On offensive line, transfers make progress — no longer the new guys

7 hrs ago
He may be in his first season with the Auburn football program, but Gunner Britton is no longer the freshest face in the building.
This Saturday marked exactly seven months with the program for him. Sure, he's yet to play an actual game, but since committing to the Tigers on Jan. 5, Britton’s gotten an entire spring under his belt. He’s been through an offensive install twice, and is going through it for a third time during fall camp.
“At this point, not being a new guy anymore is kind of nice,” Britton said Friday. “The first couple months, you're like, 'I'm the new guy.' You've got to earn everyone's respect.”
The respect has, presumably, been earned as he and the rest of his teammates are in their first week of fall camp. But there's still a newness to it all from the outside looking in. Auburn's a program with a new coaching staff and a new roster with loads of new faces arriving from the transfer portal and a 21-player signing class. Head coach Hugh Freeze didn’t shy away from the uneasy feeling of that newness when speaking to the media Thursday. But for as new as it all is, it’s hard to hear any anxiety in Britton’s voice.
“The way I've described it to guys is I've played in big stadiums where I've had 90,000 people cheer against me, so it's going to be kind of nice having 90,000 people cheer for me,” Britton said in a recent meeting with the media. “ … you get to Western (Kentucky) and you're like, 'Well, I'm in Conference USA, I don't really ever expect to play in the SEC.’ So now I have an opportunity to do it. It's really special. I'm looking forward to it a lot.”
The hardest part of making the jump from C-USA to the SEC, Britton said, hasn’t been about who will be lining up across from him on Saturdays, but getting settled into the offense that he’s already grown familiar with through a spring. He even threw some of his fellow transfers into that mix.
“I'd say we're pretty ingrained,” Britton said. “Obviously everything's open for competition and stuff, but it's a lot easier when you're doing installs and stuff and you've already kind of seen it once before. It makes it a lot easier and stuff. We got Avery (Jones) and Dillon Wade. Dillon Wade's been in this offense for a couple of years. So has Jaden Muskrat, he's played in this offense a couple years.
“Some of the terminology might be a little different, but for those guys, it's kind of like going back to it. Even for me, you know, I've seen the install. I've done it twice now, going on my third time. You see a little bit of the nuances and different techniques you can use, but everything kind of gels together.”
That’s a promising sign for a position group that Auburn spent nearly all of its offseason overhauling. Between the portal and signings, 10 offensive linemen came to Auburn, which is well over half of the program’s scholarship players at the position. It’s several upgrades on paper, but that will remain to be seen until Aug. 2. In the meantime, though, those on-paper upgrades of players have made progress in their own right this offseason.
“Too Tall [Izavion Miller] has had a really good fall,” Britton said. “Avery looks really good. (Kam) Stutts looks really good. Jeremiah (Wright) is always one to me that pops off when you look at him. DWade is like that. Connor Lew is the one. If you ever get a chance to look at Connor Lew’s forearms, the dude has the biggest forearms I have ever seen.”
It’s another promising answer from Britton, because as exciting as the additions of him, Wade and Jones are to Auburn’s front line, the depth behind them may be just as significant. And that will likely be the responsibility of players like Stutts and Wright, and even the freshman Lew.
“We're all in this for one year together, especially when you got me, Avery, Kam Stutts and Jalil Irvin who all have one year left,” Britton said. “We have to pour everything into a group for one year. It's turned into kind of a family. I mean, we have our separate O-Line group chats and stuff. And like, the guys are really, really cool. It's been an honor to play with them."