communication 'key to winning'

[aubiefifty 17,488]

Auburn's offensive communication 'key to winning' at Penn State

ByNathan King

5-6 minutes

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Week Three Preview: Auburn @ Penn State (Late Kick Cut)

 

AUBURN, Alabama — Thanks to crowd restrictions last season and a four-game home stretch to end its 2019 regular season, it's been quite some time since Auburn last played in a true road environment — 689 days, to be exact.

A 23-20 loss to Joe Burrow and eventual national champion LSU two years ago was the most recently Auburn has played in front of a capacity crowd in an opposing team's home stadium. Plenty of players from that year's team are still on the roster and have plenty of experience in hostile settings. But plenty of them weren't; players like star running back Tank Bigsby have never played in front of a packed house on the road.

"We try to simulate it the best that we can, but until you're there, you don't really know what it's like," senior linebacker Chandler Wooten said Tuesday.

The Tigers travel to No. 10 Penn State (2-0, 1-0 Big Ten) on Saturday (6:30 p.m. CST) for their first Big Ten road trip since 1931. College GameDay will be there before the second-biggest crowd in college football makes its way into the stadium. Penn State made Auburn its annual whiteout opponent, which is reserved for the most important home game of the season for the Nittany Lions.

Road games don't get much bigger or more anticipated than this one. So there's lots of outside noise leading up to the game to complement the literal noise that No. 22 Auburn (2-0) will be dealing with Saturday night.

Auburn's staff — led by Bryan Harsin's signature "1-0" mentality — wants its players to put this game in a vacuum, taking it one play at a time. Otherwise, Wooten said, it's easy to get overwhelmed.

"At the end of the day, it comes down to doing your job," Wooten said. "At the end of the day, it's going to be loud, but you've got to line up — there's a man in front of you and you play football, you know? The crowd noise doesn't really affect that at the end of the day. It presents energy and stuff like that and a great home-field advantage, but at the end of the day, we're going out there to play football."

The Tigers have put a particular focus on preparing for crowd noise along the offensive line. Senior center Nick Brahms said the biggest challenge an offense can run into on the road is when linemen can't communicate with the quarterback and running backs pre snap, leading to busted plays or wasted timeouts. Brahms has been a part of more than a few such plays in his time at Auburn.

"Really, the big thing is just letting the quarterback and the running back know who the offensive line's responsible for," Brahms said. "You know, everybody's a part of that on the offensive line — the guards are a part of that, I'm part of that. Mainly it's the interior three guys. Just doing that and making sure that they know what we're responsible for is big.

"... I think that's going to be big this week. That's going to be a key to winning this week."

Though its offense is tops in the nation in scoring (61.0 points per game) after beating Akron and Alabama State, Auburn has had more than its fair share of struggles in similar road contests to the one it's facing in Happy Valley. Since its last win over a top-10 team in a true road game — No. 7 Ole Miss in 2014 — the Tigers have averaged 12.6 points per game in such matchups, and have scored only one offensive touchdown or less in six of their nine straight losses to top-10 teams on the road.

Maybe this is the year Auburn lights up the scoreboard in a big road setting; maybe the new offense under Harsin is exactly what they needed. Or maybe it's too soon in a new system for Bo Nix to dice up a talented defense in a way that will result in a win. 

Regardless, Auburn is subscribing to Harsin's philosophy of winning one play at a time. Up front on the offensive line, Brahms knows the Tigers can't afford to take any focus off producing in the run game or protecting Nix, lest they find themselves trailing early in front of 100,000-plus fans rooting for their downfall.

"This is just another football game," Brahms said. "We can't let the external environment control what we do on offense, especially. We know it's going to be loud. So we're going to prepare for it, and we're going to be ready. We're planning to succeed."