Bryan Harsin explains how Auburn is highlighting Tank Bigsby

After a tumultuous offseason, Auburn football is back with spring practice and a new-look roster for the 2022 season. One of Bryan Harsin’s biggest returning pieces is running back Tank Bigsby, who built on his breakout freshman season with another big performance last year, and hopes to further emerge in 2022.

During a spring practice press conference, Bryan Harsin addressed how his staff plans to get Tank Bigsby and the running back room more successful touches in 2022 by preparing in the offseason.

“We’re always looking at NFL film either way for all our positions, not just the run game or Tank in particular, but all the positions” said Harsin. “That’s the highest level. You’ve got great players, they do it the right way, so you try to use those clips as examples in all that. But Tank, Jarquez (Hunter), Sean (Jackson), Jordon (Ingram), those guys, Demari (Alston) when he gets here, they’re all going to be a part of the run game.

“I think we’re just looking at things that we did last year, things we need to improve on and looking at how we can run the ball and be successful. Obviously, Tank is a big part of that. It just goes back to some film study and things that we want to do. And then examples of how we want to work that with the o-line and put all those things together. Tank’s obviously going to be a big factor in that.”

Over two seasons at Auburn, Bigsby has played in 23 games with 1,933 rushing yards and 15 touchdowns. He also added 268 receiving yards and returned 13 kickoffs as a freshman for 306 yards.

Bryan Harsin on offensive line

One of the weaknesses in the Auburn Tigers program over the past few seasons has been the offensive line. Not being able to protect former quarterback Bo Nix over the past three years has been an issue and head coach Bryan Harsin is on a mission to fix it for the upcoming 2022 season.

After a recent spring practice, Harsin gave an update on how the unit is progressing early on. He said the offensive line is “getting better,” saying getting a few big names back from injury will certainly help with depth and build the group up overall.

“From that standpoint, assuming that those guys that have played come back and they improve and they’re competing with the guys right now, then we have better depth,” said Harsin. “You have more competition, better depth, which is going to create, hopefully, better performance with those guys up front.”