Ground chucked

Auburn abandons heralded ground game in loss to USC

By John Donovan, SI.com

Jason Campbell ended up with minus-25 yards rushing. AP

AUBURN, Ala. -- For a running game to work, as they say down here, you got to use it. It's Football 101. It's more basic than a cloud of dust. It's as simple as off-tackle right.

The Auburn Tigers had the running game -- that's what everybody said, anyway -- but they barely got a chance to unveil it Saturday. They tried, here and there. They seemed committed, at times.

But, like a fickle fiancée, when it came time to really get the job done, the Tigers got cold feet. They took to the air. They abandoned the ground game. Left it standing at the altar.

And, very possibly, they broke the heart of Auburn's faithful by doing it. Not to mention any hopes Auburn had at a national title.

Sure, there's a long season ahead. There's the Southeastern Conference title to win. That's still out there. So is the national championship. The Tigers can still get there.

But the hopes of all that, the hopes of those Auburn diehards, took a major beating in the biggest home opener ever for the Tigers. Southern California came into sultry Jordan-Hare Stadium and dared the Tigers to run on them. Dared them.

The Tigers never did. Not for anything that counted, anyway.

And so the eighth-ranked Trojans, who showed last year that they could stomp the Tigers' running game, did it again, beating No. 6 Auburn 23-0 in front of 86,000-plus on the Loveliest Village of the Plains.

"The good running teams, they tell you they're going to run the ball. And you have to tell them they're not going to run the ball," said Southern California defensive end Omar Nazel. "It's like poker. And you see the outcome."

Yeah, the Trojans cleared the table, all right. They took all of Auburn's chips. They called the Tigers' bluff and made them pay. Nobody could have figured it, either.

This was not a long shot, by any means. But this was not supposed to be the wipeout it turned out to be.

Auburn was ranked so loftily in the preseason rankings precisely because of that running game. The Tigers have four running backs who could be starters for a lot of schools. They have one, Carnell "Cadillac" Williams, who averaged 5.3 yards a carry last season. Another, Ronnie Brown, cranked it up at 5.8 a carry last season.

Then there is Tre Smith, who ran 126 yards against rival Alabama last season, and junior college transfer Brandon Jacobs. The Tigers were loaded.

Sorry. Are loaded, for those Auburn faithful who still have hope.

But USC didn't care. Maybe it was the fact that the Trojans didn't have a single player run for 100 yards against them last season. Maybe it was because they held this Auburn team to minus-2 yards rushing in the second half of last year's opener between these two teams, which USC also won.

Whatever, the Trojans came out and got in the Tigers' facemasks. They put eight men on or near the line of scrimmage almost from the start. They sent cornerbacks on blitzes into the backfield. They sent their linebackers into the backfield. They were everywhere the Tigers wanted to be. They did not wince.

"We had hoped to discourage them in the running game," USC coach Pete Carroll said nicely.

"We kind of thought it was going to be a lot tougher," Nazel said, not so nicely. "We came in running the same thing we ran in the second half [last year]. We knew where they were going the whole game."

Auburn's first running play, its first play of the game, lost 2 yards. And then the Tigers threw on the second play. They threw on the next one, too, a really bad decision by quarterback Jason Campbell that resulted in an interception that led to the Trojans' first touchdown.

The Tigers tried a running play on their next drive, too -- just one -- before they again went to the air.

This was not the plan. The Tigers were supposed to wear the Trojans down with their depth, tire them out in the Alabama heat. It seemed a little early to go to the pass.

But, given how the run game was doing early on, not everyone agreed.

"You don't want to look stupid out there," said Nazel, who really does seem like a decent fellow.

Auburn finally ripped off a decent running play on its third possession, when Cadillac drove for 14 yards up the middle. That turned out to be the longest run of the game for the ballyhooed backfield.

By halftime, Auburn had gained all of 35 yards on 17 runs. When everything was tallied at the end of the game, USC had held Auburn to 43 net yards on the ground.

Forty-three.

For sure, much of that total had to do with the negative yardage from Auburn's hassled quarterback, Campbell. The junior ran, mostly for his life, 16 times and lost 25 yards. When he tried the option, the Trojans were all over it. When he dropped back to pass, the Trojans were all over it.

When he tried anything, the Trojans were all over it.

"We tried everything that we could," Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville said. "There are no excuses."

By the time USC running back Hershel Dennis scampered in for a 14-yard touchdown early in the fourth quarter, the Tigers had long since given up any idea that they could run the ball. And by that time, with almost a full quarter left, Jordan-Hare looked like a giant juicer had descended on it, there was so much orange running up and out of the aisles.

There is still hope in Auburn. This was only the first game of the season, after all. The Tigers won't face many defenses as tough or well prepared as USC's.

Next time, though, Auburn probably ought to think about sticking with the run a little longer.

Hey, how much worse could it work out?

John Donovan is a senior writer for SI.com.