From the Podium: Bryan Harsin reflects on Auburn's win over Missouri

AUBURN– Kicking off SEC play for the 2022 season, Auburn defeated Missouri, 17-14, in a not-so-pretty overtime win on Saturday afternoon.

The Tigers started off strong with a quick 14-0 lead, but then fell back into old patterns as the game went on. Bryan Harsin entered the media room elated for the win, happy for his players, and aware of how close the Tigers were to a much different outcome.

With slim-to-none pass protection, quarterback Robby Ashford passed six times in the first half, completing five of them. The offensive line struggled once again today, averaging just 1.8 yards per carry. The defense played well, bent at the end, but did enough to help the Tigers secure the win.

Heading into the last of five straight home games, Harsin and the Tigers know plenty of improvements have to be made. The schedule only gets more difficult from here on out.

RELEVANT LINKS

Grading the Tigers

Inside the Numbers

Takeaways

Bryan Harsin’s opening statements

“First of all, Missouri is a very good football team. They’re very well coached. Their staff has them prepared. I knew Eli would do that and he did exactly that and they did some really good things and we had to overcome a tough opponent- certainly some tough circumstances. At the end of the game, they put themselves in position to win the game and we were able to have that play go our way with the field goal and go into overtime and have an opportunity for Anders to go out there and make the kick, which he did. Then, at the very end of it, play that last play and the ball comes out, that’s really the tail of the game right there- the ball comes out and we’re able to recover it. So, we had two turnovers today, so we’re plus two on the turnovers, which is what we wanted to be. That was a big factor of the game.”

Harsin continued…

“Just overall, just the effort of our guys and the sideline- the energy and the focus each and every play. The execution part of it, we’ll go back and look at that. We know that’s always a message that we’re going to have from me and our coaches and everybody in that room- the execution. We’re going to have to figure out how we do those things better. That’s the beauty of having another week to go prepare for another SEC opponent. But overall, that was a great game. Our crowd was fantastic- to get up early and to be there at 11 a.m., to go out there and have the energy that we did. I thought we started off fast and you could feel that. I thought we had momentum early in the game and then things started to slow down. It was just kind of a back-and-forth slug fest at that point.”

On on Robby Ashford’s performance

“Robby did a good job today, I was really proud of Robby. Robby ran around and made some plays. That’s the one thing that Robby did a really good job of, he made things happen. He ran the ball well, towards the end there, we had a little fade ball that he threw that was nice, Koy had a great catch on that.”

On Holden Geriner being part of the game plan

“Yeah, it was more of that. Robby, he got hit, so he needed a minute there to recover, so to get Holden there and play… I’ll say this- Holden had a very good week and Holden is coming along. He is coming on and he’s learning and he’s been involved in every game plan, maybe not as far as playing, but he knows the game plan. He knows what to do. We put him out there, I mean, yeah we felt good. We felt like he could go out there and execute the plays.”

“I don’t think anything had to do with Holden, necessarily, it kind of comes back to the question with protection. We need to do a better job giving him a little bit more time, but I felt good about it when he went in there. We actually gave him another drive and gave him a chance. And we kind of felt like he was ready to go again and then Robby came back and we were able to finish the game with him.”

On Tate Johnson and the OL

“Tate (Johnson), I don’t know the status of Tate right now and what that means moving forward, so we’ll get more of that tomorrow.”

“We struggled in some of our pass protection, no question. That’s an area that we’re going to continue to keep emphasizing and keep working on. It’s not going to go away until we fix some of our own problems. That’s the focus that you have on your own football team and our guys know that. A lot of our week’s preparation is still about us. We played Missouri today, but a lot of it was about what we had to do, how we had to execute. The message during the week was focus and execution… We’ve got to be better on the offensive line and we’ve got too much pressure.”

Harsin continued…

“Overall, yeah we’ve got to fix some of those things up front and that ties into the run game. For us, just so we’re clear, we want every single play to be successful. We want to stay ahead of the chains and when we don’t… that’s when we look back and go ‘What’re we doing?’ schematically…”

On the defensive pressure

“I thought our defense did some really good things. They got the turnover early in the game. I don’t know how many three and outs we had and they made a few plays and then, in the second half, we got ourselves in some behind-the-chains situations is what we did. We want to stay ahead of the chains. We got behind the chains- second-and-12, second-and-15. And we didn’t recover from that as well as we’d like to. We’ve got to learn from that. Overall, in that locker room right there, there’s a lot of guys in there that I’m very proud of. I appreciate the effort.”

Has Harsin ever coached a game like this one?

“No. There’s been some crazy games, but no, not like that. I think, as you look to the end of the game there, we put ourselves in a position… I thought they executed what they needed to do to put themselves in a position to win. We went out there and we applied some pressure. I couldn’t tell you what caused their kick to go wide right, if it was the pressure that we were bringing. One of the things about that is just the accumulation of the game as you’re out there and you have the chance to get your field goal block team, sometimes that does affect the kicker… Crazy finish, both teams fighting hard to win the football game. We were able to find a way to get it done.”