Southern Miss Head Coach Raves About Auburn QB Byrum Brown: 'It Starts And Ends With Him'

With only one game of film from the Auburn Tigers under a new process with head coach Alex Golesh, Southern Miss head coach Blake Anderson found a point of emphasis within the team on offense.

If you don’t stop quarterback Byrum Brown, the chances of winning are very slim.

Anderson spoke with the media about the Golden Eagles’ process heading into Jordan-Hare Stadium on Saturday evening, calling Auburn’s defense a tape that “looks like it’s on fast-forward.” Then, when going to the offense, it’s all about Brown, saying, “it starts and ends with him.”

“He’s a big dude. He’s going to be very hard to bring down,” Anderson said. “They’re not afraid to run him. I know he turned the ball over this last week, but first game of the year at a new pace. I’m sure a lot of nerves go into that.”

In the Tigers’ win over Baylor inside Mercedes-Benz Stadium last weekend, that’s how Brown showed off his dual-threat ability. He finished with 259 passing yards, despite three interceptions. However, he ran the ball 21 times, including calling his own number on the final offensive drive of the game for an 11-yard rushing touchdown.

Southern Miss can’t have Brown running the ball often, and Anderson is making it a must to keep him throwing the ball.

“He is a big, physical specimen with a ton of confidence, and we got to keep him in the pocket; hard to do,” he said. “We got to get him on the ground; some of those times in one-on-ones, hard to do, and he knows the offense.”

Another angle to watch entering this contest is that Golesh and Anderson run the same type of offensive scheme. That’s where Southern Miss could have some tactics to slow down Brown and the Auburn offense, since its defense plays a similar offense with each practice.

Of course, though, Anderson wants to eliminate the aspect of Brown making plays outside of the pocket. If that’s the case, there aren’t many solutions for that part of Golesh’s scheme.

“They run the same system we do. They see this every day,” he said. “They see what we’re doing, and they know, so he can be a huge challenge for us just in one-on-one settings alone, but really, he can do everything.”

Auburn heads back to the Plains with hopes to pick up another win before hosting Florida on Sept. 19. With that game expected to be a program-changing game for either team, being the first season of each head coach, the Tigers will look to bring momentum into that, and Brown will be at the nucleus of that.

Anderson will look to slow that down, but with the tempo Golesh plays at, it could have his hands full, especially with the Auburn quarterback that will run out there.

“He can throw it, he can run it and it makes the field really big, and they’re going to play lightning fast in terms of tempo, which we struggled at times to get lined up the other day, even in limited space,” Anderson said.

Enjoy our content? Make AuburnOnSI a preferred source to see more stories from us on Google by clicking here.

Add us as a preferred source on Google