Auburn out to fix red-zone woes

Tommy Tuberville didn’t need to be reminded of his team’s offensive struggles in the red zone.

The Auburn head coach is well aware that the Tigers are last in the SEC in that category, scoring only 69 percent of the time they’re inside the opponent’s 20-yard line. Auburn has scored nine out of 13 times in the red zone, with five touchdowns — only one of them passing — and four field goals.

Tuberville knows that’s not going to win too many games in the SEC, especially if you can’t figure out a way to score touchdowns and not just field goals. Saturday vs. Mississippi State, Auburn had the ball inside the Bulldogs’ 11-yard line twice and came away with no points.

“I would have loved to played better in the red zone,” Tuberville said. “We’re going to have to make some adjustments there.”

One of the “adjustments” would be going back to a two-back, power-running game, something that’s been non-existent since Tuberville hired offensive coordinator Tony Franklin and his spread offense, even though Tuberville said from the beginning the power running game wasn’t going anywhere.

So far this season, the offense has lined up under center just six times, and five of them have been to kneel the ball at the end of games. The other came in the first quarter Saturday vs. MSU on fourth-and-inches, where quarterback Chris Todd took a direct snap from center Ryan Pugh and plowed his way for the first down.

The rest of the Tigers’ 213 offensive plays have come in the form of the shotgun.

Sunday, when Tuberville was reminded about what he said about the power, two-back, goal-line running game, the head coach chuckled.

“I lied. I lied. I lied,” Tuberville smiled. “We’ve got that. What you do is you look at what they’re doing on defense. You look at what they’re doing last night, even out in the open field, that wouldn’t have helped any. The best thing you can do, and most teams do on the goal-line, is keep it spread out …”

But Tuberville did admit things can and might change.

“We’ll have to make some adjustments,” he said. “We’re not hard-headed. This is a project that we’re trying to find the right combinations. We’ve got to be more aggressive on the line of scrimmage. We’ve got to get more push. We’ll keep working every day to make that happen. That’s one concern.

“If we’d have knocked one of them in the end zone (Saturday night) the game would have been over. I think it would have been totally different.”

For Franklin, it comes down to thinking too much.

“That’s new for me” Franklin said of the red-zone struggles. “I’ve never been bad in the red zone before. More than likely, it’s two things: One is mistakes. Two is me.

“I’ve not done a good job in the red zone. I need to do a better job of going back to my feel and my instinct versus probably more game-planning. I’ve done more game-planning here. I’m going to go back to feel and instinct more than game-planning.”