What Mike Bobo said about fall camp

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What Mike Bobo said about Bo Nix, Auburn’s offense and start of fall camp

By Tom Green | tgreen@al.com

19-24 minutes

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Auburn had its first day off of the preseason on Monday, and though the Tigers weren’t on the practice field, a couple of assistant coaches met with the media for the first time this fall.

First-year offensive coordinator Mike Bobo spoke with the media for the first time since the spring and discussed a wide range of topics regarding Auburn’s offense. He was asked plenty about Bo Nix and his development, the Tigers’ inexperienced receiving corps, competition along the offensive line and just the process of piecing together the offensive system with head coach Bryan Harsin.

Here’s a look at everything Bobo had to say just three practices into fall camp:

Mike Bobo, Auburn offensive coordinator

On collaborating on the offense with Bryan Harsin…

“Yeah, it’s been fun getting together with Coach Harsin and the other guys on this staff. There’s a lot of knowledge in the offensive staff room, and it’s always a challenge when you go somewhere and start new. You’ve got your own challenges each and every year because each team is a little bit different. I think the biggest challenge for us right now is not what we want to do and what we believe in -- I wouldn’t be here and be with Coach Harsin if we weren’t aligned in a lot of what we believe offensively; we believe in attacking and playing attacking offense. I think the challenge arises for us is still trying to figure out who we are as the 2021 Auburn football team. You know, what are our strengths we need to build upon? Whether it’s an individual’s personal strength and what he does well, or the strengths of each unit, and then what are our weaknesses? What do we need to improve on -- things that we’re not quite ready to go to the next step with.

“We’ve had three days of practice -- we’ll have Day 4 tomorrow. Right now we’re throwing a lot at them, and while we’re doing that, we’re still trying to figure out who we are. We’re still in the process of, you know, building the Auburn offense of what we want it to be. There’s a lot of offenses out there, there’s a lot of different ways to do things. I think everyone in that room has done a lot of things offensively, schematically. I think, you know, being a good coach, you have to figure out what your players do and what they do well and give them a chance to be successful.”

On freshman receiver Tar’Varish Dawson…

“I think it was a good sign for Auburn -- he did sign at the second (period), but we recruited him when we got here -- he was committed to Auburn. I’ve known about him since I got back in the league when I was at the other school last year. We recruited him there; I talked to him on the phone. What I like about him was his ability to run. He has elite speed. Obviously he has track times, but he has game-changing speeds that can create explosive plays off his ability. Right now you can see the guy has speed; he’s made some tough catches in practice; he’s won some with his speed. Right now it’s learning what to do. He’s got talent, and that’s our job as coaches to figure out what he can do and put himself in position to be successful. But I like his attitude. He likes football, he likes to compete. We had a conversation this morning, him and I, about what he needs to keep working on to improve, and that’s focusing on what his coach tells him on a daily basis and not getting ahead of himself -- try to improve as a receiver each and every day.”

On what has impressed him about Bo Nix…

“What’s impressed me most about working with Bo Nix? That’s the question? Just his work ethic. I’ve been extremely impressed with how hard this young man works -- whether it’s in the weight room, whether it’s running the decks this summer in the stadium, how he prepares for each meeting. Coming in beforehand with the offensive staff, I walk around the corner to my office and he’s sitting there constantly watching film, getting ready for the meeting, preparing. The questions that he asks -- he leaves no stone unturned. His work ethic No. 1, and then he’s the ultimate competitor.

“He wants to win at everything, not just football. Anything that we do that has competition, Bo Nix wants to win. So work ethic and (being a) competitor, and then the last one: being vulnerable, which I think is a good trait that Bo and I have talked about. About being vulnerable, about taking coaching. I understand I’m his third coach in three years in that quarterback room, but being vulnerable and listening to the way we want to do things. The way Coach Harsin has it structured, and constantly trying to learn. So I’ve been impressed with Bo. He’s hungry. He wants to win. He loves Auburn University. And I think all those things are important, and this is a guy who’s started two years here but is still being vulnerable and understanding that he still has a lot he has to work on. And I think that’s a credit to him and how he was raised. I’m really excited to be here and coach Bo Nix.”

On Georgia transfer Demetris Robertson…

“I’ve known Demetris for a long time. I went and saw him in high school. It might’ve been after his 9th grade year going into his 10th. I think we were the first to offer him at that time. I remember going down in the spring. You couldn’t have contact with him then at the school in Savannah. I recruited him when I was still there, then obviously I left and went on to Colorado State but kept up with his career when he went to Cal, and then saw he went back to Georgia. So we got on the phone and started talking with him and his brother. It wasn’t like this was a long-standing relationship, but there had been introductions; there had been conversations in the past. I think that always helps when each side knows a little bit about somebody and where they’re from and what they’re about. So I knew a little about where he was from, his family, his brother, his dynamic. He knew about me. So there was a little bit of a comfort level.

“Demetris, he’s an explosive athlete, too. I was telling him last night, he’s a lot bigger than when I saw him when he was probably a 158-pound freshman at Country Day High School. I think that was his high school. He’s weighing close to 190 now. He looks good. But he’s a guy who had explosive movements. He had short-area quickness. He had elite long speed. And that’s something that we need on this football team. We need speed. The two receivers I’ve been asked about are guys that can run. This league, they have big, strong and fast people. And to add two guys who have speed into this offense, we’ve got to find a way to hopefully get them on the field, and they’ve got to do their part of learning what we’re trying to do, and buying in to what we’re trying to do as an Auburn offense.

“Excited about both of those. Excited Demetris is here now. He’s not going to walk on the field tomorrow and know everything or be in the best shape, but he’s here, and we’re gonna work him to get ready. Hopefully he can be a strong contributor for us this year offensively and in special teams. He was a very good special teams player at Georgia. In all phases, which shows you a lot about the guy. His willingness to block, to play gunner, to do those things on special teams at the other team. So he’s a good addition.”

On wide receivers needing to improve from spring to fall…

“A lot of it was because of the youth in the room when we got here in the spring, and it’s a brand-new offense, with new terminology. So a lot of it was trying to figure out what this formation means, what’s my split. A lot of thinking for those guys, and you couldn’t really see who they were. They weren’t being able to perform at probably their God-given ability because of how much thinking they were doing and a lot of still learning how to play receiver. I mean, you lost a lot of production off of last year’s football team with Seth, Schwartz and Stove. I don’t think anybody coming back in that room had at least 10 catches. I don’t know the exact numbers, but those guys were a large, large percentage of the passing offense.

“I told these guys the other day: It’s a credit to them what they did after spring practice. We weren’t where we needed to be coming out of spring practice in the passing game, and they worked extremely hard in what we call their play-around practices this summer. They got in their playbook, and we’re lightyears ahead of where we were when we finished spring.

“We’re light years ahead of where we were when we finished spring. That’s a credit to those guys. We can have some meetings with them, what the NCAA allows and film review, but we can’t go on the field. They did a lot of that on their own and now we’re able to see ‘they’re not thinking about what a certain formation is or what the motion is or what we call this route.’ They’re able to go out there and execute it and then we’re able to coach them on the route or how to attack coverages. We’re a long way from where we were in the spring. I told them that the other day but we’re not where we need to be at this point. If they’ll keep the same mindset and take coaching. Kids are always wondering ‘what do I have to do to improve?’

“It’s in your meeting every day. We’re telling them every day. Take coaching. It’s not criticism. Take it to heart. When your position coach is talking to the next receiver in line, still listen and take coaching and go out and get better. I think coach Cornelius Williams has done a good job of developing a relationship with those guys so you have a trust. Those guys are working hard. Then we’ve got some competition. We’ve got Shed Jackson, who missed spring practice. You’ve got Capers, who wasn’t here in the spring. Dawson is here now and Demetris will be practicing soon. You’ve got more guys in the room and there’s more competition. Competition is the best thing you can have. It makes guys more alert and aware everyday of going out and working hard. Coach is about competition and so am I. It’s good to see that competition out there this fall camp.”

On how Bo Nix has progressed this offseason…

“I think if we went in there and got on the chalkboard and said ‘draw this up or draw that up.’ I think he could draw it up and talk about it but there’s so many little nuances and details of why you call a certain play or what we’re trying to attack, those little things. To me, with Bo, it’s doing the little things over and over and I’m talking about fundamentally. He had a really good day on day three. I thought he was sharp. I thought he was fundamentally sound. He was on-balance in the pocket when he threw and he finished on-balance. That’s a lot of what we’ve been talking about with him of being on-balance and getting his feet in the ground. You’re going to be more consistent throwing the ball. He still had a couple of plays where he scrambled. He had an excellent run and we don’t want to take that away from Bo Nix because that’s something that scares the crap out of defensive coordinators, the ability for the quarterback to pull the ball down and run. Just becoming a more consistent passer, to me that’s with his fundamentals that we talk about everyday.

“That goes back to him being vulnerable and taking coaching and not having all the answers and listening. The number one thing for me, you never get away from talking fundamentals. You’ve never arrived. You’re always looking at the fundamentals of each play, your drop and where your eyes are and how you set your hips. All those little things we talk about. A scheme is a scheme but doing the fundamentals over and over is the main thing with him and I like where he’s at. There’s a lot of improvement to be made but he’s made a lot of improvement the short time we’ve been here.”

On Auburn being a “downhill” rushing team…

“You hear the word ‘downhill running game’ and that’s what we preach to our guys. You’re lined up in the I-formation and just running straight downhill, but I think it’s a physical attitude. It’s not just the running back but it’s the offensive line, it’s the receivers. I believe you have to be able to run the ball to get where you want to go and that’s ultimately to win a championship and to be able to run the ball late in football games when you’ve got to run the ball.

“Downhill, physical running game to me is a mentality. Are we going to have plays that run on the perimeter? Yes. Are we going to have plays that run in between the tackles? Yes. But it’s a mentality of your running backs. And when a running back has a mentality that, you know, at some point I’ve got to get downhill and get behind my pads and get the dirty 2-3-4 yards and I’m shoving my tailback up and I’m getting in the huddle but I’m finishing runs. I’m downhill when I’m finishing a run, that excited everybody on the offense. That makes those offensive line and tight ends want to block for those backs, those receivers want to block, because he might break one and we’re downfield blocking.

“And that leads to excitement. To me, it’s a mind-set that we’re going to be physical in the run game. It’s not necessarily we’re going to run between the A-gaps every snap. It’s just a mentality of how we’re going to play at all the positions offensively.”

On Malcolm Johnson’s progression this offseason…

“Malcolm’s another guy that I got to know when I was at the other school, at South Carolina. We recruited him. Talked to him on the phone a number of times. With the COVID, you never got to see him or see him in person but he’s a guy that had really good speed, elite speed. He’s learning to play the receiver position. Raw is not a bad word. When I say he’s raw, that’s not a bad word. That means he has a high ceiling in my opinion. He has the physical characteristics. He has the size. He has the speed. He’s got those things, but he is raw in learning how to play the position.

“This young man has a really good attitude. He doesn’t mind working extremely hard. We’re able to see some of his physical tools now because he understands a little bit of what we’re doing coming out of spring, and that’s a credit to him. But he’s a guy that I think will continue to improve throughout this camp, throughout this year, throughout his career here at Auburn. And he’ll continue to work, I think he’ll be a guy that will make a lot of plays for us.”

On what he wants to accomplish in fall camp before preparing for Akron…

“Camp is a little shorter for us because school starts a week from today. But the big picture of it is you’re trying to get the bulk of your offense that you feel like this group can handle in fall camp, what coach Harsin calls the DNA, the bones of who we are. And then you’re trying to identify your playmakers at the skill positions. You’re trying to identify who your best five are up front. You’re trying to identify depth at every position. And then also you’re building on fundamentals of playing the game.

“So, there’s a lot of things that are at work these first 10 days of fall camp. You’re trying to build toughness. You’re trying to teach them to strain and thrive in practice and not just survive. So, there’s a lot of things you’re working on. And ultimately after camp, you want to say, ‘OK, here’s who we think we are offensively. We’ve got an identity of what we want to be: downhill, physical. How are we going to be downhill and physical? Is it 12 personnel. Is it 11 personnel? Is it this formation, is it that formation with these guys? We want to be explosive in the passing game. Well, how are we going to be explosive. There are a lot of ways of being explosive. We want to do a lot of our stuff that we do, but how can we do it and who do we want to do it with. So, you want to figure that out in camp.

“Who are guys that coming out of camp, we feel like these guys can provide depth. So, we’ve got to continue to work them. We’re looking for guys before we start gameplanning that these are the core group of guys that you’ve got to start working toward your gameplan with Akron and then those other guys you’ve got to find a way to keep developing them to get them to hopefully, you never know when it’s going to happen. It can happen Game 2 when you have guys that we thought we were going to redshirt in the past end up playing for you Game 5, Game 6. Find your core guys, who you’re going to be, how you’re going to do it. You got a base idea, then that might change a little bit throughout the year but you’re pretty set on what your identity is offensively. I don’t think you can fit a square into a round hole. Your identity is formed of who your teams are and what they can do best. You can’t be stubborn and say, ‘Hey, we’re going to do this because this is what we do.’ We’ve got to do what our guys can do. When you do that, you give them more confidence when they step on the field. We’re trying to still figure that all out right now.” On the competition at offensive tackle… “Well, we’ve got a number of guys that are working at tackle. We’ve got Brodarious Hamm, we’ve got Coffey, we’ve got Troxell, we’ve got Zierer. Council has worked some at tackle. To be honest, we’ve just put the shoulder pads on day three. We were running around in our underway days one and two. Everybody looks good in their underwear. You can’t really block the guys you want to when you don’t have pads on. I thought they’re competing, they’re working hard. That’s a process that we’re trying to get our offense in and move around in positions. As we get closer to Saturday, our first scrimmage, then we’ll go out there and let them play and compete where there won’t be so much structure like there is at practice and see how guys go. Then we’ll grade them, we’ll talk about it, we’ll come back, and we’ll see who we want to put where going into that second week.

“After that second scrimmage, we’ll figure out who fits in what position. Those are some of the guys that are working there now. Kinda missed Colby Smith, a young freshman that has size. Langlo has worked some at tackle too. We’ve worked a number of guys there. I don’t think it’s fair to say this guy’s ahead of this guy right now. We’re just getting started really in the nuts and bolts of them having to block people with pads on and them have pads.” On the challenge of getting from Day 1 to Game 1…

“I’d say getting everybody on the same page. That’s a big challenge. Mine is not as tough as the head coach because he’s got the whole team. support staff and everybody. I’m dealing with the offense. When I say the same page, a lot of times same page means same language. I may be sitting in a meeting room and what Coach Friend and I call a certain type of block and drill, Coach Bedell might have said something different. Coach Cadillac might have called it this last year. It’s getting everybody speaking the same language. If you’re not speaking the same language, things get lost in translation. We might have all meant the same thing but if I speak my language and this coach over here speaks his language, and the players from last year, ‘Oh, this is what we called it last year,” and still communicate it that way, things get lost. Getting everybody on the same page, speaking the same language, I think offensively, is big for us.

“And then getting the trust factor and the buy-in. I always say this, there’s a trust between coach and player because a player wants to play. So ‘yes sir, yea coach,’ but we’ll effect true trust so they know who we are other than coach. It’s been tough going on the COVID restrictions and now we’re back in some COVID protocols. But coach has done a good job allowing us time with our players, getting to know them, them getting to know us outside of being a football coach. That’s when I think you develop the trust. Speaking the same language and then building the trust, which is not going to be an overnight thing. It happens over time the more you work together, the more meals you share together, the more time you share together, the more you get to know somebody is the way you build trust. Yes, we’re the coach and they’re the player, but I don’t think it works just in that capacity. There’s got to be more to that relationship than that.”

Tom Green is an Auburn beat reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Tomas_Verde.

[EastAl_Tiger 228]

So...tell us coach, what does Bo need to work on mostly?  answer: fundamentals.  who knew?