Three the hard way: Senior LB trio looks to leave Auburn on top
At the first home game this season, Davis recorded a video of Tiger Walk knowing that it will be his last “first Tiger Walk” of his Auburn career.
“It’s scary because our time at Auburn is winding down,” Davis said. “We won’t get those days back. There will never be another fall camp. We’ll never have to go through a winter workout or anything like that. Our games in Jordan-Hare are winding down.
“It’s a good feeling also because this is what we’ve worked for. To have the chance to put ourself in position to enter the NFL draft and have a chance to have a well-rounded team that can compete for championships and be one of the top defenses in the country and be one of the best linebacker corps in the SEC and in the country.
“Everything that we’ve always wanted is right in front of us.”
Nobody expected the trio of Davis, Darrell Williams and Montavious Atkinson to get to this point. They have been undersized or underrated their whole lives. What’s stopping them from still competing for a championship, being one of the best linebacker groups in the country and one day playing in the NFL?
It’s only fitting that their position coach gave them the nickname, “Three the hard way.”
“With three seniors, we’re coming hard,” Williams said. “Whatever it takes. Whatever it takes to win, whatever it takes to get the job done, that’s how we’re coming.”
“I would take Deshaun Davis tomorrow,” Auburn linebackers coach Travis Williams said. “I know what I’m getting. He’s a football player, and he has a great football IQ.
“He’s going to run a 4.6 every day of the week, and he’ll be 5-11 every day of the week. But he’s a heck of a football player, and I think he’s done a great job of playing with that chip on his shoulder. He’s a linebacker and the type of kid that Auburn has been built on. He’ll play in the NFL. He’s just so smart. His football IQ is off the charts.”
Davis arrived at Auburn a year before his position mates, Williams and Atkinson, with little to no fanfare. He was a three-star recruit who redshirted his first year and saw only a handful of snaps as a freshman in 2015.
That all changed in 2016 when new defensive coordinator Kevin Steele took over and realized there weren’t many other options at linebacker on the roster. Kris Frost and Cassanova McKinzy had both moved on the season before. So when Auburn opened against Clemson that season, Davis made his first start because there wasn’t anybody else.
“If you remember, the [linebackers] we’re playing with now – put Tre’ Williams with them and that’s all we had,” Steele said. “So you’ve got to become a good player.”
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Davis made five tackles, hurried the quarterback twice and broke up a pass in that Clemson game. Since then, he’s started every game for the Tigers and had 150 career tackles coming into this season. Through the first three games this year, he leads the team with 24 tackles.
“I’m not a 6-3 linebacker,” Davis said. “And I’m not going to run a 4.5. Knowing football, knowing the game and knowing the NFL, I’m pencil-whipped already.
“So how I’m going to stay in the room is me doing my job, me knowing the game and just being smarter than everyone else around me. If you run a 4.5 and say I do run a 4.6 or a 4.7. If I know where the ball is going before you do, it’s going to look like I ran a 4.4. You don’t have to be extremely fast. You just have to be fast enough.”