More than ever, defense in college football is about your eyes.
Georgia head coach Kirby Smart said as much this week. Every offense nowadays utilizes motions and shifts to create matchups and confuse opposing defenses.
Nobody does a better job of that than Hugh Freeze, whose Auburn Tigers travel to Athens this weekend to take on a Bulldog defense that struggled at times last week against Alabama.
"Football has become this crazy event of moving people pre-snap to try to gain an advantage," Smart said. "I don't know where it evolved to. It just continued to. You know, it used to be everybody standing still and hit each other, and now they all move. So the eye discipline is extremely important, but it's extremely important every game. I think with Hugh, he does a great job of changing things up, giving you different pictures."
Freeze certainly gave Georgia fits last season, his first at Auburn.
The Tigers ran for 219 yards, including 92 from quarterback Payton Thorne. The Tigers are expected to start Thorne once again on Saturday.
The quarterback run game makes things that much more difficult for second-level defenders to have good eye discipline. So do run-pass option plays, something Freeze has relied on for much of his career.
"For a while, he was an RPO guy. When RPOs came out, he was ahead of the game at doing those. He's evolved. He still does those," Smart said. "He still has the quarterback make decisions on plays, whether to throw it or run it, because you can take advantage of defenses doing that. But he's added new wrinkles and twists that you see in the NFL, you see across college football, using motions and eye candy and sorts of things to create an advantage or create a leverage or a mismatch. So he's done a good job evolving while keeping the RPO game."
So what are the keys for Georgia's linebackers this weekend?
For starters, the Bulldogs say it's important to understand they're working as a unit. Linebacker Smael Mondon said it's crucial to know "where your help's at" as you attack blocks.
But of course, each player bears his own responsibility too.
"When you first start, you kind of just see the lot, you see formation, you try to think what they're going to run and stuff like that," linebacker CJ Allen said. "But just being on your keys, for every snap, it's a specific key that you have. Just sticking to your keys and doing your job and trusting your teammates."
The success on the scoreboard hasn't been there for Auburn, which has lost three of four games and two straight in the SEC. But Smart knows that the Tigers still create plenty of challenges for his Bulldog to be aware of on Saturday afternoon.
"People misunderstand. They think that you're just coach speak when you talk about Auburn," Smart said. "These guys have not really made like — they're not getting stopped. They're turning the ball over. Look at the stats of what they've done offensively. Don't look at the points, the scores. Just look at them go up and down the field, and they've stopped themselves a lot of times. A lot of respect for the physicality they play with them, how they play."
