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Allburn's defense has been dominant throughout spring, and that's okay. Let's don't freak out about the offense. You are locked on Auburn, your daily podcast on the Auburn Tigers. Part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. Yes. Welcome on into Locked On Auburn, your daily Auburn Tigers podcast. He's Lindsay Crosby. I'm Zach Blackerby, and thank you so much for making Locked On Auburn your first listen every single day. We each have some true freshman defensive players that could step up and have moments this Saturday during a day, as well as we're going to each make an argument for two separate wide receivers to lead Auburn in receiving on Saturday. But a big narrative that I'm seeing pop up and being written about and talked about and tweeted about and posted on message boards about Lindsay is the defense by all accounts seems to be really winning. And in some cases, people are using the term dominating the Auburn offense over the course of spring practice. And I want to just get out there and say, it's okay. Alice Goulish talked about this, I guess it was two Fridays ago when he spent probably about 45 minutes talking to the media, and he was asked a similar question. And it doesn't really seem like that narrative has changed. And the 10 days following that, Lindsay, this is a defense that its core is all here, all returning sophomores who has freshman all kind of played more than we a lot of people thought that they would and their exceptional athletes and they know this DJ Durkan system. And also to Alex Goulish's point, Byron Brown, a big part of what he does with his legs, and he's not going to be able to use his legs in practice. They're going to blow everything dead. It's not worth him getting hit. But that's just kind of the nature of spring ball. I think I'm okay. No, I know I'm okay with Auburn's defense dominating spring so far. I'm going to go one step further and say, I think it'd be a problem if Auburn's defense wasn't dominating spring so far simply because, I mean, you brought back their defensive coordinator. They have the same scheme. You brought back a lot of their main players who learned that scheme, played in that scheme last year, impaired to an offense that is completely different with most, feels like most of your starters are going to be transfers in this year. It would be a problem if the defense was not dominating in spring practice. What I do appreciate from this whole thing is we're not getting any of the leaks, any of the reports about them asking the defense to take it easy on the offense, right? To give them a break. They're dominating. They should be dominating. And yet despite that, you can still get reports and glimpses of good things out of the offense. I actually feel really good about this because it makes me feel like, hey, one, the defense has a chance to be really special this year. And two, the offense is, it's trial by fire. Practice is probably going to be just as hard as any game they play. And the more they are faced with a really good defense, the quicker they're going to have to pick up everything and the more they're going to learn what they need to do when the plays actually matter in August and September. Right. I mean, that's what Alice Golis said when we last heard from him. It was practice should be the hardest thing you do, which is the opposite mantra from what we heard a year ago. I mean, you alluded to it with leaks coming out. I think Cole Kublik was the first to report it. And it sounds like several other folks kind of confirmed it after the fact of, you know, Hugh Fries going to and saying, hey, defense, like, let's give Jackson Arnold some confidence. That's not the case. Alice Golis is saying, make it as hard as possible for Byron Brown and this offense to gain an edge. So that way, when the season opens against Baylor, it's like, yeah, yeah, we are going to, you know, the match up against ourselves is tougher than the match up to open the season against Baylor, which is good. I also think there's some nuance to this, right? Like this is a system. We heard about Golis system and there's positives and negatives to running a system that is unique and that everyone doesn't always do. You know, you're spreading guys out a little bit farther than normal. You're putting a little bit more stress on a defense because you don't see this type of system weekend and weekend. You've got to spend a little extra time on it and weeks prior to it, or if not, you're probably going to get burned. And I do think a defense going up against this every single day, you're going to get tendencies where you're not going to get that, you know, on a week by week basis during the season, just from the natural game plans of it. Also, I do think that's one part of it. But also with any system, there's going to be a lot of meticulous details. And boy, do we hear this coaching staff and by extension of this coaching staff, the players talk about the details mattering and paying attention to all these little tiny things. And when you have five linemen who are all right now, I think all five of Auburn starters will be transfers that have been here for just a few months. That's part of it. And so you've got two guys that already knew the system coming over from South Florida. But like, I don't care how good Joe Simmons is, he's still learning a new system. Gholish talked about this with Derek Plass, the transfer from Miami. It's like, okay, it took him a few days to really get going because a lot of times we throw a lot at you and then things start to slowly slow down. I think there's layers to this. And I think all of them point to like, okay, let's, let's don't panic about the offense struggling and the defense dominating because I think the defense kind of knows what it is. And I think the offense is still learning. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's the familiarity with what you're being asked to do. I do think another aspect you touched on it when you mentioned how this offense does things differently. One of the things that you see here, it's kind of like when you play air raid teams, where everybody's spread out, you're doing the entire field horizontally. It means your offensive line is, your blockers are almost more on an island. So I do feel like it's making them learn how to handle an individual player across from them, making them be a little bit better in their technique. But also it's helping the coaching staff understand was there a valuation of this player in the portal, correct or not? I think one of the things you can point to from last season was you brought in some transfers at quarterback, yes, but also on the offensive line that you thought were going to be stalwarts for you and they were not. And I think that doing something like this, facing the really good defense in practice every day, you're able to get a better look at, hey, can this guy do it in the SEC? You know, he's facing SEC defense now. And when your defense is excelling, they're not taking it easy on these guys. It forces them to quickly accelerate their learning curve to move up a level. But also it gives you more information on if they can handle it again when the bullets start flying for real in August and September. So again, I see zero problem with this on the assumption that you're not going to have offensive players being demoralized because they can't do anything. I feel like in the world you have now in college football, a lot of guys are past that. They know what they're signing up for when they transfer up. So zero issues with this so far. Yeah, I also don't think Alex Gholish and the staff would have a guy starting on this offense if they thought he was going to be demoralized because they face adversity in practice. I just don't think that's going to be... I mean, you can say what you want about how the staff recruits and how they acquire talent. But that's one of the things they learn about these guys during that recruitment process. So we're in agreement on that. Would love to know your thoughts either on socials or in the comments down below. Are you in agreement with us here? All right, we've got two receivers, one each, that has a shot to lead Auburn in receiving yards this Saturday during A-Day. It's so close. That's next, right here, unlocked on Auburn. Today's show brought to you by our friends at Fandle. Fandle is America's number one sportsbook. Lindsay Crosby, you love Fandle. I love Fandle. And Auburn is a 7.5-point favorite, according to our friends at Fandle. Against Baylor in the season opener. What's the line for A-Day? Say again. What's the line for A-Day? Is Auburn favorite or is Auburn favorite? I think Auburn's going to win. I don't think Fandle's touching this one. And also, if you just want to get on the action way too early, Auburn basketball plus 8,000 to win the National Championship Bet Basketball in 2027. You're telling me there's a chance. Time for the 31st Best Odds last eye check. So get in on the action to Fandle, Bet $5 when $5, you get $250 in bonus bets over at Fandle.com. If you've ever run a business with a bloated CRM, you know how painful it is digging through useless menus and features while deals slip through the cracks. It's time to switch to a new CRM. That's where Pipedrive comes in. An easy to use intelligent CRM loved by growing sales teams. Pipedrive unites everything on one visual pipeline that shows every deal, what stage it's in, and what needs to happen next. It's so intuitive, your team can jump in and use it from day one. Pipedrive keeps everyone aligned, on task, and moving toward the close. It's powerful enough to grow with your business, but simple enough that your team will actually love using it. Switch to a CRM built by salespeople for salespeople and join the over 100,000 companies already using Pipedrive. Head to pipedrive.com forward slash audio for a 30-day free trial with no credit card or payment required. That's pipedrive.com forward slash audio. Thank you so much for making Lockdown Auburn your first listen every single day. All right, looking at who can lead Auburn in receiving for AIDA, which of these new incoming receivers gets to excite the fan base the most and say, hey, I'm the guy. I'm the guy that you should be excited about the remainder of the offseason, and they're going to be vying for it. And I think there's several that could lead the way with this. I'm going to go with Kishon Singleton. I've spent a lot of time last week watching just specifically the wide receivers. And I think a lot of them do things well. He is the one to me that is by far the most smooth at every aspect of the route, every aspect of the catch, and also just the way that even the way he and Byron Brown look at each other, those guys clearly have a connection. They have a relationship that stems several years. And I think that the Auburn fan base will get a front row seat of seeing that this Saturday day day. Yeah, I think the size of Kishon Singleton, right, being 6'3, 2'15, and he looks a little bit bigger than that on the film, I think you've seen that similar type of big-bodied receiver, even just recently, you know, succeed with the ability to, you know, to whether it's boxing out guys, whether it's just, you know, separating a defensive back away from the ball, screening the ball, things like that. I'm not saying he's as talented as Cam Coleman, but I think you've seen that type of model receiver. I don't hate the pick. The familiarity definitely helps. The Brown and Gullish and the offense and everything. And when we get there, my guy has a similar theme, but I do think it's big if Kishon Singleton can do it and then carry that over to the regular season, because the thing I keep looking at with this roster is who is going to be the guy. And I'd kind of resign myself to thinking you're not going to have the guy. You're not going to have one guy who just steps up and dominates, you know, out wide. But if there's anybody who's going to do it, it feels like Kishon Singleton has the physical tools and the knowledge and the offense to do it. Yeah. All right. Go ahead and share your prediction and then I want to kind of explain my thought process on why it's an outside receiver versus the direction you're going. Okay. Mine is Chaz Nimrod. Makes sense. Yeah. Another guy out of USF. He doesn't have the career production of a Singleton, but when you saw him last year, six games, 23 catches, 466 yards. You know, he's on pace for close to a thousand yards last year. And you could argue was really their leading receiver. And he had some good performance to get some quality teams. They go to Miami. He is the he is the feature part of the game plan. He gets 10 targets. He has 128 yards. And actually, not that many receptions. There was some good defense played against him. And so he like he has the experience in the system. They've shown the willingness to give him target on a target on a volume perspective. And the comments from Gholish, which I love how he's been just very open and honest about everything. He said that Nimrod's playing with a ton of confidence. And he just he's very comfortable moving up to this level. And so when you combine how heavily they fed him at times when he was healthy last year before he was down for the year, his experience, I could see him being the guy that comes out of this. And, you know, maybe he gets five targets and three or four catches for 100 yards because he had quite a few deep passes last year where he's catching balls down the field and racking up extra yardage there. Yeah. I think it's a great pick. And obviously Chaz was at Tennessee before South Florida too. So knows what it takes to go up against, you know, SEC defenders every single day, like these guys are, you know, learning to and addressing to now. I think from a matchup standpoint, I think Auburn's middle of the field defenders, your nickel and your safeties, I feel better both about the starting end and the depth at that position that I do Auburn's corners right now. Andrew, I just think of a matchup of Auburn versus Auburn. If I was Auburn's offense attacking Auburn's defense, I would go outside right now until proven otherwise. Yeah. When you look at, I mean, they brought in guys to try to take over and be starters, but you have a lot of underclassmen with questions about who's going to step up, right? Blake Woodbees of sophomore, right? You brought in Scrap Richardson from Notre Dame. You transferred in Gavin Jenkins from USF. You know, Ray Sean Pleasant is one of your only upperclassmen in that room, but for the most part, it's a lot of red shirt freshmen. It's a lot of sophomores and then Andre Jordan, you know, the transfer from UCLA. He seems to be cornerback one. Yeah. I can't wait to see him and Kishan, you know, beat each other up at the line on Saturday. That's one of the matchups I'm most excited about. But also on that note too, 6'1", 175. He's given up like 30 or 40 pounds to Singleton. So, you know, we'll see how that goes. But yeah, like, it's just not a lot of experience in there outside of Jordan. And even then, it's a different level of competition. I know that there are power conference and stuff too, but still it's different in the SEC. So we'll see what happens. Yeah. Every 8 days different, right? And every coach is going to handle this differently. Like, do they want certain guys to play less? Like, it wouldn't shock me if both of the guys we mentioned only got a few drives and they pulled them. And then you see a guy who may rotate in with the starters, but also be like a solid piece on the 2-Deep, a mass yards, like a Bryce Cain. I think like a guy who could play at both levels of the offense and play just more total snaps at 8 a.m. So therefore getting more total targets and catches and could lead to more production. So like, I don't think a Bryce Cain is a bad choice here. And then I also think just like a Christian Neptune could be interesting. And then we've heard incredible things about D'Shawn Spencer down the stretch here in the second half of spring. Do they kind of showcase him and give him that opportunity against, you know, a second team defense and maybe he can that could be a mismatch in favor of Spencer in the offense. So like, I think if folks said Bryce Cain in this, like, I wouldn't push back on that either for those reasons. Yeah. I was trying to think about the underclassmen and I was like, D'Shawn Spencer probably would do better over a guy like an Eric Smith simply because we've heard more about Spencer down the stretch. And it's freshman versus red shirt freshman. You're not necessarily getting much different out of the red shirt freshman because it's a whole new offense other than they've had a year to acclimate to the college physicality, right? They've had a year in the weight room and all of that. So I do worry about Spencer being a little bit undersized from a weight perspective as far as like how much do you want to send him over the middle? For instance, being 165 pounds listed, but you can't apparently, I mean, this is goal is saying that he's apparently gained 15 pounds. Okay. That's a lot. That's a lot when you're coming in at like under 170. 165 to 180 in like a few months. Like that's in four months. That's pretty unheard of. That's and you have to hope that like he kept the speed and everything going along with that. But I will say he was a like a Sarah Land High 6a like he had the talent level in high school to be able to step into college right away. So, you know, that's, that makes a ton of sense. He's been showing up a lot so far in spring provided he can keep the speed up with the sudden weight gain gets drinking gallons of milk every day. Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. Who do you think leads Auburn and receiving? Let us know down below. Let's continue that conversation or a, Hey, join, join the everyday air club. Go to locked on Auburn.supercast.com. You can get access to an exclusive discord where you can tag me, ask me questions, make, you know, recommendations for show topics and just continue the conversation about, about this right now with other, with other Auburn fans who also get access to an ad free audio feed as well. True freshman defensive players. We've got a few that you should look out for on Saturday. That's next right here unlocked on Auburn. Today's show brought to you by our friends at TurboTax. It's tax time up for a lot of us. The old way of doing taxes is a lot. 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That's where Pipedrive comes in and easy to use intelligent CRM loved by growing sales teams. Pipedrive unites everything on one visual pipeline that shows every deal what stage it's in and what needs to happen next. It's so intuitive your team can jump in and use it from day one. Pipedrive keeps everyone aligned on task and moving toward the close. It's powerful enough to grow with your business, but simple enough that your team will actually love using it. Switch to a CRM built by salespeople for salespeople and join the over 100,000 companies already using Pipedrive. Head to pipedrive.com forward slash audio for a 30-day free trial with no credit card or payment required. That's pipedrive.com forward slash audio. All right. I found a few minutes on today's edition of Lock on Auburn. Lindsay Crosby. I want you to lead the way on this one because I think you've got a compelling argument for which true freshman defender could really make a statement on Saturday. The number one guy that stands out to me in this situation, Shadarius Toodle and Linebacker. And there's a, I mean, there's a couple of different reasons here. The first one is when is the size he's listed at 63, 235 and from everything we've seen, but he looks at least that size, if not bigger. So there's not a lot of concerns about the physicality immediately transferring over, but also he plays a position, one that is coached by your defensive coordinator. So he's probably gotten a lot of attention and there's starters at his position that will not be playing on Saturday. DeMarcus Riddick is still in a non-contact jersey. Those guys don't play on a day. And so he'll be surrounded by other experienced veterans in this defense in a position where he can, you know, he got linemen of the year last year. So he has experience coming forward. He's looked pretty decent and, you know, and he had eight interceptions on. He looked pretty decent defense as well as far as dropping back into past coverage. Oh, he's an incredible recruit. No question about it. He's like a dude who can do everything, has a playing time, has the physicality, the speed decides the opportunity. Like that just makes a ton of sense to me to say he is lined up to have a great Saturday for Auburn. Yeah. I think his day they could be big. I agree with you because also like, okay, with DeMarcus Riddick out, who are the guys ahead of him? Xavier Atkins, Elijah Melendez, and then I think Bryce Diaz is ahead of him as well. And when you look at it like, okay, you know, let Xavier Atkins play for a few series, but there's no reason for Xavier Atkins to be out there. You know what he has. And really, like I was, I'm not, it's not the exact same thing, but it's not too far off of like, you know who Elijah Melendez is as well, is as well, like younger, younger guy. So if you want to get him raps, I don't think anybody's going to question that. But if Shadaria's Tudor was kind of ushered onto the field a little bit earlier, despite being the third or fourth guy off the bench in the linebacker room, in this context, I think it makes sense. Lindsay, I'm there with you. I'm there with you. So he's, I mean, it sounds like he's had a good, a good spring so far. I'm going to cheat and give you two, but I'll go one at a time. Jaquess Wilkes at Edge. True Freshman does not look like a true freshman by any stretch of the imagination, physically gifted human being. But it usually takes an extra year or two to develop as a pass rusher in this conference. So I don't think you're going to see him, you know, be an elite player. Right. Day one, but I think you can show traits of developing into an elite player. And I would love to see him get a few opportunities, especially if it's like against the backup offensive line, just to kind of see what exactly that looks like for him. But he also, I mean, for a lot of these fans, right, this is the first time seeing a lot of these guys. And I think there's going to be several people that look out and say who in the world is that guy. And to me, I think that's something that's going to be a big storyline coming out of this is when they're sitting down and they're watching, yo, who is number 29 coming off the edge? And they look at their roster or their program or you know, whatever we have like, Oh, that's true. Plus Wilkes, that's who that guy is. That guy looks the part. I am glad you specified against the backups a little bit because part of my concern there is he was playing in one a last year. And so from it, it is a massive jump and talent level from one a to college. But you know, pointing out that it's going to be, you're going to see flashes and see traits more so than just a domination of the of the stat sheet makes a ton of sense. And I do think those impressions that fans are going to get are going to be a big deal. And he's a guy well positioned to give you some great impressions there. And then just a quick other one, Tavion Branch backup defensive lineman, freshman defensive lineman, but has heard his name's kind of popped up a little bit. Just, you know, the last week or so. I don't know if he's really a threat to play or for anybody's job or anything, but that's not what eight a is. Eight a is not always about like the best guys on the current roster. A lot of the times, this guy is for the future. Tavion Branch is another guy that I'm going to kind of be watching out for on Saturday. So we'll see what happens with those guys, but all in all excited to see excited to see the Tigers play football grandest against themselves, but in journey here, stadium, that'll be fun. Yeah. On the note of scenario, I want to get back to that for a second because I think my big question here and I want to kind of get your opinion on this is I expect a big Saturday from him just given playtime opportunity, all that stuff. But when everybody's healthy, when the Marcus Riddick is back in the regular season, how much run can he realistically get unless somebody else in front of him falters or gets hurt simply because like we name three or four guys that can all be on the field most of the time if needed. And he's kind of the fourth or fifth guy in the pecking order here. Yeah. So I mean, I guess to start this conversation, right, is if you can play and help this team win, Durkin is going to find a way to put you on the field. Yeah. But like Xavier Atkins is ahead of you. Elijah Melendez is ahead of you. The Marcus Riddick is probably ahead of you. And Bryce Diaz, I think it's ahead of you. And so like can the fifth linebacker play? Bryce Diaz had 185 snaps last year. Melendez had 271. Atkins had 700. Riddick had 246. And so then we're like, okay, is there a fifth linebacker? And there is. Robert Woodard had 400 snaps last year. So those are five guys that played snaps. Now, some more than others, there's a big difference between 190 and 700. But if you told me he played 150 snaps to 200 snaps, that wouldn't shock me. It wouldn't shock me at all. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, that's just based on how they used guys last year. I don't think the linebacker room is that different than a year ago. So thank you for what it's worth. Thank you for what it's worth. Lindsey Crosby, how can people check out everything you've got going on? Bravesaday.com is all of the Atlanta baseball stuff, ton of stuff there. Bravesaday podcast, Bravesaday.com is the newsletter. Also, the Auburn baseball stuff, the barnauberd.com. Please like the video. Please subscribe. We'll see you next time. This has been Locked on Auburn.
