Auburn’s offense keeps drifting away from the identity Alex Golesh said he wanted, and the run game is at the center of it.
The Tigers managed just 3.3 yards per carry in Saturday’s 44-39 loss to Florida, a number that simply doesn’t travel well in SEC play. It followed a 3.2-yard average in the season-opening win over Baylor, a game Auburn escaped thanks to Eric Winters’ heroic tackle on the final play. Against Southern Miss, the ground game finally looked the part, but that came against a middling Sun Belt opponent.
Through two Power Four games, Auburn has looked like a team that can’t consistently establish the run. That’s a long way from what Golesh said his team would be doing this season.
“Yeah, we didn’t run it well enough today,” Golesh said after Saturday’s loss. “We’ve got to find a solution. I can’t really tell you why right this second.”
Auburn did get some production on the ground from Byrum Brown, who finished with 65 rushing yards on 18 carries even while losing 35 yards on seven sacks. But Brown carrying the load is not how this offense is built, and offensive coordinator Joel Gordon acknowledged that after the Baylor win. Still, Brown remains Auburn’s most reliable option when the Tigers need something to happen on the ground.
The running backs didn’t give Auburn much against Florida. Jeremiah Cobb and Bryson Washington were the only backs to get carries, and they combined for 40 yards on 12 attempts.
“Through these first three games, man, we got to put up way, way bigger numbers in the run game,” said Auburn center Cole Best. “We’ve got the best backs in the country, and man, we got every piece and puzzle and tool to make that game go.”
Best’s line has been part of the problem. Auburn had some good moments in pass protection, but the group still allowed seven sacks and never found much of a consistent push in the run game.
The line can’t take the blame for every sack, but the broader issue is the same: Auburn is not moving people the way it needs to on running downs. Golesh said he wants to study the film before making a full judgment on the team’s physicality, but the issues up front are hard to miss.
Saturday’s game also wasn’t the kind of script that makes life easy for a run-first offense. Auburn spent most of the night chasing Florida, which naturally makes it harder to stay committed to the run as the game wears on.
“When you’re down like that,” Golesh said, “there’s times you’ve got to be patient enough to go grind it out, and there’s times where you feel like, man, we have to go create a chunk.”
Auburn leaned more toward trying to create those chunk plays, and the results were uneven. That choice made sense with the Tigers playing from behind, but it also left them with another game that didn’t look anything like the offense Golesh wanted to build.
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