Auburn Football: Defensive Depth Chart Projections – Cornerback

Oct 25, 2014; Auburn, AL, USA; Auburn Tigers defensive back Jonathan Jones (3) intercepts a pass intended for South Carolina Gamecocks receiver Shaq Roland (4) during the second half at Jordan Hare Stadium. The Tigers beat the Gamecocks 42-35. Mandatory Credit: John Reed-USA TODAY Sports

Looking ahead to the 2015 Auburn football season, we’ve gone through the depth chart projections for the defensive front seven.

• Buck
• Defensive End
• Defensive Tackle
• Nose Guard
• Strong Side Outside Linebacker
• Weak Side Outside Linebacker
• Middle Linebacker

Now we turn our attention to the cornerbacks.

Simply put, one of the most important areas of improvement for Will Muschamp in his first year as Gus Malzahn’s defensive coordinator the Tigers’ pass defense and the play of the secondary.

Over the last six SEC games last season, the Tigers allowed 1,722 passing yards – an average of 287 yards per game. Take out the Georgia game in which the Tigers allowed only 123 passing yards but lost 34-7 and the Auburn defense allowed 319.8 yards per game to Mississippi State, South Carolina, Ole Miss, Texas A&M and Alabama.

Overall, the Tigers allowed 230.1 passing yards per game, and if they hadn’t forced 22 interceptions things could have been worse.

The good news is that Muschamp’s Gators allowed just 194.2 passing yards per game in the first 11 games of 2014 in which he was the head coach (Muschamp didn’t coach in the bowl game and Florida allowed over 400 passing yards to East Carolina).

It’s worth noting that the 2014 pass defense was the worst statistical performance for the Gators with Muschamp as head coach and Travaris Robinson coaching defensive backs – and the Gators allowed nearly 30 yards per game less than Auburn on average.

Are there any schematic differences can we expect from the coaching change? Not many. Auburn will still play a lot of aggressive man coverage, but Muschamp wants to make sure he puts defenders in a position to be successful no matter what their strengths are.

“… It is our job as coaches to identify with the players what they can do. If they can not play man coverage, you need to figure out how to play zone and stop them,” Muschamp said at his introductory press conference in December. “That’s the bottom line. If you can be a man team we would like to be a man team, we’d like to be a middle field coverage team, we like to be able to mix things up.”

Because of the coaching change, there are a lot of unknowns in the secondary. But how does the cornerback depth chart shape up two months prior to spring practice? Let’s take a look.

Next: Jonathan Jones