Red-Zone Issues Doom Auburn in Epic Iron Bowl

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Forty-four points and 630 yards of offense are usually more than enough to beat any team.

They weren't enough for Auburn on Saturday night as the Tigers allowed 55 points to a surging No. 1 Alabama team in an Iron Bowl shootout.

But instead of pointing the blame toward his defense, which allowed more than 400 yards for the fifth time in its last six games, Auburn's head coach Gus Malzahn absorbed the blame with his offense.

"I think the name of the game really was we got in the red zone, and we had to kick field goals instead of scoring touchdowns," Malzahn said. "We had enough yards to score a whole bunch of points."

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Auburn scored on seven of its eight red-zone trips Saturday night, against the nation's No. 5 total defense, but five of them were short field goals by freshman kicker Daniel Carlson.

By settling for field goals, 35 points from touchdowns went down to 15 on those drives, and Malzahn said that was the difference in the 11-point result.

"I think it kind of goes back to this—regardless of what happened, we didn't get enough touchdowns in the red zone," Malzahn said. "We should've scored a whole bunch of points. We didn't get it done."

Quan Bray's five-yard touchdown grab from quarterback Nick Marshall early in the third quarter—one that gave Auburn a 12-point lead—and a garbage-time touchdown run from Corey Grant were the only red-zone trips that resulted in six points.

While the Tigers had an 88 percent scoring rate, the 25 percent touchdown rate was the lowest for Auburn in a game that featured more than one red-zone trip since Malzahn took over last season.

Not scoring touchdowns on red-zone trips had been a problem for Auburn in losses under Malzahn.

"It's frustrating because we were one of the top red-zone teams in the country," Marshall said. "We just have to put points on the board when we get down there."

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Four of Carlson's field goals came from inside the Alabama 10-yard line as Auburn's offense continued to stall right outside the end zone.

Several of those drives came down to poor third-down conversions. The Tigers were 9-of-19 on third down against the Crimson Tide, including 5-of-10 on 3rd-and-short situations.

Grant, who started his collegiate career in Tuscaloosa with the Crimson Tide, gave some credit to the play of his former team.

"It does get tougher for you down there," Grant said. "Your options are limited. There are only certain plays you can run down there against a team that has a great defense."

On the earlier visits inside the Alabama 10-yard line, going for a fourth-down conversion seemed like a strong possibility for Malzahn's offense.

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The Auburn head coach opted for the field goals, and his team defended the decisions after the game.

"I'm behind my coach," said Sammie Coates, who had 206 receiving yards and two touchdowns on five catches. "If he wanted to kick field goals, we were going to be behind him on that."

But one drive in which the Tigers settled for three points didn't come down to third or fourth down at all.

With less than a minute before halftime, following an interception from Alabama quarterback Blake Sims and a 40-yard pass from Marshall to Coates, Auburn had the ball on the Alabama 1-yard line with one timeout.

But Auburn ran down the clock before its next snap, and a negative rush for star running back Cameron Artis-Payne forced Auburn to send out Carlson.

Instead of taking a two-score lead into the locker room, Auburn made it a 26-21 game thanks to what AL.com's Brandon Marcello correctly identified as poor clock management:

After the game, Malzahn explained the odd end to the quarter and wished for another crack at it.

"Looking back, we probably should have called a timeout," Malzahn said. "We tried to get a formation in there and pace it. We felt really good about it. We were ID'ing certain things. Looking back, that was obviously a big factor. I'm not saying we would've scored [a touchdown], but I'd like to have at least a better chance at that."

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While criticism continued to swirl around Auburn's defense and its leadership, the players on the offensive side of the ball said Saturday night they must improve heading into the postseason.

For Bray, that improvement could be the difference in ending what has been a disappointing senior season with either more heartache or a high note.

"We really left a lot of points on the board," Bray said. "The whole world saw that. It would've been a different outcome, I'm sure, if we would've scored touchdowns every time we got down in there. But that's football. We have to finish next time."

All quotes were obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted. All recruiting rankings and information courtesy of 247Sports. All stats courtesy of cfbstats.com.

Justin Ferguson is Bleacher Report's lead Auburn writer. Follow him on Twitter @JFergusonAU.