AUBURN — All season long, Auburn's struggles — mostly on the offensive side — have lingered without much correction. The running game, by Gus Malzahn offense standards, has been non-existent. Quarterback Jarrett Stidham has been hit-or-miss on many of his deep shots, especially with pressure in his face.

The one constant: Seth Williams.

The true freshman wide receiver has created an extensive highlight reel in Year 1. He did it again against in Auburn's 53-0 victory against Liberty, going full extension to haul in a 45-yard touchdown catch from Stidham early in the second half.

It helped give Williams his first 100-yard game of his Auburn career, which came as a bit of a stunner to his quarterback.

"Was it really? Yeah, that surprises me," Stidham said. "Well, you can't really ask much more of him. He's doing his job to a high level."

Williams was one of the few parts of Auburn's offensive showing that looked familiar.

The Tigers offense hasn't been able to move the football up front in 2018. It has been Auburn's worst rushing offense in the Malzahn era. Albeit against a far inferior opponent, the Tigers finally made it back toward their old rushing ways.

Auburn carried the ball 61 times for 340 rushing yards. To be expected, it was the Tigers' second-best rushing output of the season behind the Alabama State game earlier in the year. It's only the third time all season Auburn eclipsed the 150-yard rushing mark.

"We just tried to keep it rolling as much as we could offensively," Stidham said. "We did a lot of great things tonight. Last couple weeks, I think we've started to find our offensive identity a little bit. We're just going to have to stick to that and have a good game plan and be ready to go [with the Iron Bowl coming up]."

Not everything can be spun as a positive following the Liberty win.

Auburn's third-down woes continued. The Tigers were only able to go 2-of-12 on third down, which carries on a worrisome trend they've had this season. Stidham, Ryan Davis, Chandler Cox and Gus Malzahn — despite being pleased with the win — all made separate mention of this statistic as something that has to improve next week.

"That’s probably the only negative about tonight, is the third downs. We’ve got to find a way," Malzahn said.

At the very least, Auburn's offense hopes to build off the 531-yard offensive performance even though the two opponents — Liberty and Alabama — couldn't be further on the talent spectrum.

"What those things do: They give all the players confidence going into the [Alabama] game," wide receiver Ryan Davis said. "Having that feeling of making plays is good. The line gets confident. The running backs get their confidence. I think it's more a confidence factor than anything we're taking away from this game because obviously that team isn't what we're going to be facing next week."