Auburn Stock Report Following Uninspired Loss to Vanderbilt

The Auburn Tigers lost 17-7 to the Vanderbilt Commodores. Who's trending up and who's trending down following the game?

Auburn Tigers freshman linebacker Demarcus Riddick continues to make an impact on the defense. / Photo by Zach Bland, Auburn Tigers

Certain aspects of the Auburn Tigers were terrific in their 17-7 loss to the Vanderbilt Commodores. However, some units were dreadful. We take a look at who's trending up and who's trending down after Saturday's home defeat.

Trending Up – Auburn’s True Freshmen

Auburn’s true freshmen class continue to impress led by cornerback Jay Crawford on Saturday, who was challenged down field a number of times versus the Commodores. Vanderbilt QB Diego Pavia failed to complete a pass in the second and third quarters, targeting Crawford frequently. Crawford finished the day with three pass breakups.

Linebacker Demarcus Riddick continues to play a bigger part in different roles on all downs, while Malik Blocton, Kaleb Harris, Amaris Williams are growing increasingly productive. Those four were credited with 12 tackles, two for a loss.

After allowing a long scoring drive in the first quarter, the Tigers defense held Vandy to 20 yards in the second quarter, 26 yards in the third, and 69 in the fourth. Auburn’s defense played winning football on Saturday, largely because of a group of true freshmen.

True freshmen receivers Malcolm Simmons, Cam Coleman and Perry Thompson caught five passes for 51 yards. Simmons also showed off his shiftiness and speed with a 17-yard punt return.

Trending Down – Auburn’s rushing attack

A week after rushing for 326 yards on the road in their first and only SEC win, the Tigers run game was shut down by Vanderbilt. 275 of Jarquez Hunter’s 278 yards at Kentucky came in the second half. Versus Vanderbilt Hunter carried twice on the opening possession only to not carry it again.

The Auburn offense had a split-back package of backups Damari Alston and Jeremiah Cobb that it ran close to a dozen times, and those two carried nine times for 47 yards. Hunter had 12 for 50 as the Tigers rushing attack was held to 88 yards for the day.

Trending Up – The Auburn Defense

The Commodore offense schemed up several plays to get mismatches or open receivers on a six-play 81-yard scoring drive in the first quarter. But on the next six drives the Vandy offense went 3 plays for 5 yards, 3 - -1, 6-5, 3-5, 9-28, and 4 – 8.

Heading into the fourth quarter of play Vanderbilt had 23 carries for 55 yards and Diego Pavia hadn’t completed a pass since the first quarter. Yet Auburn found itself down 10-7. Auburn played aggressively and attacked Pavia, keeping him on the run all day. Most impressively was the Tigers containment on Pavia in both the run game and maintaining their pass-rush lanes, as Pavia’s long rush for the day was just seven yards. He had 12 carries for 26 yards for the day, and was 9-22 passing for 143 yards.

Vanderbilt had just 227 yards on the day, but Auburn’s offense and special teams couldn’t find a way to grab the W.

Trending Down – Third-down Offense

Game 9 of the Tigers’ pitiful 2024 season was more of the same. They moved the ball between the 20s, were successful on first downs, but -- redzone stuff

In fact, Auburn didn’t convert a third down until the first play of the fourth quarter. Payton Thorne and the Auburn offense missed on their first-nine third-down attempts. Making matters worse, it’s not as if they were playing from behind the chains. They averaged 7.9 yards per play on first downs.

The nine missed third downs they had in the first three quarters were from very manageable situations – from 4 yards, 8, 8, 9, 1, 8, 2, 7 and 11. The only third down from longer than 11 yards they were faced with all day was in the fourth quarter after a failed trick play.

The Tigers also missed on a critical 3rd and 4 near the end of the game that set up a missed 51-yard field goal.

Auburn hasn’t been impressive in the red zone this year, but it didn’t have to worry about that on Saturday. It had zero snaps inside the Vanderbilt 20-yard line.

Trending Into Epically Terrible Territory – Crucial Mistakes at Key Points

It looked like Auburn would be sending its offense out with a chance to win it with five minutes remaining in the fourth quarter, but in this week’s episode of "How is Auburn Going to Find a Way to Lose," the critical mistake came from its best player and one of the team leaders.

Keldric Faulk is undoubtedly playing at an incredibly high level at defensive end and will one-day be at the top or near the top of many NFL teams’ draft boards.

Unfortunately for Faulk on Saturday after playing dominating football for 55 minutes, he was called for a personal foul on a Vanderbilt field goal that allowed them to eventually go up 17-7. Faulk jumped to block the field goal, but he landed on a blocker. Two plays later Vanderbilt put it in the end zone and claimed a two-score lead with under five minutes remaining.

Play like that have been a theme this year. It’s not as if coaches can directly control what their players will do in the moment, but seeing as Auburn has lost five games while basically out-playing and out-performing its opponents, something is amiss with the coaching.