STRANGE? Auburn STILL has not announced Byrum Brown, What is the hold up?

0:00Where is he? Where is he? Where's the news? Where's Byron Brown? You are Lockdown Auburn, your daily podcast on the Auburn Tigers. Part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. Man, portal season, goodness gracious. Yes, welcome on into Lockdown Auburn, your daily Auburn Tigers podcast on your host, Zach Blackerby. And thank you so much for making Lockdown Auburn, your first list in every single day. What it's touch on some of the USF ads so far? Which one is your favorite? Which one might be underrated? We have so many to pick from. State of the Troj is, I think that's interesting. That hasn't really been addressed yet. It does seem like they're working that direction. We'll touch on that as well. But Kyle, the big question every Auburn fan is asking is, okay, there's Byron Brown announcement. Where is it?

1:01When is it coming? I think there are several solid theories up to this point. But I am, I mean arbitrarily, I said, look, if Tuesday comes and goes, you have the right to ask the question. And I'm just going to ask the question, like, what's the benefit of not having this done up to this point? He's reportedly supposedly still an offer. Yeah. Yeah. I think I think I may have figured out what the deal is. And I think that this staff just absolutely hates content creators. I'm just going to go ahead and throw that out. They hate us. They don't want to give us anything to work with as far as Byron Brown goes. No, I'm just kidding. Obviously, but it does. It is kind of funny how there's no lead up to anything. There's no hinting of anything. There's no, there's nothing. You just, and then if it's like you, you're getting bombarded. I'm sure you're getting bombarded. I'm getting bombarded. There's Byron

2:02Brown. That must mean we're not getting him or we can't afford him or there's problems or there's this or there's that. And honestly, I don't have a good answer for it because this is so unnatural to what we've been used to the last couple of years. I can't really think of a good excuse as to why he's not already out in the public as far as being an Auburn commitment, but on the same token, I don't feel concerned at all either. No, I don't either. And I think that's the main thing here. Now, if a report comes out that he's visiting somewhere else, sure, at that point in time, you panic and you asked the question, like, what is going on? How did you let that happen? Why is it happening? I mean, there was some rumor and chatter about like a potential announcement with Duce night, but then Duce officially enters the portal yesterday. So then it's like, does that

3:03end that? Are they still going to have to? Right. Because who knows when he filed the paperwork to enter the portal, right? I mean, USF showed us that, right? They'll hold it for for it. Like, did we do some of that with Duce? Like, I don't, I don't know. I don't know. It's so interesting. Like, Warsaw, the GM posted a picture of Jordan here stating them all lit up at night and said, it was going to be a great night or whatever. Are they waiting to film a video or some kind of promotional content at night with the announcement? They needed to get dark before they could do that. Like, I don't know. It's dark pretty early. It does. It does. Yeah. Like something like that goes out. Something like that goes out and then everybody's like, okay, well, here it comes any point in time and it just, it just doesn't, it just doesn't. You remember how, I don't remember. I think it was, I can't remember if it was she or if it was Harson and we were, we joked about how they had to

4:05get their bat signals down. Like, they had to figure that that part out because like, it was really, there was a period of time where it was like very misleading or the time frame was way off. Like, yeah, that was under freeze. Yeah. Yeah. They would do it and then like, six hours later, it would happen. You're like, everybody's freaking out the whole time. Like, okay, what happened? There was the bat signal. I don't know. It kind of feels like that again. Yeah. The best bat signal for the old staff, especially for that specific class was Malik Autry. Oh, yeah. The bat. Yeah. Yeah. Batman. The little chubby backman guy. Yeah. Which I still don't know if I understand. Oh, that's the bat signal. That was his bat signal. The bat man. Yeah. He was at any time. Yes. Somebody got added to the class. Right. Right. No, I mean, it's, I mean, be as negative as possible when you answer this. Like, to the Auburn fan that's starting to be concerned. Mm-hmm. Like, make that case. Make the cases like, oh, my goodness. I need to be concerned

5:08about Byron Brown because I'm going to be honest. I have a hard time doing that unless somebody's making something like the Texas tech thing. Well, they got source B. Yeah. My amy's entry. Like, maybe like, does my amy somehow get inspired and want to drop a bag? Like, that's, that's kind of the last one here. Yeah. That's that. And then that's a big thing is like, you got to think about who all needs a quarterback and who's willing to pay those big bucks for for a guy like that. And really, my amy's it. Florida that took the kid from Georgia Tech. You already mentioned source B levit's looks like he's going to LSU. So where's the other big time spot for him? Everybody else seems to have have somebody already. So FSUs really seem like they're going hard after DJ lag way. Yeah. I mean, they could pivot and go go for him if Auburn is doing make sense. Yeah. Is is or is is dragging their feet, I guess,

6:11perceived. So like goalish has to know, like, that would be the worst looking thing ever. And that's kind of what we've been holding on to. It's like, yeah, these guys are leaving, but like his guys are following them. And we had a bunch of us as commit yesterday a lot. And we'll talk about those guys in a second. But I don't know. I'm just trying to think of worst case scenario. Like what could happen? And like, the result of a worst case scenario would be awful by going somewhere else. But I have a hard time seeing the road of getting there. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can be as tough and hard-nosed and lying in the sand as you want to be. But at the end of the day, you're not dumb. You know what I mean? Like, you can't be dumb. Yeah. I'm trying to think like if Byram at the last second wanted to be like, yeah, I need this amount of money. Like, you got to do it. You almost have to do it. Yeah. You have to do it. Yeah. Sores be going for five million is not nice. That doesn't make you feel good. Now, you've got a discount on your backup so far. So that helps. But yeah,

7:20sores being going for five million and kind of setting that bar. That's the third is by the way, is he was he was fine. You know, you know, you know, Byram Brown did both of those. He did both of those things in one. How many people have done that ever? Actually, not just last year, like, ever at only one person did last year. You know, when you add up, like, how many of the players has done it twice? Fun fact. Can I name someone that's done it twice? Lamar Jackson. That's it. That's the list. There you go. I didn't know that. That was a complete guess, by the way. You know, ball. I respect that. I respect that. Yeah. So like, what are we doing? Your best theory. Let us know either in the comments down below or hit us up on on social media. Genuinely curious. Genuinely curious. It's wild. Not concerned. But it is interesting. I think it's weird. I think I'm blown away that I'm not concerned at this point in time. Uh, yeah,

8:23because he has a he's there's didn't know reports that he's visiting anywhere else. Because boy, like, as soon as that were to happen, it would spread like crazy. I would, I would be, uh, I would be a nervous wreck if that were to happen. But that hadn't happened yet. So yeah, I'm kind of there with you. I'm kind of there with you. Um, we met. I have Byron Brown yet, but like, we've got the rest of this. The rest of the rest of the whole South. I think some are super underrated. Uh, that's next right here. A lot on Auburn. Today's show brought to you by our friends at rocket money. Let's go. I love rocket money. I love rocket money so much. Let's be real managing your finances can feel overwhelming between subscriptions. You forget about bills that keep going up and trying to figure out where all your money actually goes each month. Kyle, rocket money. They've got an answer. They can help you track every single dollar that you have

9:23going out and coming in. That's big. That's a big New Year's resolution for a lot of people. As it should be, it's important. Sometimes managing money can feel like a, uh, a second job, and it should it. Rocket money can help you with that. Bang. And it's got a really cool name. Yeah. Rocket money. I like money and rockets and yeah, I think that's a pitch right there. Let rocket money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join at rocket money.com slash locked on. That's rocket money.com slash locked on. Rocket money.com slash say it with me locked on. Thank you so much for making locked on Auburn. You're first listen every single day. Man, we got a lot of USF guys yesterday. So many. Um, you know, my favorite meme, my favorite meme is that they show this airplane, right? And it's an Auburn airplane. Yes. And they show a, a large number of South Florida football players in their South Florida uniform getting on to the Auburn airplane. It's really funny. Every time I see

10:26it, that is funny. I haven't seen that said it to me next time you see it because that's hilarious. I hate we couldn't throw it up on the screen. I, I want to talk about a few of these guys, because I am impressed with a few of them. But I just want to ask you this question first. And this is going to be a discussion. All off season. Everybody's having it, bro. It ain't all off season. It's right now too. But we go ahead. I don't really care about the fans' perspective of it because I think you're in a back like if you look at each individual wanted to vacuum, it makes sense. Sure. It would make sense why you would add Jeremiah Kroger Kroger Kroger Kroger Kroger. Yeah. It makes sense why you would add Christian Neptune. Kind of makes sense why you would add Cory Pettigrew. It's like, okay, if the coach believes that I'm great. It makes sense why you would add Davenport and running back. Productive Noves the system. Great. All of these makes sense. One-on-one. It's when you zoom out and you're like, this is a lot. This is a lot of like, it's pretty much like all the receipt, especially if they get singleton. It's like all the receiving core there. It's just like, oh, okay. What does blow me away?

11:32They're productive guys. I didn't realize how young they were when we first started talking about them. I didn't realize that Kroger was a freshman last year. That's remarkable. That's awesome. Yeah. What do you think? I'm sorry, it's taking me way too long into the point. What do you think the players think? These guys that are SEC battle tested and it's like, oh, he's bringing, he's like bringing, you know, all these guys with them. What do you think those conversations in the locker room are like? Well, there's not many offensive guys really left. There's not a ton of offensive guys really left. You don't have a whole lot of conversations to be had there. I could see where maybe the defensive side could be like, oh, boy, here we go. We're just, you know, last year we played as good as we could and could get two defensive guys from USF. Yeah, Fred Gaskin and Gavin Jenkins. Yeah, but most of the other guys are offensive guys. So the defense are they thinking, are they thinking, oh, boy, here we go again. Or are they thinking,

12:37you know, maybe we got some, you know, studs and we can just plug and play as far as that goes. You know what's funny is like it's the everybody points to signati and they're like, oh, signati did it. And he had success. But like, signati also has had like the oldest teams in college football for like three years. And he's doing it again. And this is the complete opposite. Like they're bringing in all the young guys. Now, some of them are very good. I think coger is insanely underrated. I agree. I think he may be, I think Neptune is as well, by the way. Yeah, I'm with you. I'm with you. I think coger may be more exciting than maybe any of them. If I'm being, I mean, not saying other than Byron Brown, like this kid's really, really good. So yeah, if I had to pick between coger and singleton, I'm thinking about it. Say that one more time. I'm picking between Jeremiah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Kishan singleton.

13:38I'm thinking about it. Yeah, I might take a, I might, you know, I might take coger on the right day. You never know. Yeah. And I think there's an argument also with like, what else are you planning to do? Because if you're getting another like number one, and then you have coger, like I think I'd rather have that situation. Yeah, you got a bunch of things. And then again, singleton, I'm going to be stoked to fiends up as an Albert Tiger. But do you think it's interesting? I do think it's interesting. So a scenario has happened in my life. Oh boy. Over really the last two weeks. Okay. Where I'm just going to, I'm, I find my, whether it's here sitting at my desk or maybe I'm watching a Disney movie with my kids. And I just find myself, sometimes in the middle of the night when I wake up, I just find myself thinking about Fred Gaskin. Really? I'm so excited for you. You're a DB guy too. So that's big. Yeah, I mean, he's a safety. He's in the middle of the field. God, I don't want him playing court. But like, I'm just like, I'm just stoked about this guy.

14:44He's just, to me, first thought, his name is Fred Gaskin. That's a great, do you want as a safety? Yeah, it's a great safety name. He's just, he's just like always around the ball. Like in his, it's like not necessarily always like the most fundamentally perfect play. But he's, he just finds himself in the mix. He finds himself around ball. There's some level of instinct there. I'll give you a perfect example. Okay. There's a highlight of him. And he doesn't really make this play. Okay. He doesn't necessarily make this play. But it looked like it was like a double safety blitz. Okay. And the actual other safety. God knocked the ball out of the quarterbacks. But Gaskin's there. He's there. And then he's, he gets the ball from like the fumble recovery runs it back 93 yards. And there's multiple plays like that where there's an interception where there's a throw away. There's a, there's a highlight of it. It's a ball that's

15:44being thrown away. And then he just happens to be there. And he tips toes intercepts, intercepts the ball going out, going out of bounds. So like, he just, he just seems like a football player, man, like a dude on, and his name is Fred Gaskin. Yes. Can't beat, can't beat that. Can't, cannot beat that name. If Troy Palomalu and Ed Reed created a super safety together, his name would be Fred Gaskin. How about that? I can't argue with that. No, I, I, where does he play? Where does he play? And who does he play in front of? I think he battles with Fagans. Or does he play nickel? That's a great question. Or does, or does Fagans play nickel? And then he plays that field safety or that freest, whatever you want to call it. Yeah, I mean, I almost kind of want him to battle with Caleb Harris, but different roles, different roles. I can't

16:48forget about Caleb Harris. Yeah, I mean, we don't have an announcement from Caleb Harris or Sylvester Smith yet. That's a good point. I would like both of them back. Caleb Harris made a, he made kind of a cryptic post a while back a couple of days ago with a bunch of Harvard stuff on it. I kind of feel like he's coming back, but Sylvester Smith, I feel like he's always cryptic and posting stuff. And he hasn't posted anything. He hasn't posted anything. And I feel like that's a good thing. Silence is great at this point time, especially when the portal is open. You know, when you're, when you start thinking about it, you add a, you add a Fred Gaskin, which great name. His name is Fred Gaskin. Add that into the mix. And you start talking about Champ Anthony. Hey, we're feeling like maybe he could come back, throwing, throwing around all these other guys. Now true corners, I feel like you still need some help. But man, you got a lot of, you got a lot of options. A lot of good athletes back there. Yeah. The trenches, if you're, if you're following Auburn every day, like the everydayers do here,

17:55the trenches are where I think the biggest concern is right now. Let's take a stab at that in just a moment right here. Unlocked on Auburn. Zach Blackerby Kyle Rush. This is locked on Auburn. And also his name is Fred Gaskin for good in the six. The offensive line and defensive line situation. Actually, before we even get there, do you think it's interesting that all the names so far are South Florida guys or Hudson Powell are long snapper. Like go ahead and commit Hudson. And then all my USF guys are going to go. Just go ahead real quick. It's not on the surface. It's not even kind of remotely that interesting that it's this, that you have this mini South Florida guys, because I think we all felt like that would happen, especially on the offensive side of the ball, especially on the wide receiver, from the wide receiver side. I guess the two things that are most interesting is that there's

18:56not anybody from another school yet. Right. And that the one that you want the most is not that you kind of got to build your team around that we talked about earlier in the show. It is not quite announced yet. So that to me is the most interesting thing. But if you told me that he brought 11 12 guys from South Florida at the end of this thing. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Great. Yeah. But if this is the exact those, you know, do we have nine so far? Let me see. One, two, three, four, five, six, eight. We have eight so far. Yeah. Yeah. So if you had to tell me eight of the first nine, and we're all from USF, I'd be like, did it happen on Friday or Saturday? I would have been like, yeah. Happened the day of it's like, okay. Yeah. Great. Cool. It makes no sense. It's fine. No, we're bleeding them out. Every time we see, every time we see the commit, we think it's

19:57bottom ran and it's not a, I mean, the ultimate goal was huilet. Yes, it was. I mean, I don't think I've ever felt that level of confusion in my body before. He's like, oh, you were like, we're like, wait, did we get this wrong the whole time? We wrong about this the whole time. It was going to be, it was going to be a lockland. Lockland is going to, which I'm excited about, lockland. Just not what I was expecting first. Yeah. No trenches yet is interesting. And one, it's because those are clearly positions of need and their positions of need for every roster in America. So Auburn's not special in that regard. And that's why these positions cost so much. But so far, like, we haven't seen a ton of examples of Auburn shooting super high up, a position grouping when you look at rankings, certain positions, except for defensive line.

20:59You've seen them go after some of the top 10 top five ranked defensive linemen early, trying to get them on campus. Do you see them like reach out to, um, is it Jay sprang? No, I'm from Kansas state. Like you've seen him. I assume he's ranked highly. I think he's really good. He should be ranked highly. If he's not, that's really kind of the only one that offensive line has been a lot of just kind of averagely ranked guys, which was super predictable. And I don't have an issue with it at all. But defensive line, it seems like that's the position where they're ready to spend some money. And there just hasn't been a whole lot of movement there yet. Yeah. And that's another thing. Are you just are you waiting for the right guys or they not what you thought they were when they they got here or the price tags too high? You know, you got to have them. Or are there some guys like, for example, you know, this Ohio state

22:00offensive line and, um, Terga Tegra to Shibola. Uh, he's one of their star. I think he's one of their starting offensive line. I hope we get him just off a name. Well, he just came. He just announced he's coming on a visit. So like, did you, did you pass like a like a guy, the, the dude from Kansas state vass, because this guy is an interior guy that you're looking at him. That's the kind of things we're not necessarily privy to. And it's impossible to know until it all shakes out. And then, you know, you never know like the kid from Kansas state, the vast guy, the interior offensive line, and he only was going one other place. And by the time you're listening to this, he could be have decided I'm not going to go to Central Florida. I'm going to go to Almond like so. Yeah. I don't know. It's not falling in the, okay, I'll tell you, I think this is accurate. The priority of need does not feel like it's being field first. As far as what we know, right, but also like our priority of need is the same as everyone else's true. And the players

23:03know that if you're a good offensive line, if you were a startable O line or D line man, you know that and you'll never have this much leverage in your life again ever. Man, you're preaching right now. And so is that, is that part of it? And you know, these guys don't have an emotional connection Auburn. They've been here for five minutes. They don't even really experience it. They should go through the super nice facilities and they may go out to dinner somewhere. Just fine. I'm sure it's super enjoyable, but I think a lot of people can offer that. It's they don't get the benefit of living here, being here, fan base, game day, all that stuff. And so the kids, where do you take a kid to eat? Just lock him down in Auburn. Where you go? Good question. My favorite is the draft house downtown Auburn. Okay. But I don't think I would take a recruit there. Yeah, that's a good one. I don't think I would either. Why'd you make a botanist? Botanist.

24:05Botanist. I mean, I just there's all the places. I mean, that's one I haven't been there in a while, but that sawmill burger would make me commit. Dude, send the check draft house. Yeah. Yeah. I've said they have the best sandwich in town. Botanics seems like the the hot place for when he was here. So that means Alex Golis will never go to but no, he may be like a cafe 123 guy or something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, yeah, there's plenty of nicer restaurant. I just, I don't know. Is that that what you guys want? I don't know. I don't know. I didn't want that when I was at age, but I don't know. It's a different. How many how many offensive linemen and defensive linemen do you think we need? So like on the defensive line, you lost one, two, three, four, five, six, you lost seven guys on the defensive line. So far, you've replaced them with two two guys out of the high school ranks. Speaking of Jay Hardy declared for the draft. Yeah. I saw that.

25:10I don't think he should do that. I didn't know. I didn't think there was any possible way he had eligibility left. I thought I was like, do you do that? Or you just say I'm done. I'm going to go try. I'm going to go try the NFL draft. I don't know. I didn't know. I didn't think he had there was. I mean, he's he was a Gus commit. There's no way he had. And then James Asher at the point. I'm like, all these guys that we got on like their last leg of eligible, like Caleb Wheatland. I recorded with our Michigan State guy because they got Caleb Wheatland. Like he could still play football. I guess he he redshirted. Yeah. I guess he didn't play here. So I don't know. And neither did James Asher. And I remember seeing him. We were wrong. I remember seeing him just off the hoof and thinking he was one of the better looking as far as put together defensive line. And I thought he was going to be a good camp. But yeah, clearly didn't crack the rotation there. So

26:10I mean, just from a number standpoint. I mean, I think it feels like you got to have three or four of each, maybe four of each kind of spread out. Yeah. I mean, you just, I don't can you go into the season with. So you've got three returning guys. And like, I don't know what expectations should be for the freshman Corey Wells and Tavy on Branch. Corey Wells is probably able to play. Here. I play. Yeah. I mean, I don't know how many how many guys you feel comfortable with. It's three enough. It's three more enough, especially when none of your edge guys. I don't think you can scoot in. I like Kendrick or Amaris. You don't have those guys anymore. Those guys were big enough where you could put them in. Play four eye and stuff. Right. Jared Smith. I don't think is doing that. Joe Phillips. I don't think it's doing that. So that's an interesting one to me. Yeah. Yeah. Like that's a you need quality and

27:14quantity at that position. And then offensive line. Like, I really think you need to add four starters. E three, three or four starters. Yeah. Two at minimum three. And then that you could argue. There could be an argument for two if the other two that you bring it. You need four minimum. But you're gonna you're gonna need to bring portal guys in on the offensive line that even won't start. Exactly. That's that's where I was going. That's where I was going. Like, you got to bring in four minimum. I feel like. And I feel like three of those need to start. You could you could convince me only two need to start with some of these other guys that are here can step up. And the toast too are in the right spots. Yeah. You got to you got to have guys no matter what you got to have guys. Got to have guys. Got to have dudes. Got to have dudes. Yep. I think that does it for today's show. I can people check out everything you're got. You've got how many how can people check out everything you've got going on? Man oh man. The go to the barn

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