ATLANTA – It was third-and-7. Down one with just over six minutes remaining, Auburn was at the Washington 10-yard line, knocking on the door to score and take the lead.
Scoring touchdowns in the red zone had proven difficult against the Huskies, though. Auburn found the end zone on its opening drive, but the next three times in the red zone, the Tigers were held to three straight field-goal attempts. And the two previous plays on this drive, running back Kam Martin couldn't find any running room, which set up a critical decision on third down. Run or pass?
"We obviously had a field goal for sure to take the lead," quarterback Jarrett Stidham said. "And we have a great defense that was playing really well."
However, the majority of the fans at Mercedes-Benz Stadium expected Auburn to throw the ball on third down. There's no way you can pick up seven yards and a first down if you ran the ball again, right?
Except that offensive coordinator Chip Lindsey saw something in the defense, and so he went back to a formation that the Tigers had success running the ball in during the first half.
"If you noticed their red-zone defense, they played coverage down there, which makes it really tough to get 1-on-1s," Lindsey said. "They're zoning you out, so there are not a lot of windows. It gets tighter in the red zone. They do a nice job with that and they're good up front, so they've got a really good red-zone defense.
"I just felt like it was our best set to get in to run the ball. If we didn't get in, we kick the field goal."
Lindsey did make one small tweak. He subbed out Martin – the team's leading rusher Saturday with 80 yards – for redshirt freshman JaTarvious Whitlow. To that point, Whitlow or "Boobee" had just six carries for 14 yards. But the coaches remained confident in him, and his teammates knew he was more than capable of getting the job done. They had seen it time and time again during fall camp.
"Coach had called my name, and I knew that it was a big play," Whitlow said. "I knew that we needed to score on that down, not just get a first down. I had to just go and run with everything I had in me. I couldn't go down. I had to get to the end zone."
So Stidham lined up in shotgun and motioned Whitlow to his left. He took the snap and handed it off to the freshman, who burst up the middle and picked up the first down initially. Just as he was about to cross the goal line, he was met by a Washington defensive back that stood him up for a second. But Whitlow wasn't going to be denied. He pushed forward and propelled himself into the end zone for the go-ahead touchdown.
"I don't even know what to say," he said. "I'm going to beat you. You're not going to beat me. That's how I feel. That's how I take every opponent. I'm going to work harder than you."
"I felt like that was big for him," added wide receiver Ryan Davis. "He did a lot of that this fall camp, running guys over. So it was nothing new to me, but it was new for you guys to see. And I feel like that was something that's going to give him a boost of confidence going forward."
It's possible that Auburn could've kicked another field goal and still won the game. But the touchdown run from Whitlow was like a shot of adrenaline for the whole team. It was an exclamation point to the drive. And it proved to be more than enough for the defense, who came out and got one more stop to seal the victory.
Ten yards. Ten hard-earned yards that turned the game.
"In my opinion, offensively that was the best thing we did the entire game," Stidham said. "When we had to score, we scored. We found a way. It wasn't pretty at all. It was kind of an ugly win offensively, but we just found a way to win."
Greg Ostendorf is a Senior Writer for AuburnTigers.com. Follow him on Twitter: @greg_ostendorf
