Tracy Rocker laughed and cracked jokes through a number of the questions he took from reporters Monday, but one in particular abruptly halted the guffaws.

Rocker, the Tigers’ defensive line coach, was asked where specifically on the front-four a certain 2009 signee would start.

“Whoa, now. Whoa. I don’t know where he’ll start,” Rocker said of junior-college transfer Nick Fairley, a big, seemingly game-ready defensive tackle. “I just hope he gets here.”

With the likely exception of returning senior Antonio Coleman, no job is safe on the defensive line, Rocker said. Couple that philosophy with an impending depth problem, and Rocker will have plenty of evaluating and decision-making on his hands.

“We’re probably right at two-deep up front, so that’s an issue,” Rocker said. “It comes with time and we’ll make it work.”

Auburn returns a number of regulars from last season’s defensive line, but lose starting defensive tackles Tez Doolittle (graduation) and Sen’Derrick Marks, who opted to enter the NFL Draft. Players such as junior Zach Clayton and senior Jake Ricks saw more action than was likely expected, as injuries decimated the unit throughout the season.

Rocker said he’s watched film of every player on defense, “from the secondary up to the front.” He was aided, he said, by his knack to watch
Auburn film even while he was at Ole Miss because “there are certain teams you turn on to watch film, teams that get after people and play hard
and have some great tradition on defense.”

“Now I’m just trying to understand them as young men,” Rocker said, “and see if we can all get on the same page.”

For a player “to lay it on the line every down,” Rocker said he would like to have a “true eight” and, at maximum, 10 players he can rely on to rotate in and out on the defensive line.

Though Auburn will have six new defensive linemen with the 2009 class, Rocker isn’t getting his hopes up about an immediate impact from any of them.

“You hope someone could come in and step up and play, but we all know when a young man walks in here, he’s going to stare at that big, pretty stadium for about 10 days, and he’s going to realize he’s finally at Auburn,” Rocker said. “So we’re going to have to go through that phase. Once he gets over that phase, he’ll be OK.”

Luper fan of recruiting rankings
Curtis Luper doesn’t tout the company line when it comes to his opinion of recruiting rankings.

“If they’re keeping the score, you want to win, right?” said Luper, who serves as the team’s running backs coach and recruiting coordinator.

Two weeks earlier, head coach Gene Chizik had a more standard perspective floated from major college football coaches.

“We don’t look at all the rankings and things of that nature,” Chizik said at his National Signing Day press conference. “When we say we’re looking for the right guy, what we’re looking for ’is this young man two and three and four years from now, did we bring him in here and did we develop him?
Was he the right guy when we brought him to developing not only the best football player, but to be the best student and the best person on and off the field?’”

Auburn’s class was ranked 18th in the nation — eighth in the SEC — by Rivals.com, 15th — fifth in the SEC — by Scout.com and 25th by ESPN.com.

Luper doesn’t just want Auburn to rank among the best.

“We need the No. 1 recruiting class in the country,” Luper said. “That’s what I want. That’s my goal.”

Luper agreed with Chizik that too much stock is put into whether a player is a three-star or a four-star. Players such as Marks, who was a two-star out of high school, fly under the radar all the time.

“You still have to evaluate if he fits into your system,” Luper said. “If he’s a three-star and you think he’s the best offensive tackle in the country, then you take him.”

Luper said his title of recruiting coordinator is just that: a title. Just like the assistant head coach label he had at Oklahoma State.

“Coach Chiz said he wanted to give me one for making the move, and that was the one he had for me,” Luper said. “It wasn’t about a title or anything. I just wanted to come and go to work.

“That’s what I told him. He said, ‘Well, I want to reward you for what you’ve done the last 15 years.’”

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