What Auburn Can Learn from LSU's Victory over Ole Miss
Anomaly or the start of a trend?
That's what Ole Miss is left to ponder after LSU racked up 264 rushing yards in the Tigers' 10-7 win in Death Valley last week. Prior to that matchup, Ole Miss had not allowed an opponent to rush for more than 193 yards on the ground and had given up an average of 82.25 rushing yards per game to SEC opponents.
So what happened?
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Ole Miss was outmanned by a tougher, more physical LSU offensive line.
On LSU's only two scoring drives on Saturday night, 25 of the 30 plays were runs, including 12 straight on a 95-yard march in the fourth quarter that culminated with a three-yard pass from Anthony Jennings to Logan Stokes—the only pass of the drive.
The game plan featured guards pulling around the corner, wide receivers getting after it as blockers downfield and a stable of running backs including Leonard Fournette, Kenny Hilliard and Terrence Magee.
"They played with great passion and played a really, really physical brand of football," Ole Miss head coach Hugh Freeze said during Monday's press conference. "Coach (Les) Miles had his guys ready. They deserve credit. From watching the film, we did not play our best game. That's always disappointing."
What can Auburn learn from LSU's win over Ole Miss?
Ground-and-Pound
Athletic offensive linemen, wide receivers blocking their tails off downfield and a large cast of characters available to carry the ball...sound familiar?
While it looks different out of the spread, those are all staples of Gus Malzahn's offense at Auburn.
Not only are they staples, Auburn is rolling into Oxford at the right time to exploit what suddenly looks like an unstable Ole Miss run defense.
The Tigers got back to the basics last week against South Carolina, rushing for 395 yards on 47 attempts—8.4 yards per carry—in the 42-35 win on the Plains.
Running back Cameron Artis-Payne rushed for 167 yards and a touchdown, quarterback Nick Marshall rushed for 89 and three touchdowns and wide receiver Ricardo Louis ran for 102 yards and a touchdown.
That's a lot of variety that doesn't even include Roc Thomas and Corey Grant, both of whom also made an impact as runners and blockers.
Things could get more interesting in Auburn's backfield this week against the Rebels, with Artis-Payne, Thomas and Grant all joining Marshall on the field at the same time.
"You could possibly even see all three of them on the field at the same time in the future," Malzahn said on his radio show Monday night (h/t James Crepea of the Montgomery Advertiser).
All of the talk of becoming more balanced in the offseason has suddenly been replaced by more of a retro approach to the Auburn offense, as Malzahn noted on Tuesday (h/t AuburnSports.com's Jay G. Tate):
Ole Miss' front seven was worn down and beat up by LSU, and it showed in the fourth quarter on what turned out to be LSU's game-winning drive. Now Auburn comes calling—a team with an offense designed to wear defenses down with tempo and beat them up by winning the battle in the trenches.
Auburn learned a lot about itself last week, when it went more old-school, focused more on a diverse running game and stretched the field through the air only at appropriate times.
That works, and it should work again this week against an Ole Miss defense that we also learned is susceptible to bruising, power-rushing attacks.
"Bad Bo" Is Real
Quarterback Bo Wallace has been known as a boom-or-bust quarterback during his first two seasons in Oxford, but "Bad Bo" had been noticeably absent during the 2014 season.
Until Saturday night.
Wallace completed just 14 of 33 passes for 176 yards, one touchdown and one pick in the loss to LSU.
That one pick was huge. With nine seconds to go, head coach Hugh Freeze passed up the chance to kick the game-tying 47-yard field goal in favor of taking one more shot to get a few more yards and give his kicker a closer look.
Instead of hitting the receiver in the flat or throwing it away, Wallace threw deep and was picked off by Ronald Martin to end Ole Miss' dream season. This came two plays after another Martin interception on a terrible pass was negated by pass interference on Jalen Mills five yards downfield.
While Ole Miss' pass defense has been getting all of the publicity, Auburn has quietly gone about its business, picking off 13 passes on the season—second-most in the SEC.
Wallace wants to be more aggressive against the Tigers.
"A lot of times when we're throwing right now, it's third down," he said during Monday's press conference. "We're staying in 3rd-and-long so much. People get in their defenses and it's hard in this league to convert third downs as well as people play third-down defense. We have to get back to throwing the ball on first and second down and making plays like we did earlier in the season."
An aggressive game plan could actually benefit Auburn.
The Tigers have struggled to get a pass rush this season, but with offensive tackle Laremy Tunsil day-to-day, expect the Tigers to get very creative with their front seven in an attempt to rattle Wallace.
After all, it's not like Ole Miss presents a challenge on the ground. That brings me to the next point.
No Running Threat
Ole Miss is simply not a good running team.
The Rebels rank 12th in the SEC in rushing yards per game (149.5) and yards per rushing attempt (3.87), and were stymied by the Tigers on Saturday night, gaining 137 yards on the ground. This against an LSU rush defense that had given up 212.4 rushing yards per game against FBS opponents coming in.
Ole Miss' offense is one-dimensional by necessity, not by choice.
There's no between-the-tackles threat on that roster. I'Tavius Mathers and Jaylen Walton run toward the edges, with Wallace again taking on too much of those responsibilities and absorbing way too many hits.
"It's a number of factors," Freeze said during Monday's press conference. "We've had several decent games where we've rushed fairly well. It is a challenge and continues to be. There are a lot of factors. We could sit here and talk about losing one-on-one battles or they have the right call at the right time and we have a bad call at the wrong time."
Auburn's run defense is giving up just 3.37 yards per play on the ground, and linebackers Cassanova McKinzy and Kris Frost have progressed in nearly every game since the middle of last season.
Toss in "Star" Robenson Therezie and linebacker Justin Garrett, and Auburn has the speed off the edge at the second level to slow down those rushers and make Ole Miss just as one-dimensional as LSU did.
That's right where Auburn's defense wants to be.
The lessons learned last week will converge on Saturday night in Oxford.
If Auburn stays true to its new self on the ground and gets to Wallace, it should lead to a big statement for the Tigers and end Ole Miss' dream season with a resounding thud.
Barrett Sallee is the lead SEC college football writer and video analyst for Bleacher Report as well as a co-host of the CFB Hangover on Bleacher Report Radio (Sundays, 9-11 a.m. ET) on Sirius 93, XM 208.
Quotes were obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted. All stats are courtesy of cfbstats.com, and all recruiting information is courtesy of 247Sports. Follow Barrett on Twitter @BarrettSallee.
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