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Auburn Football vs. Arkansas State: Game Recap and Highlights
The Auburn Tigers got back on track Saturday night with a convincing 51-14 win over Arkansas State.
The offense looked much improved from the first game from the beginning.
Sean White came out throwing the ball – as I said he should. They were working the ball down the field on their first drive before a Kerryon Johnson fumble.
He made up for it later with a 47-yard run after White flipped him the ball while falling down.
Johnson was able to reverse field, out run the defense, and then hurdled a guy before running into the end zone for Auburn’s first score.
The defense looked good on the first quarter as well other than a busted coverage that set Arkansas State up with a 1-yard touchdown run to tie the game.
Auburn answers right back with a deep pass of their own. Kyle Davis jumped up in between two defenders and bright the ball down with one hand.
Three plays later Johnson ran the ball in for his second touchdown of the game.
Sean White threw his first passing touchdown of the season early in the second quarter to give Auburn a 21-7 lead.
The offense continued to dominate the second quarter scoring 24 points in the quarter.
White picked up his second touchdown pass of the game, and should have had at least one more.
Gus Malzahn pulled one out of Les Miles’ playbook with a fake field goal. The hold roses the ball behind him and Daniel Carlson caught it and ran all the way into the end zone.
The Arkansas State offense was stymied in the second quarter and weren’t able to get anything going.
The defensive line continued to get into the backfield, creating negative plays for their offense.
Freshman Marlon Davidson picked up his first sack of his college career towards the end of the second quarter.
Midway through the second quarter Auburn had more total yards on offense than they had in all of the first game.
At the half Auburn had 453 total yards with 279 of that coming on the ground.
Sean White played his best half of quarterback since he’s been at Auburn.
He was smart with the football, was accurate in the short passing game, and he ran the ball extremely well.
While it was an incredible to see the offense play at this level, I couldn’t help but think how different the Clemson game could have been with this play calling.
The third quarter was similar the third quarter. Auburn put a couple more touchdowns in the board, while Arkansas State got another big pass that led to a touchdown.
Kamryn Pettway received a heavy workload in this one and almost broke away for two long touchdown runs.
He finished with 152 yards on 15 carries. A lot of those runs were in short yardage situations, which is what I wanted to see from him.
He broke off a run of 64 yards just before the end of the first half before getting tackled at the half yard line.
He also had a 29-yard run early in the second half.
Kerryon Johnson also went over the century mark with 124 yards on 18 carries and 2 touchdowns.
Tony Stevens led all receivers with 3 catches for 75 yards and 2 touchdowns.
Ten different receivers caught a pass in the game.
Sean White threw the ball 23 times for 244 yards and 3 touchdowns. He came into the game with just 1 touchdown pass in his career.
In the end the Auburn offense put up over 700 total yards!
They were also 11-of-15 on third down, which was one of our keys to this game.
The offense turned the ball over once in what was an otherwise flawless performance.
Final Thoughts and Observations
I don’t know if Gus Malzahn read our articles this week or not, but he stuck to our gameplan.
He came out throwing the ball with Sean White, which opened up the Arkansas State defense, and it was over from there.
The offensive game plan was 10 times better than what it was against Clemson.
I thought the defense played exceptional well too.
They gave up 326 total yards, which isn’t great, but a good chunk of those yards came on two big pass plays.
Both of those pass plays led to their 14 points.
I thought Tre’ Williams was the MVP on defense. He was flying around the field all night and seemed to be in on every tackle.
I tweeted it early in the game, but this is by far the best performance we’ve seen from Sean White at Auburn.
He seemed comfortable out there without the threat of being replaced. He made good decisions with the football, and ran it exceptionally well when he needed to.
Kerryon Johnson has been highly impressive to me in the first two games. If Auburn continues to win, don’t be surprised if he gets doe Heisman consideration.
I know it was just Arkansas State, the same team who gave up over 500 yards and 30 points to Toledo the week before, but this was exactly what we needed to see from Auburn this week.
This game could not have gone any better for Gus Malzahn and the Auburn Tigers.
War Eagle!
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