Oct. 22, 2016
By Charles Goldberg
AuburnTigers.com
AUBURN, Ala. - Sean White, Kamryn Pettway and Stanton Truitt kept Auburn's red-hot offense in hyper-drive Saturday night, running and passing and helping the No. 21 Tigers beat No. 17 Arkansas 56-3 in Jordan-Hare Stadium.
White threw for one touchdown and ran for another, Pettway turned in another workhorse performance with 192 yards on 27 carries and Truitt scored three times as the Tigers got their fourth consecutive win to improve to 5-2 overall and 3-1 in the Southeastern Conference. Arkansas fell to 5-3 overall and 1-3 in the league.
Auburn finished with a staggering 544 yards rushing, the most ever by one SEC team against another. Arkansas had just 25. The Tigers finished with 632 yards.
Auburn's defense didn't let Arkansas do much of anything with early sacks and late sacks and taking away most everything the Razorbacks wanted to do.
"We played a complete game," said an understated coach Gus Malzahn.
"Anytime you play like we played tonight gives you confidence. It was a physical game, but it was a good physical for us."
Arkansas was so accustomed to seeing Pettway running by the middle of the third quarter that all it took was to fake a handoff to him to free White to run untouched around end on a 1-yard touchdown scamper to make it 35-3. Freshman Kam Martin got into the act with a 51-yard touchdown run with 4:27 left.
Auburn did all of it without Kerryon Johnson, the Tigers' leading rusher coming in, who was held out after hurting his ankle against Mississippi State two weeks ago.
The speedy Truitt, Malzahn said, "was a great change of pace" to Pettway. They combined for five touchdowns.
Auburn easily played on while erasing last year's four-overtime loss to Arkansas. The offense grabbed the touchdown headlines.
The defense made sure Arkansas didn't.
Malzahn said holding Arkansas to 25 yards rushing 'was really unbelievable."
Auburn started fast. Real fast. The Tigers scored on their first play, then scored again and then again before the first quarter was done.
Auburn led 28-0 until Adam McFain hit a 54-yard field goal on the final play of the first half.
That didn't matter. Auburn had done its damage by then, first when Eli Stove raced 78 yards for a touchdown on the Tigers' first snap. It was the first time Auburn had scored on its first snap of a game since Carnell Williams did it against Alabama in 2003.
The Tigers didn't stop there.
Pettway scored on a bulldozer 9-yard run eight minutes later. Then Stanton Truitt, the receiver-turned-running-back-turned-receiver scored two times in a row, first on a 20-yard run, then on a 45-yard pass from Sean White.
Truitt was virtually untouched on both plays as Auburn built a 28-0 lead.
All the while Arkansas was doing what it does best: Hogging the ball. At one point, Arkansas had held the ball 16 minutes, 27 seconds to Auburn's 5 minutes, 4 seconds -- yet the Tigers led 21-0.
Charles Goldberg is a Senior Writer at AuburnTigers.com. Follow him on Twitter: Follow @AUGoldMine