Auburns "O" gets stuck in the mud in loss to lsu

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Auburn’s offense gets stuck in the mud in loss to LSU

Posted Oct 26, 2019

4-5 minutes

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1. Auburn Football

Auburn opened the second half against LSU with its longest play from scrimmage this season when D.J. Williams broke down the left sideline for a 70-yard run.

It’s about all Auburn could manufacture the rest of the day on that side of the ball, as Gus Malzahn’s offense stalled out in the muddy conditions in Death Valley, dooming No. 9 Auburn in a 23-20 loss to No. 2 LSU.

“Offensively, just didn’t get it done,” Malzahn said. “…. We had opportunities, and we didn’t seize the moment.”

Williams’ run on Auburn’s first play of the third quarter put his team in position to break a gridlocked score with a potential touchdown after he was pushed out of bounds at the LSU 10-yard line. Instead, Auburn’s offense sputtered in the red zone and the team had to settle for a 23-yard field goal by Anders Carlson.

It was the high point of the second half for Auburn offensively. After Williams’ long run, Auburn punted on each of its next six drives, going three-and-out on four of them. Auburn totaled just 28 yards on those six drives — and 25 of those yards came on the sixth drive in that sequence.

The offensive struggles added to Auburn’s personal house of horrors in Tiger Stadium, where the team has now lost 10 in a row since its last win in 1999. Auburn finished the game with just 287 yards of total offense, which marked the team’s second-worst total of the season. It was only marginally better than the team’s 269 total yards in a loss to Florida earlier this month.

Many of those woes offensively came in the second half, when Auburn’s offense couldn’t get anything going for much of the game’s final two periods. Auburn had 140 total yards offensively in the second half, but half of that came on Williams’ long run to open the third quarter.

From that point, Auburn averaged 2.19 yards per play for the rest of the game — a span of 31 offensive snaps.

“I thought we were going to do better; we didn’t,” Malzahn said. “Like I said, I’m running this offense, and that’s on me. We got to do a better job. We got to do a better job moving forward.”

Two of Auburn’s five drives after Carlson’s field goal netted negative yardage, and it wasn’t until late in the game — when LSU already built a double-digit lead — that the offense was able to string together some yards. After an eight-play drive led to a punt with 4:26 to play, Auburn got the ball back a minute later and put together a late touchdown drive, with Bo Nix finding Seth Williams for a 6-yard touchdown with 2:32 to go.

It was too little, too late for Auburn, though, as the offense couldn’t overcome its inability to move the ball against LSU. Auburn was plagued by third-and-long inefficiencies — converting just 1-of-9 opportunities of third-and-9 or longer — as well as eight offensive penalties that totaled 40 yards. That included five false starts (four of which came in the first half), a personal foul and a pair of intentional grounding calls against Nix, who completed just 15-of-35 passes for 157 yards, one touchdown and an interception.

“We just shot ourselves in the foot,” Nix said. “The defense played out of their minds again, and it’s frustrating. I feel like as the leader, as the quarterback, we should help them out more. That might be the most frustrating thing, that they’re doing their job, and we didn’t do ours.”

Tom Green is an Auburn beat reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Tomas_Verde.