Auburn OT Dealing with Hearing Issues Amidst Struggles

The Auburn Tigers line has struggled this year, allowing sacks and committing penalties. One player has found himself the biggest culprit: left tackle Xavier Chaplin. He committed three of the Tigers’ five offensive line penalties in the Texas A&M game and has struggled with false starts all year.

However, it may not be a lack of skill or effort from Chaplin, but rather something else out of his control.

“We’ve done some testing on his hearing, and there’s an issue there,” head coach Hugh Freeze said Monday. “That goes back to us, we should’ve handled the cadence stuff differently for him, but he really struggles to hear in those environments, and we’ll make adjustments for that.”

This, admittedly, explains a lot for Chaplin, who has been the target of much vitriol from Auburn fans due to his excessive number of false starts, particularly in the Texas A&M and Oklahoma games.

Additionally, Chaplin’s hearing issues and fear of false-starting may be causing him to be a touch late off the ball, making it harder for him to cleanly block and protect Arnold, resulting in holding penalties.

Of course, there’s much to work on there, but things will likely improve for the Virginia Tech transfer once the hearing issues are fixed or circumvented.

Despite Chaplin’s struggles, though, Freeze said he was confident in Chaplin’s ability, as well as his mentality.

“When he’s on time off the ball, he’s pretty dang good," Freeze said. "Nobody hurts more than him. He was really distraught. I wish that we would’ve put him in a better position.”

Jackson Arnold has been sacked 14 times in the last two games, which Freeze has previously attributed to the both the newcomer and his protection. The coaching staff has been working with Arnold to remedy his part of the issue - holding on to the ball for too long - but now they can continue digging into the other half of the issue with their newfound knowledge.

Auburn returns to play this week against rival Georgia with kickoff set for 6:30 p.m. CT.

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