Auburn Football: 5 takeaways from Tigers’ 2017 regular season

4. College football is still a run-first world

With all of the throwing going on in the boring world of the NFL, college football remains a run-first world. Georgia and Alabama would prefer to run the ball down your throat and play stingy defense. Clemson is a more balanced attack that excels at picking on the weaknesses of their opponents.

The Oklahoma Sooners are focused around Baker Mayfield but they’ve produced a slew of NFL-ready running backs over the last decade. Even the cusp teams of the College Football Playoff like Ohio State and Wisconsin are run-first organizations from totally different offensive sets.

College football remains run-heavy and Auburn is no exception. Jarrett Stidham may be great passer but Auburn ran the ball almost twice as much as they threw it. Stidham averaged 8.6 yards per attempt which is phenomenal, but the Tigers relied on Kerryon Johnson as the season progressed. He averaged 5.0 yards per carry which isn’t great in college football but he was the workhorse back rushing for 1,300 yards and 17 touchdowns.

Kam Martin and Kamryn Pettaway contributed 6.0-plus yards per carry on the ground in a relief role and wing back type receiver Eli Stove added 10.8 yards per rush. The Tigers averaged 5.0 yards a carry as a team and scored 32 times on the ground.

Auburn does what many high school programs have started to do which is show a spread look using wide receivers, wings, and H-Backs while running old school wing-t principles. This keeps people from admonishing you for running an “antiquated” offense like Georgia Tech, Navy or Army and keeps the high tempo and ability for post-snap run-pass options.