Auburn defensive coordinator Kevin Steele keeping options open on depth chart heading into summer

Auburn coordinator Kevin Steele doesn’t want any of his defenders feeling safe with their spot on the team’s tentative depth chart going into the summer.

Speaking to the media at an Auburn Alumni Club event Wednesday night at Union Station Train Shed in Montgomery, Steele was coy when asked about playing time for specific individuals.

“There are a lot of battles to take place and that’s what we want to create,” Steele said when asked about junior college transfer Paul James III. “We want to create competition on the field to make the guy that you are playing with on your team better. If they can have some internal positional competition it makes us better.”

When he was introduced as Auburn’s newest defensive coordinator in January, Steele spoke about the importance of establishing depth across the defense. His focus hasn’t changed after 15 spring practices.

“The snap count in college football has gone way up, it’s a fast paced deal, it’s more like basketball than huddle up football,” Steele said. “You have to be careful because if you start getting a pitch count too high on a guy in a fast-paced offense fatigue can set in and now you are playing with 10 and a half men.”

Steele’s goal is to have 18-plus starters ready for the team’s season-opener against Clemson at Jordan-Hare Stadium on Sept. 3.

Wednesday was also Steele’s first opportunity to address the defense’s performance on A-Day. Steele downplayed the strong defensive effort to an extent — “the focus wasn’t on the spring game, you get no points for winning the spring game” — but gave the group high marks for their consistent effort.

“What we wanted to accomplish, you’ve heard us talk about this before, relentless effort, pursuit to the ball and create a dominating attitude with just effort and we wanted to be better tacklers…” Steele said. “I think when you watch the video you see a group of guys that tried to play really, really hard, I thought we tackled in that setting relatively well. There were very, very few missed tackles and that was encouraging.”

While the defense coaching staff kept the playbook small, Steele was also pleased with the lack of mental errors in a performance that saw the defense limit the offense to two total touchdowns and hold the opposition to 1 of 22 on third downs.

This story was originally published April 27, 2016 at 8:16 PM with the headline "Auburn defensive coordinator Kevin Steele keeping options open on depth chart heading into summer."