Offensive line looks to improve

Lee Ziemba isn’t about making excuses.

Auburn’s sophomore left tackle knows he’s struggled. He knows he’s made mistakes. He knows he needs to fix the problems — immediately.

Things like jumping offside, holding, missing blocks, setting too far outside or not far enough, keeping focus ... everything that highlights his position for all the wrong reasons. It’s the old cliché, really, if people are talking about an offensive lineman, something’s not right.

Ziemba knows that. And he’s determined to fix it.

“I’ve had some penalties called on me. Everybody sees that,” he said. “It’s going to be corrected.

“The penalties are something that should be addressed and corrected. They will be. There is no excuse for that. It’s my fault. I’ll continue to improve.”

The phrase “sophomore slump” has been thrown around when talking about Ziemba, who burst onto the scene last season as a true freshman, starting all 13 games, making him just the third true freshman of the Tommy Tuberville era to start the season opener — wide receivers Ben Obomanu and Devin Aromoshodu did it in 2002.

In five games this season, Ziemba has been flagged for a handful of penalties, which have hurt offensive drives, and admittedly isn’t playing up to the standards he set for himself after last season.

But he’s not the only one, says Tuberville.

There are four other guys on the offensive line who have also had their struggles, the head coach points out.

“We lose our focus,” Tuberville said of the offensive line, which was flagged nine times during AU’s 3-2 win over Mississippi State in the first SEC game of the season. “It’s all of them. You just can’t point at one guy. We got to be more on the same page.

“It’s always a concern and it’s happening with everybody, not just with one or two. Ziemba has had a few more, but we don’t point the blame at anybody. We’ve just got to focus better.”

Tuberville could be speaking for the entire offense, as well. Currently, the Tigers are ranked 97th or worse in four offensive categories, including scoring offense (97th, 19.8 ppg), passing efficiency (99th, 105.18), red zone offense (T-105, 66.7 percent) and third-down conversions (112th, 29.3 percent). And that’s out of 120 Division I teams.

Throw in Auburn’s struggles to consistently run the football and score points — three touchdowns in three SEC games — and the Tigers are undoubtedly looking for an identity.
Ziemba said the offensive line has found one.

For the 6-foot-8 left tackle, it’s about trying to relocate the same focus and intensity he and his linemates had last year, which returns four of the starting five — Tyronne Green, Jason Bosley, Ryan Pugh and Ziemba.

It’s something they all talked about Sunday after Auburn’s 14-12 win over Tennessee in a team meeting.

“We’ve got the same guys out there that we had last year when we were running the ball down people’s throats,” Ziemba said. “What’s the difference this year? Why can’t we do that? We were just talking. We opened it up for discussing; the starting five and (offensive line) Coach (Hugh) Nall.”

And what did they come up with?

“We decided that this week we’re going to play with a new confidence level,” Ziemba said. “We’re going to play with a different swagger. We’re going to get off the ball and we’re going to block some folks. That’s what we’re going to do this week. That’s what we’re going to do this season.

"We’ll practice hard this week and we’ll get after it Saturday.”

It’s the same for Pugh, who also played last season as a true freshman at right tackle before switching places with Bosley, last year’s center.

“I think you’ll see a different offensive line this week,” Pugh said, “one that you saw at the end of last year when we were nasty, a little meaner, a little more aggressive.”

Bosley, the lone senior on the line, agrees. And he says the problems can be corrected with a simple return to the basics.

“We were just kind of getting back to where we came from,” Bosley said. “During two-a-days, we had an attitude that we’re the leaders of this offense, we’ve got to really set the tempo and we’ve kind of gotten away from that a little bit I think. We’ve just kind of been grinding a little bit instead of going out there and really leading the offense like we should be.

“We just said, ‘Look, this is the same offensive line that we’ve been playing with for the last two years now. We’ve been playing together for a while. We’ve got great chemistry, we love each other, we hang out all the time. Let’s just go out there and start fresh, have some fun and kind of get practice going so we can keep getting better.’”

mszvetitz@oanow.com | 737-2513