AUBURN | No. 12 Auburn will be without its top running back for at least the next three games.

JaTarvious Whitlow is out 4-6 weeks after undergoing surgery on his left knee Tuesday, head coach Gus Malzahn announced. The injury occurred late in the Tigers 24-13 loss at Florida last Saturday.

“We knew he was a little bit banged up. He went back in after that,” Malzahn said. “We didn’t know exactly the severity of it. The next day, woke up, it was pretty stiff and they got it checked out, and felt like they needed to have a procedure done and got that done today.”

Whitlow, a third-year sophomore, is second in the SEC with 544 rushing yards on 110 carries, and leads the conference with seven rushing touchdowns.

“I found out this morning,” said senior running back Kam Martin, who will likely replace Whitlow in the starting lineup. “Coach Lac sent the running backs a message in our group message and he said, ‘Pray for Boobee. He’s having surgery,’ and stuff. I found out this morning. It sucks. Boobee is one of our guys. He led the league in rushing and stuff so it sucks. Just got to step up.”

The timeline means Whitlow will likely miss Auburn’s next three games against Arkansas, LSU and Ole Miss, but could return for the Georgia game Nov. 16, which comes after an off-week and is five weeks and four days away.

Along with Martin, Malzahn will have a number of options at running back to fill in for Whitlow including sophomore Shaun Shivers, true freshman D.J. Williams, sophomore Harold Joiner and senior Malik Miller.

Williams is the most intriguing of the group seeing his first and only college action in mop up duty against Mississippi State, rushing for 32 yards on seven carries. He was injured the first portion of the season.

“Kam Martin, we’ve got a lot of confidence in him,” Malzahn said. “He’s played some big games. And he has experience. There’s nothing like experience. And Shivers is a guy that has played quality times this year. He played last year. He played in some big games. Malik Miller is a guy that has really done a good job for us on third downs and some other things.

“D.J. Williams is a guy we’ve been talking about for a while and he looked like he was pretty healthy today. We rotated him in there with, really, the first group some too. And we’ll continue to do that, you know, throughout this week. And then Harold got a chance to scrimmage. It’s always good anytime you can scrimmage and get tackled and hold onto the ball and those things that go with it. That’s always a good thing.”

Kickoff at Razorback Stadium Oct. 19 is scheduled for 11 a.m. CT on SEC Network.