This constant back and forth though, is not. Clearly, there’s a disconnect here, and it’s on the head coach, the adult in this room, to bridge that gap.

But what about the plays in question? What happened and why? To answer that, I’m unveiling a new segment. I can’t promise it’ll happen every week, but I have some thoughts I need to put down. Welcome to Film Study.

All images courtesy of ESPN.

Here’s the look that Auburn presents. Pistol set, with a bunch off to the offenses left. Clear indicator of strength, something UGA’s defense works off of a lot. Looking simply at this set, we can see that Auburn has a numbers advantage to that side. I like the idea here, all things considered. A bunch set, especially one close to the tackle, makes it impossible for all three defenders responsible for those players to play close to the line, lest they run into each other. Auburn has, at the theoretical point of attack, set up a 4-on-2 battle, with the left tackle and defensive end locked up one on one with assistance from one of the tight ends if needed, and the bunch set largely responsible for the linebacker walked up.

Pre-snap, Thorne walks up to right tackle Dillon Wade, and the two discuss blocking assignments. Wade points down to the defensive lineman, suggesting he’s not blocking 11, the end man on the line. There doesn’t appear to be a miscommunication there, Thorne and Wade are on the same page, at least from my point of view. Notice the other eyes on Thorne, especially those in the bunch at the bottom. What Thorne saw here, I can’t say for sure. It’s possible he didn’t like the traffic the bunch created, or he wanted a cleaner read from a true free rusher. But if you believe the quotes given by Thorne and Freeze up to this point, Thorne didn’t go to a different play, he flipped the side it was meant to go to. By running away from that bunch, Auburn lost the numbers advantage.

Thorne then motions Hunter to stand on his right side instead of behind him. The strength is now in question. Georgia doesn’t show any movement pre snap to adjust to this, but you can bet it probably changes their assignments. Most would still call this strong to the offenses left side, with that bunch, but depending on matchup you could call it to the right, since that’s where Hunter is set up. Again, Thorne points out 11 at the top of the screen to Hunter. 11 has become the read key. And with all the times Auburn has pointed to him, he can probably figure that out.

I love a sky cam angle. This look shows how Auburn is choosing to manipulate splits. Look at the distance between Luke Deal and Rivaldo Fairweather, 86 and 13. Auburn has designed space for that spot, and gotten good angles from the defenders. However, 11 is free, there’s no traffic around him and as far as a read key, he’s easy to see.

This is one of the more important screen shots I’ll show here, and it kinda hurts. The most important thing to note here is the behavior of Georgia’s four down lineman. They pinch towards the inside, trying to stop the inside dive. If Thorne doesn’t motion Jarquez Hunter to shotgun instead of pistol, we don’t know how that behavior changes. Georgia is a very reactionary defense, and what they do changes based on the look they get. But with that said, look at that space over on the left side. Percy Lewis, 73, had a rough game at times, but he’s getting really good movement at the point of attack. Fairweather isn’t exactly WINNING his block on this play, but with the spacing pre-snap he’s generating a stalemate and that’s good enough. With Keondre Lambert-Smith and Luke Deal inserting and becoming lead blockers, a run off the left side of the line picks up the first and probably more. Instead, we see Thorne and Hunter running what looks like some kind of zone read look. 11, who as stated earlier has been pointed at several times and probably knows he’s important, crashes on the mesh point and blows the play up in the backfield. You know the rest.

It looks to me, a person who doesn’t know the original play call and doesn’t know how much freedom a quarterback in a Hugh Freeze offense has to completely change a call, that Thorne wanted to go to the short side to make the read cleaner and the run easier if he kept it. But the blocking by that bunch on the left side makes it seem like there was no ability to read on that left side. I don’t know how you could have the inserts from Luke Deal and KLS without that block out from Fairweather. But Freeze says Thorne didn’t change the play, Thorne swears up and down he didn’t change the play. The read was originally on another player, not the end man on the line of scrimmage, if those two are telling the truth.

This presents an entirely different problem. Why is there a read in the first place? I don’t feel the need to reiterate the “feed Jarquez” thing. We’ve been over it. But I have to keep asking the question. Why does Hugh Freeze feel the need to give his quarterback, not Payton Thorne specifically, but the quarterback of his offense, as much freedom as he does? Why is everything an option, a choice, a decision? I believe Hugh Freeze has to find a way to have a hard and fast play called and 100% run. Some part of the playbook language has to say “there is no changing this call, we are running exactly what’s set up.” Having a quarterback that can make decisions is great, but at some point, buck stops with the head coach. And Freeze needs to figure that out sooner than later.