NASHVILLE – The sweater vest was back. Gus Malzahn was calling plays again. And so when Auburn won the coin toss in Friday's Music City Bowl, the decision was easy. He wanted the ball.
On first down, Jarrett Stidham completed a quick pass to Ryan Davis for six yards. Then Kam Martin picked up three yards on the ground, setting up a significant 3rd-and-1 early in the game. The last thing Malzahn wanted to do was go 3-and-out on the opening drive and give the ball to Purdue. The whole reason behind the decision to start on offense was to send a message early and put points on the board.
That message? The Tigers delivered it on the next play.
With running back JaTarvious Whitlow lined up next to him, Stidham received the shotgun snap and took one step forward like he was going to run for the first down. Instead, he pulled back and threw a perfect pass to Whitlow down the sideline who was running a wheel route out of the backfield.
"I knew they were in man," Whitlow said. "So I was just looking at the linebacker, and he was giving me a little look. I'm like, 'You don't even know what you're about to get right now.' Once I went, I was like, 'He's not even coming. This is crib.' I wasn't even going to play with him."
Whitlow caught the pass in stride at midfield and then cut back to the middle of the field where he outran three Purdue defenders to the end zone for a 66-yard touchdown.
"It was 3rd-down-and-short," Malzahn said. "We felt like there was a good chance of them going zero coverage. That's a play we hadn't run in about two or three years. We practiced it during the course of the season. We got the perfect look. Whitlow came out of the backfield, and Jarrett did a good job of really faking run with his hat placement, and we got an easy one there."
It was the perfect play call, and it set the tone for the rest of the game.
"We went crazy," Auburn safety Jeremiah Dinson said. "We already knew what time it was when [Whitlow] scored that first touchdown early like that. We already knew what time it was, and we were excited for him."
With Malzahn calling the plays, Auburn scored a touchdown on their next seven offensive drives. The only drive in the first half that didn't result in a touchdown was when Stidham took a knee on the final play before the intermission. But the Tigers, who got three touchdowns from Whitlow and three more from wide receiver Darius Slayton, set a new bowl record with 56 points in the first half.
"Coach Malzahn already had it set up," Whitlow said. "He had already watched film, and he kind of knew what they were going to do. He knew what to expect."
When asked if it was the most fun he'd had on offense, Whitlow's eyes lit up.
"I really felt like we got back to the Auburn offense," the freshman running back said. "We were flowing. We were running the ball, and then boom, we hit him with a shot. It was just back to Auburn football. We put up like 63. And I heard we had the most in a bowl game? Wow.
"The (play-calling) really was fire. He really was calling those plays. We were going at a fast pace, and Purdue couldn't even adjust to it. I hate it for y'all next year."
Greg Ostendorf is a Senior Writer for AuburnTigers.com. Follow him on Twitter: @greg_ostendorf
