re: Auburn Defense

The defense as a whole does what it has to do. Ted Roof catches some flak, but nobody can deny that the second half adjustments we make are pretty incredible week to week. I believe we average giving up a touchdown less in the second half than we do in the first half, which is pretty incredible in itself.

If you want to know position by position details, our defensive line is the strength of the team. Everyone knows about Nick Fairley, who is just impossible to block consistently, but we also have guys who play incredibly well in Zach Clayton, our other DT, and Antoine Carter and Nosa Eguae, our starting DEs, are very good at keeping containment and making plays. We also rotate a few other defensive linemen, including Mike Blanc, Jeffrey Whittaker, Dee Ford, and Corey Lemonier, all of which are more than capable of toting the load and providing invaluable depth and talent at that position.

Our linebacking corps is pretty good, simply because having Bynes at MLB is awesome. He really is the leader of the defense, he has a great football mind and always makes plays when he can. He has a huge heart and in games where our defense gets burned (see Arkansas), he's the one who never gives up and eventually makes the plays (two late interceptions). We also play Darren Bates, former safety, who needs a little work as he tends to go for a hard hit instead of wrapping up, leading to screen passes being thrown his way and going for big yards occasionally. Our other OLB, Craig Stevens, has experience and has played incredible this year after a lackluster start against Clemson. We also play Eltoro Freeman, who is very good and getting better. Our linebacking corps on the whole are good.

The gripes of the defense come with the secondary. Etheridge is a serviceable safety, and Demond Washington is a decent CB but nothing special. He's actually pretty short, working against him. Neiko Thorpe is another CB, much maligned, and he's pretty terrible but I guess he has his moments. T'Sharvan Bell is much of the same. In all honesty our best defense against the pass in a great pass rush. We are consistently able to generate pressure without blitzing, and that is just invaluable in masking our deficiencies against the pass.


Of our defensive coaches, I'm happy with all of them sans Tommy Thigpen, the coach of our secondary. It seemed that our CBs never turned their heads to the ball when it was in the air, leading to many completions that just did not have to be completions. That problem has been resolved, but it was against Ole Miss when we first started to see our CBs turn their head, and that is just too far along in the season to resolve that problem.