A wrinkle in this year’s Iron Bowl: Auburn’s defense is actually good

Saturday’s Auburn-Alabama Iron Bowl (3:30 p.m. ET, CBS) carries limited stakes, but the game is not meaningless.

Alabama already locked a spot in the SEC West and is assured a Playoff spot as long as it doesn’t lose two games in a row, but Auburn’s still got room to grow. An upset could put Auburn in the Sugar Bowl — no small thing to end a season that started with Gus Malzahn on the hot seat.

And besides: it’s the Iron Bowl.

If AU fans are looking for a reason to be optimistic in light of the fact that their team is playing a juggernaut, defense should be one. Auburn’s D has gotten better this year by leaps and bounds, to the point where it’s the best by miles in Malzahn’s four years on the Plains. It’s not good enough to make Auburn a single-digit underdog, but it might be good enough to keep the game close and give the Tigers a wink of a chance.

Tide freshman QB Jalen Hurts is brilliant, but that’s not because he’s a great passer yet. The genius has been in how well he’s steered Lane Kiffin’s spread running game. Alabama creates simple decisions for Hurts, and he’s such a good athlete, with so much help, that he’s unstoppable when he gets it right.

Auburn’s secondary is fine, but the Tigers’ real strength lies in their front. And when you’re playing Bama — especially this version of Bama — that’s huge. Auburn allows just 3.5 yards per carry for the year, and that’s a bit misleading because it’s jumped to 5.3 against ranked teams. Alabama’s very much a ranked team.

But opponent-adjusted advanced stats thing AU’s front is pretty, pretty good anyway. Its ranks:

Auburn’s got a top-15 run defense, whether you prefer traditional figures like yards per run or new-school ones like the above. The Tigers have shown some vulnerability to the splash play, but they’re efficient from down to down, and they do really well in short-yardage situations. (That’s Power Success Rate, where they’re 12th nationally.)

That 35 percent Opportunity Rate means teams struggle to get beyond 5 yards on any given run. The higher IsoPPP comes from allowing a few too many explosive runs when they do.

But on the whole, there’s not much to say about Auburn’s front other than that it’s solid. It’s not as good as Alabama’s, but it should be good enough to keep the game closer than your run-of-the-mill Bama game.

Auburn defensive backs are sixth in the country in Havoc Rate, which counts tackles for loss, pass breakups, forced fumbles, and interceptions. They’re an active group, and they’re pretty good at helping against the run. Nickel cornerback Johnathan Ford is AU’s No. 2 tackler, only behind strong safety Tray Matthews.

Ford spends a lot of time playing near the line of scrimmage. He’s pretty big for a nickelback (a listed 6’0 and 204 pounds), and he likes to be involved. He’s got 4.5 tackles for loss, and he’s both big enough and strong enough to be an effective check on Hurts and Bama’s running backs. He’s a good tackler, and he’s fast.

Alabama likes running to the edge, and doing it enough to catch you complacent before hitting you through a gap. Having athletic tacklers to back up your front is a pretty important deal. LSU has them, and LSU held Bama to 10 points.

That means buck pass-rusher Carl Lawson (nine sacks, 12.5 tackles for loss) and tackle Montravius Adams (4.5, 8.5) will need to get in Hurts’ business. Middle linebacker Deshaun Davis, only a sophomore, will have to read a bunch of plays correctly, even though Kiffin designs plays so he’ll be wrong either way.

Alabama is a 40-points-per-game offense. In four ranked games, it’s a 36-point offense. There’s no real weakness. All but one Bama opponent has given up 30-plus, and six have given up at least 48.

The only team to find answers was LSU, which happens to share Auburn’s enthusiasm for good run defense and has a better secondary. It’ll be pretty hard to find the right formula.

But Auburn’s got a non-zero shot, because the defense is serious now. The Tide have scored 29, 55, 28, 49, and 42 points in the last five Iron Bowls. Auburn’s best shot at victory involves keeping the Tide below any of those scores, because Bama’s defense vs. Auburn’s current offense is nowhere near as promising a matchup for the Tigers.