Derick Hall provides takeaways from loss against Alabama

The 2021 Iron Bowl had Auburn and Alabama fans on the edge of their seats during the four-overtime thriller that saw the Crimson Tide survive the Tigers’ upset bid 24-22 in Tuscaloosa.

That game saw Auburn standout edge rusher Derick Hall record a season-high three sacks to go with six total tackles – a performance he won’t soon forget as it seemed the Auburn defense was finally beginning to click despite losing the final five games of the season, though they lose three of those games by one score or less.

“[The Alabama] game really showed us a lot, just in the standpoint of the kind of defense that Auburn is capable of playing,” Hall said at SEC Media Days. “That’s the Auburn blue-collar defense everyone knows and everyone is used to. So just trying to sustain off, that build off that, learning things that we need to learn and take away from in that game to help us go into this year.

“Once that happened, we’ve might have lost a game, but once we played a kind of caliber of defense, that was the standard. Nobody’s backing down from that, so we’re gonna keep rising, we’re gonna hold that standard and … we’re going to keep rising, moving the right direction. I think the Auburn defense is definitely back.”

Throughout all of last season, Hall compiled nine sacks – meaning that one third of his total sacks during his junior year came during the Iron Bowl on the Heisman Trophy-winning Bryce Young. Only four teams in total (Georgia, Arkansas, LSU and Texas A&M) managed to sack Young more times than Hall in all of last season, which Auburn had seven total.

With Hall poised for a breakout season, landing on multiple preseason All-American lists and gaining momentum as one of the top edge rushers in the 2023 NFL Draft class, Auburn is still projected to finish at the bottom of the SEC West – something Auburn fans (and Hall for that matter) don’t want to get used to.

Hall and the Tigers have the chance to prove the doubters wrong starting Week One of the 2022 college football season, where they’ll take on Mercer at 7 p.m. at home on Sept. 3. Their first real test of the year won’t come until two weeks later when Auburn hosts Penn State on Sept. 17.