What Bryan Harsin said after beating the Missouri Tigers

Bryan Harsin liked the effort, energy, and focus of his team in Saturday's victory

To open his press conference after Auburn survived against Missouri in OT, 17-14, Auburn head football coach Bryan Harsin complimented the Missouri Tigers and acknowledged that his team needed a break or two to come away with the victory. 

“First of all, Missouri is a very good football team. They’re very well coached. Their staff has them prepared. I knew Eli would do that and he did exactly that and they did some really good things and we had to overcome a tough opponent- certainly some tough circumstances. At the end of the game, they put themselves in position to win the game and we were able to have that play go our way with the field goal and go into overtime and have an opportunity for Anders (Carlson) to go out there and make the kick, which he did. Then, at the very end of it, play that last play and the ball comes out, that’s really the tale of the game right there- the ball comes out and we’re able to recover it. So, we had two turnovers today, so we’re plus two on the turnovers, which is what we wanted to be. That was a big factor of the game.”

In a story we've heard multiple times now this season, Harsin was happy with the effort and energy from his team but wanted them to clean up the execution. 

“Just overall, just the effort of our guys and the sideline- the energy and the focus each and every play. The execution part of it, we’ll go back and look at that. We know that’s always a message that we’re going to have from me and our coaches and everybody in that room- the execution. We’re going to have to figure out how we do those things better. That’s the beauty of having another week to go prepare for another SEC opponent. But overall, that was a great game. Our crowd was fantastic - to get up early and to be there at 11 a.m., to go out there and have the energy that we did. I thought we started off fast and you could feel that. I thought we had momentum early in the game and then things started to slow down. It was just kind of a back-and-forth slug fest at that point.”

Harsin had praise for the job that first-time starting QB Robby Ashford, who finished the game 12-18 for 127 yards while adding 46 yards and a touchdown on the ground over 15 carries, did leading the offense. 

“Robby did a good job today, I was really proud of Robby. Robby ran around and made some plays. That’s the one thing that Robby did a really good job of, he made things happen. He ran the ball well, towards the end there, we had a little fade ball that he threw that was nice, Koy had a great catch on that.”

Ashford temporarily left the game and true freshman Holden Geriner, the new backup QB after injuries to starting QB TJ Finley and transfer QB Zach Calzada, came in to run the offense. 

"Robby, he got hit, so he needed a minute there to recover, so to get Holden there and play… I’ll say this - Holden had a very good week and Holden is coming along. He is coming on and he’s learning and he’s been involved in every game plan, maybe not as far as playing, but he knows the game plan. He knows what to do. We put him out there, I mean, yeah we felt good. We felt like he could go out there and execute the plays.”

“I don’t think anything had to do with Holden, necessarily, it kind of comes back to the question with protection. We need to do a better job giving him a little bit more time, but I felt good about it when he went in there. We actually gave him another drive and gave him a chance. And we kind of felt like he was ready to go again and then Robby came back and we were able to finish the game with him.”

When asked to elaborate on the pass protection, Harsin was very blatant with his assertion that the Tigers need to execute better.

“We struggled in some of our pass protection, no question. That’s an area that we’re going to continue to keep emphasizing and keep working on. It’s not going to go away until we fix some of our own problems. That’s the focus that you have on your own football team and our guys know that. A lot of our week’s preparation is still about us. We played Missouri today, but a lot of it was about what we had to do, how we had to execute. The message during the week was focus and execution… We’ve got to be better on the offensive line and we’ve got too much pressure.”

Harsin reiterated that it wasn't a schematic issue, but an execution issue that is holding the offense back. 

“Overall, yeah we’ve got to fix some of those things up front and that ties into the run game. For us, just so we’re clear, we want every single play to be successful. We want to stay ahead of the chains and when we don’t… that’s when we look back and go 'Alright, what are we doing schematically? How are we coaching it? What are the things we're doing in our drills to make sure that we're in better positions than what we were today?' That's what we get to do as coaches — go figure out how we can help our players be better in those areas.”

Harsin was happy with the defense's ability to execute the game plan and disrupt Missouri's offense. 

“I thought our defense did some really good things. They got the turnover early in the game. I don’t know how many three and outs we had and they made a few plays [...] Overall, in that locker room right there, there’s a lot of guys in there that I’m very proud of. I appreciate the effort."

Harsin closed the press conference by admitting that he's never been a part of a game that was as wild as this one was. 

“No. There’s been some crazy games, but no, not like that. I think, as you look to the end of the game there, we put ourselves in a position… I thought they executed what they needed to do to put themselves in a position to win. We went out there and we applied some pressure. I couldn’t tell you what caused their kick to go wide right, if it was the pressure that we were bringing. One of the things about that is just the accumulation of the game as you’re out there and you have the chance to get your field goal block team, sometimes that does affect the kicker… Crazy finish, both teams fighting hard to win the football game. We were able to find a way to get it done.”

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