Auburn football: Bryan Harsin’s offensive identity for Tigers, in his words

Auburn football head coach Bryan Harsin has been under the magnifying glass, seemingly with the sun shining into it in a painful blaze, from the media recently. Opelika-Auburn News deputy editor Justin Lee claimed that he is the luckiest coach in college football for being able to get away with not delivering on any of the promises he made at the start of his Tigers tenure.

After promoting Boise State holdovers Eric Kiesau and Jeff Schmedding into offensive and defensive coordinator roles, respectively, the idea that he has not been given a chance by the Auburn brain trust is up for debate. Truthfully, the February inquiry was the most damning thing done to Harsin’s chances.

But establishing an offensive identity with much of the same personnel from the 2021 season should have been an accomplished task by now. That right there is the magic question for a team that should have one of the SEC’s top rushers (Tank Bigsby) but instead has a quarterback (Robby Ashford) who was supposed to be a third-stringer before Zach Calzada was unable to make his debut at all in the 2022 season being the leading rusher some games.

Offensive line woes cannot be let off the hook. Former Auburn football head coach Gus Malzahn left Harsin with thin trenches on the offensive side of the ball, but Harsin and Will Friend have done little to make up for it on the recruiting trail through either the transfer portal or through high school recruiting besides nabbing Auburn High’s Bradyn Joiner — who may have wanted to don the orange and blue as a local stud anyway.

Much of the offensive struggles fall solely on Harsin’s shoulders at this point. Here was his description of the Tigers’ offensive identity during an October 10 press conference with the local media (h/t AL.com):

"“I think the identity right now, we want to be balanced. We want to run the ball, throw the ball. We want the play-action off some of the run game. We want to be able to get out on the perimeter and still be firm and be able to run downhill, inside the tackles, and really try to be balanced as much as we can. Utilize our personnel.”“So, that hasn’t changed. Have we been very good at that at this point? Are we where we want to be right now? We’re not. But that’s what our identity is.”"

Auburn football doesn’t have the offensive line talent for a pro-style offense

Once upon a time, Zach Calzada was seen as the best fit for Bryan Harsin’s pro-style offense; the same offense he had success with in the Mountain West and during the middle portion of the 2021 season with Bo Nix under center.

Now, he has a dual-threat under center in Robby Ashford who has shown flashes of dicing secondaries from the pocket but hasn’t shown it nearly enough. To be fair to the Hoover High School signal-calling great, the offensive line hasn’t given him a chance to become one.

Truthfully, the best bet to overcome the current offensive line woes would be to embrace trickery and chaos and ditch any pro-style concepts.