Auburn Tigers: Unacceptable Defensive Play for Auburn Standards

Watching Auburn play Clemson on Saturday, it's hard to believe that Auburn has a history of having a strong defense. It was down right shameful. Other than the defense not getting pressure on the quarterback, making tackles, and coach Roof calling the wrong defense, they weren't bad. Yeah, I'm being sarcastic, but after what I witnessed Saturday, I think many Auburn people are a little ticked off.

I hear all the reasons why the defense is struggling, the most common being "they are young." True, they are young, but with the talent that Chizik has recruited they should be at least showing improvement. I saw a defense take not a step backwards, but a leap backwards.

I was thinking back to defenses of the Pat Dye era and don't recall one this bad. Dye put great defenses on the field and the Auburn faithful wasn't concerned about how young or inexperienced the players were. The defense was just expected to get the job done when the game was on the line. They didn't always, but did it enough to give Auburn fans at least some confidence that they were a sound unit.

You won't have that feeling with this defense.

Auburn had a 21-7 lead. True, the offense didn't do anything after that, but a true Auburn defense would've made it harder for the opponent to forge a comeback. Clemson not only came back, but made it look easy.

Unacceptable.

The first few drives looked like the defense came around, but after that, the defense almost seemed predictable. The coaches can blame it on youth, but with the lack of improvement, I think they should start looking in the mirror and asking themselves what they need to do to improve.