Auburn Defense Needs to be 'Locked In' on Third-and-Long

Auburn Tigers senior linebacker Jalen McLeod blames a lack of focus on his team's third-down woes.

Defensive lineman Philip Blidi and the Auburn Tigers defense held Arkansas running backs to just 2.8 yards per carry in a 24-14 loss. / Photo by Austin Perryman/Auburn Tigers

The Auburn Tigers’ unexpected loss to Arkansas on Saturday afternoon has caused many people to completely write them off. Turnovers have sabotaged and otherwise-good effort from Auburn's defense; the same script they followed in the Cal loss.

Despite holding Arkansas to just 334 yards on 83 plays, Auburn's defensive players know there's more work to be done.

“It’s hard,” defensive lineman Philip Blidi said. “As a competitor, you work all week, you watch a lot of film on this, on the teams, and you get to the game and you have these mistakes. But at the end of the day, it was really a lot of self-inflicted mistakes. They’re (Arkansas) a good team, too. We knew that we had to do our jobs coming into this game and went through the things that we didn’t do the week before (against New Mexico). 

“That’s something we didn’t get done, but we’re going back to work. We’ll get back to work this week and have a lot of things ahead of us. We have to keep working. We have to stay together.”

The Tigers struggled to get off the field on third downs, particularly in third-and-long situations. Safety Sylvester Smith blamed lazy plays and half-hearted efforts for the Tigers’ struggles in those situations.

“On third-and-longs, we just have to be more locked-in,” Smith said. “I think that as a player you hear third-and-long and think it's kind of easy to not be a 110% locked into the play because its third-and-long, but that comes back and bites you sometimes. You have to play every down like it’s a fourth down. We need to be more attentive to those situations.”

Auburn’s defense did have to come on to the field after a lot of turnovers but linebacker Jalen McLeod does not believe that contributed to its struggles. 

“It’s not really tough at all,” McLeod said. “We take those opportunities every run, but, every time we step on that field, it’s an opportunity to be great and show how good we are. We've got to embrace that. We've got to embrace this team, so we've got a head on our shoulders every time we got out there. We cannot move around, and if we move around, we are going to get blown out by 30.” 

Auburn hosts No. 21 Oklahoma next Saturday at 2:30 p.m. CT. ABC will carry the broadcast, it can also be streamed on ESPN+.