Auburn hits the ground running again, including White

Auburn offensive lineThe Tigers’ main focus will be on Garrett, as it should be.

White’s 60 yards rushing were a career high and his ability to turn passing plays into positive yardage not only got Auburn at least into functional second-down situations but also allowed to use the fast tempo that Malzahn cherishes.

In the Tigers’ 51-14 rout of Arkansas State, that group rebounded to allow just one sack, three hurries and five tackles for loss. Auburn had eight first-down runs that were perfectly anticipated by Clemson defensive coordinator Brent Venables leading to Auburn only gaining a total of 6 yards and never more than 2 yards on any single play.

You’re never going to be ideal, but the team’s performance on Saturday night was about as close as you can get.

“We came out and looked like an Auburn offense for the first time”, Malzahn said. The Aggies (5-2, 1-0) ran their winning streak to four-straight to open league play. We had a lot of different guys carry the football, and I think our offensive line got better.

A common saying in college football is that the biggest improvement for any team comes between weeks one and two. Auburn QB Sean White continues to get the call as he has completed 61.4 percent of his passes with three touchdowns and an interception.

A week after the entire offense couldn’t amass 100 yards on the ground, Auburn had two players, Kamryn Pettway (152) and Kerryon Johnson (124), go over the century mark against Arkansas State.

But to label White as a prototypical drop-back quarterback doesn’t do him justice either. “We had 17 explosive plays, which is a really good number and guys made plays”. Aggies QB Trevor Knight has completed 54.4 percent of his passes for 583 yards and four touchdowns with 2 interceptions and he has rushed for 2 touchdowns. And that’s an important element of Auburn’s offense. “He did a super job, and I think he’ll have a chance to get better and better”.

“He is our quarterback”, Malzahn said. “We talked about that in the offseason, that we’re at our best when our quarterback is a running threat”. He converted from fullback in the spring and had a 64-yard ramble among his 15 carries against Arkansas State.

I think it goes to show that our coaching staff still knows what they’re doing as it’s clear they focused on all of those areas during practice last week. Keith Ford leads the Texas A&M rushing attack with 127 yards and 3 touchdowns and Christian Kirk is the top receiver with 13 catches and two touchdowns while Josh Reynolds and Ricky Seals-Jones have six catches each.

“Obviously this past week our offense had a tough week because we didn’t perform up to our standard”, Malzahn said. “To give those guys some confidence and experience will do nothing but help us later on, because we’ll need both those guys before the season’s out”.