There are hardly ever any positives to the starting running back going down with an injury. If there is a silver lining to Kerryon Johnson’s hampered ankle, though, Auburn has found it.
Johnson, the team’s leading rusher with 538 yards and six touchdowns, but he exited the game during Auburn’s second drive of the game with an ankle injury. In his stead, Kamryn Pettway bowled through the defense for 169 yards and three scores in 39 bruising carries. Johnson didn’t return, but the injury appears to be minor.
“He’s doing well,” said offensive coordinator Rhett Lashlee. “We’ll just kinda take it day to day right now. He’s progressing well, probably better than our trainers maybe thought after Saturday. It’s nothing major and serious, we just hope he’ll continue to improve and get better.”
Johnson has shouldered the load for an Auburn team that ranks 10th in the nation at 262.8 yards per game. The struggles the Tigers faced last year offensively are being rectified, and Johnson had been a large part of that. The improvement also comes from the progression of quarterback Sean White, who has guided Auburn to top-30 ranks in total offense and passing efficiency.
White has completed his 132 pass attempts at nearly a 70 percent clip, seventh-best in the FBS. He has thrown for six touchdowns and only thrown two interceptions: one in Auburn’s season-opening loss to Clemson, when coach Gus Malzahn’s wonky quarterback rotation didn’t give anyone a chance to settle in and the other because his pass slipped through one of his receiver’s hands on Auburn’s first drive in Starkville.
“He’s our guy and he’s playing well,” Lashlee said. “He’s probably getting a little better each week. He’s doing what the starting quarterback should do and he’s making it hard for other people to get on the field. We’re fully behind him and we want to make that clear: we’re not going to do any kind of musical chairs.”
The thing Auburn wants to crack down on the most is turnovers — the offense has fumbled the ball 12 times and lost six of those. Against Mississippi State, Auburn put the ball on the ground four times but only lost one. They weren’t as detrimental as they could’ve been, given that the game was never really in doubt, but with teams like Ole Miss and Alabama looming in the second half of the schedule, the Tigers likely won’t be able to sidestep the fumbling issues like they’ve been able to recently.
“We’ve just got to be more diligent with the football because we only had two turnovers and it could have been four,” Lashlee said. “It probably should have been. And we keep putting our defense, once a game, in a really tough spot. We can’t do that. It’s going to catch up with us and get us beat if we don’t get a handle on it. That’s a huge focus for us as a whole.”
Fumbles are essentially the only glaring issue for an offense that has turned its production around after sputtering early in the season. Lashlee, and the offense as a whole, like where they’re at at the pivot point of the year.
“We’re six games in,” Lashlee said. “I think we’re trending that way and playing to what those guys can do. A bye week gets you healthy, allows you to maybe fine tune some things you are doing and maybe try build on things you do well and things that maybe complement that. I think we’ve got a pretty good grasp on it and it’s just a matter of trying to get our guys geared up ready for the stretch run.”
Do you like this story? The Plainsman doesn't accept money from tuition or student fees, and we don't charge a subscription fee. But you can donate to support The Plainsman.
