Auburn Football vs Purdue: 5 bold predictions for Music City Bowl

4. Jarrett Stidham increases his production

Auburn quarterback Jarrett Stidham has already elected to forgo his senior season and will enter the 2019 NFL Draft, however, he is still partaking in the Music City Bowl.

He was already slated as a draft prospect entering the season, but he hasn’t had the greatest 2018 season as the Tigers’ offense has proven stagnant at times. With a strong outing in the final game of his college career, perhaps he could help his own cause by increasing his stock.

In 2017, Stidham threw for 3,158 yards and 18 touchdowns. Compare those figures to his 2018 season in which he has thrown for only 2,421 yards and 13 touchdowns.

While these numbers aren’t terrible, they aren’t outstanding either. Though, Stidham has a chance to turn things around by playing against a Purdue defense that has been exposed on several occasions this year.

For instance, the Boilermakers surrendered 41 points to an unranked Minnesota team and one week later, allowed an unranked Wisconsin to score 47 points on them. Additionally, Purdue has let up an average of 280 passing yards per game in comparison to its 165 rushing yards allowed per game.

This is much more advantageous to Stidham opposed to Auburn’s running game. One key to Stidham’s success will be for him to take good care of the football. He has done this much better in the second half of the season as he’s only thrown three takeaways in the final six games of the season.