What Happened to Auburn's High-Powered Offense vs. Georgia?
Auburn went back to the basics during the bye week after its first loss of the season on Oct. 11 and became more focused on what made the Tigers successful on offense in 2013.
It paid off.
Head coach Gus Malzahn's crew came into the Georgia game with three straight games of 500 yards or more under their belts, including last weekend's heartbreaking loss to Texas A&M at home.
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Against Georgia on Saturday, the offense tanked.
The Tigers managed just 292 total yards against the Bulldogs, as they fell in Athens 34-7.
What happened between the hedges? Let's examine:
Jeremy Pruitt Has Auburn's Number
Jeremy Pruitt, the first-year defensive coordinator of the Bulldogs, simply has Auburn's number.
In his final game at Florida State last season, he held the Tigers to just 10 second-half points as the Seminoles came back from a 21-3 deficit to win the BCS National Championship Game 34-31.
In his second game vs. the Tigers in a year, Pruitt was again successful. The maligned Bulldogs defense held the potent Tigers offense down between the hedges, and did so with linebackers who, uncharacteristically, played with discipline.
"We emphasized keying in on them and running upfield to set the edge," linebacker Lorenzo Carter said in quotes released by Georgia. "That's what Coach Pruitt really put a big emphasis on this week in practice and we hunkered down and made plays."
That they did, and the biggest reason was the ability for Georgia to limit Auburn's running between the tackles. The Tigers have had a ton of success on the edges, but the edges are only successful when running back Cameron Artis-Payne makes an impact between the tackles. Georgia's defensive line and middle linebackers Ramik Wilson and Amarlo Herrera were successful in preventing Auburn from getting chunks of yards inside early, which prevented Auburn from being as multidimensional as it wants to be in the running game.
Outside, Carter, Leonard Floyd and Jordan Jenkins showed remarkable discipline containing quarterback Nick Marshall, wide receiver Ricardo Louis and running back Corey Grant. The trio of Tigers is dangerous in space, but Georgia's outside linebackers combined for 12 tackles on the day and, even when they weren't making tackles, disrupted running plays on the edge enough for their teammates to come clean up.
The defense didn't stand around and wait for Auburn to come to it, Pruitt's crew attacked Auburn. That's how he beat Auburn in Pasadena in January and how he did it between the hedges.
3rd-and-Long
When you're an offense like Auburn that thrives on being multidimensional in the running game, getting off schedule is a killer. That happened far too often against the Bulldogs.
The offense was stuck with 3rd-and-8 or more seven times on Saturday night. To Auburn's credit, it converted three of those opportunities, one of which was on its only scoring drive—the opening drive of the game.
After that, though, penalties (seven for 78 yards), drops and conservative play-calling doomed the Tigers on first down, which put them in difficult positions on third down.
"On the first drive, they converted some third downs and we could not get off the field," Richt said after the game. "It's so hard to stop them when it's 3rd-and-3 or less. After that, we did a little bit better job on first down and some penalties got them in trouble and behind the yardage. On 3rd-and-long, we could pin our ears back and get after them a little bit."
When they did, Marshall found himself running for his life. He has made strides as a passer this season, but when Floyd and Carter are coming in hot, life gets difficult even for elusive quarterbacks like Marshall.
Drops, Drops and More Drops
Auburn isn't known as a passing team, and in critical situations on Saturday night, the wide receivers proved that.
Looking shocked that the ball was actually coming at them, Tigers wide receivers suffered some pretty atrocious drops against the Bulldogs. The most critical drops came early in the third quarter. With the Tigers down 17-7 and in desperate need of a score to get back in the game, Sammie Coates dropped a ball that hit him in both hands and the chest on the first down, and Ricardo Louis dropped one in his breadbasket on the following play.
Auburn's a run-first team, and when Marshall does all he can to get the offense more balanced, his receivers can't let him down. They did so on Saturday.
"At the start of the third quarter, we had two drops back-to-back, which hurt the momentum," Auburn head coach Gus Malzahn said in quotes released by Georgia.
It wasn't an anomaly, it's the norm.
Drops nearly cost Auburn the win on the road at Kansas State earlier this season, and it has been a recurring problem on The Plains this season.
Would it ultimately have mattered against Georgia?
Those drops didn't cause the defense to give up 289 rushing yards, but they certainly prevented Auburn from getting back into a game that was still within reach in the third quarter.
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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