Auburn head coach Alex Golesh is zeroing in on the kind of details that can swing a game in a hurry, and he wants his team cleaning them up fast before Saturday’s trip to Tennessee.
For Golesh, it starts with the basics that show up everywhere on the field: blocking in space and tackling in space. Those little moments, he said, can be the difference between a routine snap and a game-changing play.
"I think as a team, we gotta continue to grow in a big way, and we gotta do it really, really quickly, from a fundamental standpoint," Golesh told reporters on Monday. "And I'm talking about blocking in space, tackling in space, all of the little things that that can either turn a small gain into an explosive one.
Defensively, keep you out of third and fourth and shorts, and allow you to create more negatives. Those are the biggest things, we talk about tackling.
There were 16 missed tackles in that game for 68 yards, improvement from a week ago. But certainly, a big, big staple of our defense is the ability to get people down on the ground, and it's gotten better, it's not where it's got to be, and you go into an offense, like we're about to face, and that's truly what they make you do nonstop."
That’s the crux of it for Auburn right now: make the offense more dangerous without letting the defense spring leaks. Missed tackles can turn into chunk gains in a flash, and strong open-field blocking can flip a modest play into something much bigger.
The Tigers are coming off a win over Vanderbilt, a game in which the Auburn offense had eight plays of 10 yards or more. On the other side, the defense allowed six plays of at least 10 yards.
Auburn heads back onto the field Saturday against Tennessee on the road.
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