On Sept. 9, 2017, Jarrett Stidham, who hadn’t played a snap of college football since Nov. 21, 2015 until a week prior, stepped foot into Clemson University’s Death Valley with the weight of a pained and overbearing fanbase on his shoulders.
The 6-foot-3, 214-pound quarterback was headlining the highly anticipated Tiger offense, and it was their first real test. Auburn fell well short of expectations through two weeks of the season.
On the first play from scrimmage against defending national champion Clemson, Stidham broke down the pocket and took his eyes off the downfield receivers. The QB panicked for a safe way out of his crumbling protection before being torn down by the Tiger tandem of linebacker Kendall Joseph and defensive end Austin Bryant.
That sack would be the first of 11 on Stidham in Auburn’s 14-6 loss to Clemson, a matchup that was heralded as a telling game for the Auburn offense. Stidham finished the game 13-for-24 with 79 yards passing. Auburn as an offense gained only 117 total yards, the lowest mark of Malzahn’s career as a coach or a coordinator.
The 11 sacks were the most in the FBS last season and tied for the most allowed in the last five years. Granted, Clemson ended the 2017 campaign with the most dominant defense in college football, tallying 44 sacks on the year, good for first in the nation.
"I'm glad I got sacked 11 times," Stidham said at SEC Media Days on Thursday. "Because that's never going to happen to me again, I promise you that ... I like to look at games, whether it's Clemson, LSU, SEC Championship, bowl game, there's a lot of things you can learn from and I learned a lot from the Clemson game."
To his point, Stidham went on to pass for 2,418 yards and 15 touchdowns through an 9-1 ending to the regular season. The Texan earned second team All-SEC honors and will likely find himself on preseason All-SEC lists in the coming days because of it.
"At the beginning of the year last year, we started slow, kind of sluggish," Stidham said. "We were still trying to kind of figure out what we were going to be best at. I was trying to figure out Coach Lindsey. Him and Coach Malzahn were trying to figure out who I was as a player. Throughout the season, we kind of saw a progression week to week."
"This summer has obviously been really big for us. We have a lot of guys coming back, especially at the skills positions. We’re going to be hitting on close to all cylinders, more so at the beginning of the season rather than waiting till halfway or the end of the season.”
However, despite Stidham's success last season in offensive coordinator Chip Lindsey's system, Gus Malzahn wants to spruce things up in the 2018 offense.
In June, Malzahn said Stidham was ready to make checks at the line of scrimmage, a luxury that Lindsey kept off the table last year. According to Stidham, Auburn's audible promises were a factor in bringing him back to The Plains for his final year.
"I'm extremely excited about it," Stidham said. "They've kind of promised me, 'Hey you're going to have more freedom at the line' ... I think now with playing for a year, having experience, I know a little bit more football this year and I know what to expect and I know what the coaches are looking for."
Stidham said there was an instance in Auburn's 23-20 loss to LSU when he believes the offense could have benefited from a change in play calling. The redshirt junior didn't specify if he was referring to the Tigers' often-ridiculed scheme of ramming Kerryon Johnson up the middle virtually every first down in the second half, but one can assume.
"We kept calling one play," Stidham said of the loss. "And we kept looking for a specific coverage. Every single time they were not in that coverage. I knew exactly what we were going to check to and everything like that."
Stidham's maturity with his newfound freedom will be tested early against a complex and versatile Washington defense.
"(Last season) is in the past. We’re looking forward to playing Washington in Week 1 and getting ready for this season.”
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Nathan King, senior in journalism with a minor in business, is The Plainsman's sports editor.
