Auburn football: 5 questions the Tigers must answer in 2020

4. Auburn football: Will the Auburn football defensive line remain dominant?

Though they may not have been garnering sacks at a high clip last season, the combination of Derrick Brown and Marlon Davidson was dominant for Auburn last season. There’s a reason those two guys were both top-50 selections in the 2020 NFL Draft. But now that they’re gone, along with veteran Nick Coe, the Tigers have some holes to fill on the front line.

The likely standout, or at least projected standout, of the Auburn defensive line in the 2020 season will be Big Cat Bryant. While he only registered only 1.5 sacks and 2.0 tackles for loss in a limited role last season, he was consistently generating pressure on the quarterback. Him taking a big leap forward as he assumes a larger role will help the Tigers a ton.

What remains to be seen is if the defensive line will go from being star-laden to having Bryant and a group of unreliable players. Similar to Bryant, though perhaps with less pedigree and fewer flashes, guys such as Tyron Truesdell in addition to Coynis Miller Jr. and Derick Hall will also need to take up bigger roles on defense and produce.

When you look at Auburn’s biggest games of last season, the reason they were in many of them, wins or losses, was due to the performance of the defense, a unit anchored in the trenches. While you would hope the team would be less reliant on that moving forward with Nix, the simple fact remains that they may need it and that’s far less certain to happen in 2020 than it was in 2019.