COLLEGE STATION, Texas | Entering its SEC opener with the conference's second-leading rusher through three weeks, Auburn decided to find the pulse of its offense from other sources.
In their 28-20 win over Texas A&M on Saturday, the Tigers didn't run Boobee Whitlow at all in the first half. In total, Gus Malzahn's running backs had 7 yards on eight carries.
The rushing output from the tailbacks obviously left much to be desired, but the volume of touches was by two-fold design: Auburn wanted to get multiple backs chances, like it's been advertising since the offseason, and the Tigers knew they could take advantage of Texas A&M's defense by waiting to hit the holes up the middle until later in the contest.
"Cadillac (Williams) wanted to make sure we gave some other guys some opportunities," Malzahn said following the win. "You saw Harold Joiner did a really good job, you saw Worm do a good job, too, with that. [Whitlow] was fresh in the second half, and I'll tell you what, that really made a big difference."
Malzahn said that, with Texas A&M's aggressive linebackers and defensive front that is known to attack the ball downhill, he wanted to establish the ground game in a different manner. Auburn executed that notion in a big way, with sweeps and reverses being executive well — headlined by receiver Anthony Schwartz's 57-yard touchdown in the first quarter.
The score was Auburn's longest run of the season.
"We really felt strongly that they were going to blitz us, and they were going to put pressure on Bo, and so strategically, we were going to get the ball on the perimeter," Malzahn said. "And, sure enough on that reverse, they did exactly that."
Once the speedy flankers, like Schwartz and Eli Stove, began to be sprung for big gains, Texas A&M's defense extended . That's when Auburn began to find success in its standard zone-read game with not only Whitlow, but Bo Nix, as well.
"We just wanted to make them fit wrong, pretty much," Schwartz said. "If they fit inside, we run outside. As soon as we got them to stay back, that’s when we started gashing them.
"As soon as they see the ball come out, they run it down. As soon as they see the guards pull, they’re running the field. Just being to have them be honest, and putting Boobee in the game — Boobee’s a big bruiser — It’s just great for the offense."
Whitlow did most of his damage on a 12-play, 69-yard drive in the fourth quarter that burned six minutes off the clock and saw Auburn go up 28-10.
"Our offensive line, hats off to those guys," Malzahn said. "They weren’t 100 percent, but they battled."
Whitlow had 42 yards rushing and a touchdown on the series behind an offensive line that hit its assignments well and started to bruise A&M's front.
"He kind of had fresh legs throughout the whole game, and there at the end, we just pounded them and he was in there and he was running the ball really good," Nix said of Whitlow. "He runs it really hard. The first person hardly ever tackles him, so once he gets in there and we’re in that kind of situation where we know we’re going to run the ball and our offensive line knows it, we can really do some damage.”
Nix himself had a number of well-played keepers in the zone read — namely, a 6-yard rush on third-and-5 on the Tigers' last drive after A&M used its final timeout.
"For us to have that many rushing yards says a lot about our offensive line, our running backs and our quarterback," Malzahn said.
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