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Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Line play key to the Tigers' offensive success

I wrote a story for today's paper about the offensive line and its impact on Auburn's tremendous offensive success in the first two games. Here's how it starts:

AUBURN, Ala. — Jeff Grimes isn’t big into simply doling out grades following a football game.

Auburn’s first-year offensive line coach likes to go beyond the traditional evaluation system. In meetings he’ll highlight the positives and negatives from the previous game, taking time to talk to each player individually about what went well and what didn’t.

Then, in an odd twist, he makes his linemen critique themselves.

“Never had to do that,” right guard Mike Berry said. “I think that’s really big because everybody knows, although we had almost 400 yards rushing in the last game, we could have done a lot of things better. We see that and that’s what we’re going to correct.”

So far, there hasn’t been much to fix. Auburn’s starting five — Lee Ziemba, Berry, Ryan Pugh, Byron Isom and Andrew McCain — have been a major reason for the Tigers’ early-season success.

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1 comment:

War Eagle AC-47 said...

No more false start penalties, please.

Great protection of the quarterback. Thank you.

Making holes for the ball carriers. Thank you.