Defense 'capable of more'

[aubiefifty 18,248]

Harsin: Auburn defense 'capable of more'

Mark Murphy

3-4 minutes

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AUBURN, Alabama–As expected a heavily-favored Auburn team cruised to an opening night football victory over Mercer. Bryan Harsin was asked about his team’s defense “playing lights out” versus the Bears and the coach begged to differ with that assessment.

“I really like our defense,” Harsin said after a 42-16 victory on Saturday at Jordan-Hare Stadium. “I don’t think they played lights out tonight. I?think we are capable of more. I also thought Mercer did a good job.”

The Bears, an FCS team out of the Southern Conference, finished the game with 271 total yards with almost half of their yards and nine of the points coming in the fourth quarter after a delay of more than an hour with lightning in the area.

“It has nothing to do with the delay,” Harsin said. “You have got to play. I am not going to make excuses for our guys. They wouldn’t want that either.

“I think we can play better,” Auburn’s head coach said.” I?thought we tackled well. I thought we did some good things in the running game.

“Our coverage wasn’t as good as it needs to be,” he pointed out. “There were some scramble situations, and all of that, so we have got to work on that. That is something we have got to get better at it and I think those guys would say the same I am saying.

“We have got to better ourselves in those areas and we will,” he added. “That is the nice thing about having it on film. We can go back and look at it and then go ‘this is what we have to work on, these things specifically’ and then we will do that next week in practice week and get better at it.”

The Bears completed 21-36 passes for 197 yards and two touchdowns. On the ground Mercer ran the ball 31 times for 74 net yards, an average of 2.4 yards per play.

Junior linebacker Cam Riley agreed with his coach that the defense had some issues, but noted he liked what he saw. “The defense played good,” Riley said. “Everybody was executing and getting to the ball

“We have some stuff we need to clean up and all of that, but overall I felt for the first game coming back to start the season everybody did pretty well,” said Riley, who finished the contest with a career-high 15 tackles, including nine solo stops and one quarterback hurry.

Cam Riley makes one of his 15 tackles vs. Mercer, one more than his total for the entire 2021 season. (Photo: Greg McWilliams, Inside the Auburn Tigers, 247Sports)

A disappointment for the defense was not getting any turnovers and finishing with just one quarterback sack. The Tigers allowed Mercer just 101 total yards at halftime and just 41 more in the third quarter, but in the fourth period the Bears controlled the ball for 10 minutes and 36 seconds and gained 129 more yards.

8COMMENTS

“Overall, I think we still as a team need to finish better,” Harsin said, noting that has been a point of emphasis. “You have got to be able to win the third and fourth quarter–simple as that. For our guys that is not anything new. They have heard me say that all the way back to last year and this season.”

[3rdgeneration 6,645]

I like that our head coach has high expectations.  

[penguin149 391]

19 minutes ago, 3rdgeneration said:

I like that our head coach has high expectations.  

Agreed.  A great defense would not have allowed 16 points to an FCS school.  After the 1st int, a field goal attempt should have been the worse-case scenario. Too many 3rd and longs given up.  After the 1st int, we were outscored 16-14.  No turnovers the entire game, etc. etc. etc.