It was a tough weekend for the Auburn Tigers' offensive line in Norman. The o-line performance was riddled with penalties— including six false starts when facing the Oklahoma defense— and quarterback Jackson Arnold was sacked nine times. Yep, nine times.
Though Head Coach Hugh Freeze said that the blame for the sacks was likely evenly split between the offensive line and Arnold, it's not a good stat to have in the books and it means there is plenty of work for the offensive line to do ahead of this weekend's matchup with Texas A&M, another road game against a ranked opponent.
"The biggest thing we're focusing on emphasizing is just focusing on pre-snap," center Connor Lew said, per Auburn Undercover. "We had a lot of inexcusable pre-snap penalties last week. We're focusing on getting those cleaned up."
Lew suffered a sprained MCL in the game against the Sooners, and during the plays he missed, 17-year-old lineman Kail Ellis filled in and he has been taking first-team reps with the offense in this week's practices while Lew is limited due to the sprain. However, when asked if anything would keep him from playing in this weekend's game, the answer was a firm no.
Elected a team captain this year by his teammates, Lew has been a strong leader for the Tigers, and he said he has been telling the guys to move on from last week's performance and focus on improving for the games left on the schedule.
"Yeah, I mean, stuff like that happens, and just being in this league for three years now, you got to learn from it, but you can't dwell on it," Lew said. "I've been telling everybody you've got to bounce back. Whatever you did last week wasn't enough. Whether it's preparation, taking care of your body in the training room, weights, coming out here in practice, everything's just got to — you've got to keep getting better and you can't look too much on the past."
The Tigers return to action against No. 9 Texas A&M at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday in College Station.