Auburn Offense: Sustaining Drives

Going into their game in Athens, Auburn's offense had shown an inability to string together first downs and progress down the field with any sort of rhythm. They lacked an identity, and their physicality was very subpar for the SEC.

Against Tennessee, their first drive with multiple 1st downs came on their 9th drive of the game. After gaining the 2nd first down of that drive, they took a sack on 1st and threw an INT on 2nd. Their only long drive of the game was just a string of explosive plays: 21 yard run, 57 yard run, 16 yard TD pass. It couldn’t have been a much worse day offensively for them. That defense did a ton to keep them in that one, including starting them in the red zone on their lone score of the 1st half.

That is exactly why the Georgia game was so shocking. In the 1st half alone, they racked up 12 first downs with 3 scoring drives all starting on their side of the field. They followed that good work up with a 9 play, 76 yard touchdown drive including 4 first downs to start the 2nd half. They stalled for a while after that, punting on their next 4 drives with only 2 first downs, but they picked up 3 key first downs on the final drive to set up the game winning field goal.

The big difference I noticed was that they finally just started leaning on Byrum Brown as a runner. Adjusting for sacks, Byrum carried it 21 times for 132 yards, with the running backs combining for 82 yards on 19 carries. Pretty clear that stuffing the run is the way to shut this Auburn offense down, but obviously that’s no easy task if Georgia couldn’t stop it. Load that box and spy that absolute truck of a quarterback.