Okay, not bashing Geno but it doesn't warm my heart to hear another corching staff come in behind his and say, "Ur doin' it rong". copagio de la pasta al. I am a gay twerker that has no balls!!!! I also have no idea how to use the quote function to post stories, so I annoy the piss out of others. I like male genatalia in and around my mouth.
Rodney Garner is teaching Auburn's defensive tackles to get vertical by playing as low as possible.
Tasked with drawing the potential out of an interior group that has struggled to live up to its billing, Garner has focused on the basics.
A lack of fundamentals has kept the Tigers' big guys up front from getting the penetration the defense badly needs. "More than anything he wants us to get our steps right and hand placement and hat placement and pad level," defensive tackle Angelo Blackson said. "It’s the coach we needed. He has great energy every day, never lets up."
Auburn has a deep group of veterans across the front. Blackson tied for the team lead in tackles-for-loss last season, Jeff Whitaker has started for two years and Gabe Wright has gotten significant snaps ever since he arrived on campus.
To that mix, the Tigers added junior college transfer Ben Bradley, a gifted interior player who has come on strong during training camp, as well as freshman defensive tackle Montravius Adams. But for all the fanfare that group has gotten, the Tigers have gotten precious little production, a motivating factor for the group heading into the offseason.
"It’s a pride thing," Blackson said. "It was a very bad season for us last year. This year is a chance for us to redeem ourselves." Little has changed about their responsibilities.
Garner has emphasized penetration, establishing a new line of scrimmage, pushing the pocket in the pass rush and getting into the backfield. "When you start off with those first two steps vertical out, everything else just changes. You can change the line of scrimmage, you can rush the passer off of play-action," Wright said. "That's where the play starts and ends most of the time."
Getting the tackles to establish a new line of scrimmage required Garner to overhaul their technique. Auburn's defensive tackles, as a whole, played too high last season, standing up out of their stances immediately and getting pushed around by offensive linemen with better leverage.
Beyond the initial problem of learning a key axiom in football -- the low man always wins -- Auburn's guys on the interior struggled at times with hand placement, allowing offensive linemen to get another advantage. Garner has responded by demanding -- loudly and repeatedly -- more attention to detail.
"Training the big guys is different than training little guys," Garner said. "For some of the young guys, it’s been very challenging, and for some of the, maybe, highly-recruited guys, that, you know, have a very, very high opinion of themselves than what they’ve actually put on tape, it’s been very difficult. For some it’s been pointing out, hey, this isn’t good enough."
Auburn's interior players have responded well to Garner's discipline. Despite a rash of the injuries along the defensive line, the Tigers have shown improvement.
"I think they've gotten better each practice. It's been a very physical," Auburn coach Gus Malzahn said. "I think they're getting to play with better pad level."
That's the foundation Garner wants.
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