Auburn defense emphasizes tackling, limiting explosive plays before Tennessee
Missed tackles have turned into missed opportunities for Auburn’s defense this season.
While the Tigers are one of the more efficient teams in the nation in creating negative plays, missed tackles have failed to back up the plays made in the backfield. Auburn ranks eighth in the country in tackles for loss and is top-25 in sacks this season.
“If that could be combined with high-level perimeter tackling, you could be dominant,” said head coach Alex Golesh. “And we've been a defense that's created negatives, that's created pressure on the quarterback. It's hard to live in that world because a lot of the missed tackle opportunities have been in space, and they end up causing explosives.”
Auburn missed 24 tackles in its 44-39 loss to Florida two weeks ago. Those numbers dropped to 16 missed tackles against Vanderbilt, but a key difference was limiting explosive plays from missed tackles.
Golesh pointed to four plays in particular where high effort on the sideline saved a potential explosive play from happening after a missed tackle. Dallas Walker IV, Da’Shawn Womack, Xavier Atkins and Cody Sigler each made a play, essentially covering up the mistake.
However, there won’t always be someone to bail out a missed tackle. That’s what Golesh is focused on correcting.
“You can cover some of that up where they don't create explosives with just high-level effort out of the stack to get out on the perimeter,” Golesh said. “But at times you're going to get tangled up, and you're not going to have that cover-you-up tackle on the sideline, and so you've got to eliminate those.”
Auburn had a heavy emphasis on tackling this week in practice leading up to its game against Tennessee.
“We emphasized tackling,” said defensive lineman Buddy Mathis. “We really emphasized it [Tuesday]. That's one of our key things, tackling, urgency, violence, all of that. So we just work on it every day. We’re just getting better and better at it.”
Golesh admitted there are some missed tackles you can live with — high effort attempts that use the sideline as essentially a 12th defender. The ones you can’t live with? Missed tackles in open space because of poor leverage.
Eliminating those begins in practice with quality reps every single time.
“It is a doing it over and over and over and gaining confidence that you can do it,” Golesh said. “And so we got to continue to not just harp on it, but rep it. Repetition is the mother of all learning and tackling is no different than anything else. It's the reps, it's the reps, it's the reps, and you've got to be able to simulate it in practice to give these guys confidence.”
The opportunity to be a dominant defense is there. Auburn makes the negative plays. It’s now about piecing together proper tackling and limiting explosive plays.
“It is something that you've got to do, and it's something that we got to get better at, to eliminate the explosives,” Golesh said. “You're not going to prevent them all, but you certainly have to limit the explosives in every way.”
