Even though Baton Rouge is only a few hours’ drive from Auburn, the Tigers choose to fly to games down in The Bayou rather than navigate the swaths of interstate from Alabama to Louisiana. A lot of questions about Auburn revealed themselves during the Tigers’ 45-21 loss to LSU on Saturday, and on the plane ride home, coach Gus Malzahn is going to have plenty of time to think up some answers.
Auburn was beaten, battered and bruised for nearly the whole game, as the home Tigers ran roughshod over the visitors to the tune of 417 yards. Add that on to the previous two weeks, and Auburn has given up a mind-blowing 810 rushing yards in three games.
From the get-go, the visiting Tigers were faced with climbing an insanely steep hill. LSU running back Leonard Fournette opened the game with a 71-yard run on the first play from scrimmage. LSU quarterback Brandon Harris put his Tigers on top for good three plays later with a rushing touchdown, burning less than two minutes off the clock.
Fournette, who began to resemble a Mack truck rather than a running back by the end of the game, finished with a career-high 228 yards and three touchdowns on 19 carries.
It was clear the absence of Carl Lawson—who missed his second straight game with a hip injury—had a massive impact for Auburn on defense. But even without its star defensive end, the other defensive leaders for Auburn made no excuses.
“Guys have to step up and play,” cornerback Jonathan Jones said. “It’s just part of the game—injuries, people not being there or whatever the fact may be, guys have to step up and play when their number is called.”
On the other side of the ball, Auburn’s offense was in disarray for the second consecutive game. Quarterback Jeremy Johnson was ineffective once again, throwing for 100 yards on 19 attempts. He was intercepted once and threw two touchdowns, but they came when the game was far gone.
He consistently looked flustered, skitting through his progressions as he anxiously bounced around in the pocket. His throws fell short, wide, high, and one pass even went backwards.
“(In the first half) the offense was awful,” Malzahn said. “It didn’t really give our defense any kind of spark or any kind of hope, and that put us behind the eight ball.”
Punts from Auburn turned into touchdowns for LSU, as the Bayou Bengals raced out to a 24-0 halftime lead.
“We got off to a bad start on offense in the first half and it didn’t give us a chance, it really put us behind,” Malzahn said. “Our guys fought back in the second half, but the bottom line is we got our rear kicked. That’s what happened today.”
Fournette consistently bulldozed, quick-stepped, dizzied, and otherwise embarrassed Auburn defenders, as he entered halftime with 169 rushing yards on 15 carries.
The second half was more even, be it because Les Miles took his foot off of the gas, or Malzahn settled his players down, or a mixture of both.
Johnson got his Tigers on the board with a 65-yard touchdown run up the middle, but LSU quickly shut the door on any potential comeback.
Fournette again paced his team down the field, finding the end zone on a 29-yard run that will be on every television in America for the foreseeable future.
For the rest of the game, the two teams essentially alternated scoring drives, with Auburn’s final score coming on a pass from Johnson to Duke Williams—his first touchdown catch of the season—at the 5:47 mark of the fourth quarter.
After the smoke cleared, it was clear Malzahn and his staff have a lot of work to do.
Bright spots were present, however. Freshman running back Kerryon Johnson established himself as a viable threat in the offense and the kick return game, and punter Kevin Phillips routinely launched booming punts deep into LSU territory.
“I’ve just been working for the opportunity,” Johnson said. “(Malzahn)’s given me the opportunity, and I think I did some good things out there.”
But when the positives from a ranked conference game involve a freshman running back and a punter, the negatives were clearly more prevalent.
“We’ve been out of sync now for three weeks, honestly,” receiver Melvin Ray said. “We haven’t found a rhythm yet. We were very out of sync today. They came out and handed it to us.”
Auburn, ironically enough, hasn’t allowed less than 400 total yards to an SEC opponent since the last time they played LSU in 2014, when Malzahn’s squad throttled LSU, 41-7.
Now, they’ll get ready to host a Mississippi State team that came within a field goal of beating LSU.
But it remains to be seen if any of those glaring questions—about Jeremy Johnson, about the defense, or about this team’s chances to contend—will be answered.
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